Proving even the best get it wrong sometimes
Apple has been good to me.
They’ve made some products that I’ve loved, some that I’ve used for years and some that have created wonderful, lasting memories. They’ve even been the catalyst to my becoming a creator – writing and making videos about the latest phones, Macs and tablets.
Recently though, it would be fair to say that they’ve gone off the rails quite dramatically in some areas at least.
It’s like the boxer who has no one around them to say “It’s time to stop champ”. Apple seems to have no one around who’s willing to pull in the reigns and force a regroup.
And boy, currently do they need it!
Now look, I’m not suddenly going to change tracks and begin bashing Apple. On the whole, they still deliver what I want – but equally, that’s not to say that I’m blind to the mistakes they’re making.
So rather than writing a ‘three months’ with whatever device story, I thought I’d heed my own words, and just stand back and write a piece about how I see things on Apple Street right now.
The Good
I’ve noticed, that the more involved I get in the tech space, how negative it can become.
First, let’s state the bloody obvious, we all work hard, to buy gadgets we love and want to use. At the end of it, let’s not lose sight of what we are throwing toys out of the pram over – gadgets. Lovely, shiny new gadgets.
In 2025, it’s pretty hard to buy a bad device fromany of the main players. I happen to have stumbled across Apple first all those years ago, and I’ve grown used to how they work and fit into my day.
Apple works…for me.
The phone is central to all our digital lives – it holds crazy amounts of personal information about us, which I’ll come back to later, but equally, it’s probably the device I reach for and use least each day.
The thing is, it just sits there directing everything in the background, but I hardly use it. If I want to write I’ll reach for a Mac. If I want to search a site I’ll reach for an iPad. Even in the car, I use Apple CarPlay and hardly touch the phone (being the good little law-abiding boy that I am)!
Macs are about as good now as they’ve ever been. Apple silicon changed everything. Leaving to one side the details of specs for now, you can buy a Mac mini for £600 and a new M4 MacBook Air for under £1000. And these are no toys – they are serious machines that’ll last you for years and do pretty much anything you ask of them.
The Vision Pro is far from perfect and costs a stupid amount of money, but it was one of those products that needed to be out there, improve, develop and iterate.
Apple Watch and AirPods both defined new categories that no one else had thought of and now the rest follow and mimic. iPads do what iPads do, and say what you like about them, again, they were the first.
And who’s to say that with the C1 modem that Apple has just launched we aren’t on the cusp of yet another huge step forward? If they can manage to extract even more power efficiency from their modem, then it could be another Apple silicon moment all over again.
Generally, I’d say their hardware is in a good place.
The jewel in the crown
The iPhone again defined an era.
For the longest time, the iPhone had precious little competition. Now of course you can choose from a handful of phones that all perform at a similar level. Samsung, Google, even Oppo, Huawei, Honor and Nothing…the list goes on. They’ll all do a decent job.
But here is where I want to roll my sleeves up a bit.
Tech people are quick to come down on the iPhone for being dated, lazy and offering nothing new – but I take a different view.
Sure, there are foldables, tri-folding phones and phones with funky camera layouts – but does that really make them better? What is so wrong with what an iPhone does?
I mean, what do you actually use your phone for every day?
I’ve been around for a few years and cannot think of a time that I needed that all elusive “productivity’ and work on a spreadsheet on my phone there and then – it can always wait! It seems to me that at times we’re simply looking for solutions to problems that aren’t there.
As I said, I reach for my phone very little, and when I do it tends to be for photography – but again, that’s because that’s part of what I do for a job. But here’s the thing – it suits my needs. Hell, this thing in my pocket has a camera with a 24mm, 28mm & 35mm focal length camera in it. It can record in a LOG profile and even in ProRes.
And this thing is dated…
Honestly, how much more could I want from it? Could the battery life be a little better, yeah, sure, but does that make it a bad phone?
So you have phones that can record in 8K and phones with a marginally brighter screen, but my iPhone does what I ask of it. It’s built like a tank, I know it’ll last for years and Apple will be around to support it with software updates for the next 7 years at least.
For my part, I’d rather stick with a solid-quality product than one bloated with fancy AI toys and gimmicks that I’ll never use.
And that brings us to the bad – AI!
Apple Intelligence – what went wrong?
It’s approaching a year since Apple first announced Apple Intelligence.
Looking back, I guess we should all have been a bit brighter and realised the sheer enormity of what they were trying to sell us. It was freaking ambitious and almost unrealistic in reality.
Of course, Apple Intelligence isn’t simply one thing or one app – it’s an umbrella term for a whole host of features that Apple was hoping to bring us.
I’m not sure if anybody – Meta or Google has mastered personal context to the extent that Apple had planned or promised, but when you think of how far-reaching that was, it’s not surprising that it’s fallen short.
Expecting that suddenly Siri would be able to understand you and look through messages, emails and calendar appointments and link everything together…geez, how stupid were we?
It’s a huge challenge and if the biggest and most successful tech company in the world, with some of the finest brains, is struggling to make it work, then I think it’s fair to assume that it’s ‘tricky’!
Remember I said earlier that Apple had no one to tell them to pull back – this is precisely why they need someone.
Why they were so late to the party in the first place I have no idea – they employ the best of the best and must’ve known what was coming downstream. Then, when they did finally announce it, they decided to go balls-deep and promise the world! No gently-gently, bit-by-bit…nope let’s shoot for the stars and promise the world.
They clearly weren’t ready – so why parade Apple Intelligence last year when they possibly already knew they were speaking prematurely? Was their hand being forced? Were they panicking? Did they just think we need to get some flesh in the AI game? Who knows – but what we do know is that someone should’ve been on hand to say NO!
The writing was on the wall in plain sight for us all to see that this was doomed to failure. Last year in the few days straight after WWDC, journalists were at least shown some monitored, hands-on demos of Writing Tools, Image Playground and photos Clean Up – but there was no sign of Personal Context or In-app actions anywhere to be seen.
The bad
Apple are far from being fools – but they have sure been made to look it over this mess – and it was avoidable.
They were at best disingenuous and at the very worst they were lying to us the whole time. That ad with Bella Ramsey should never have run – what we saw on that phone, in that ad has never worked on any phone – it was the stuff of fiction. Again – where was that person to say no?
Apple has a problem and that’s that they’re inflexible.
There is the Apple way of doing things full stop. That stubbornness has also resulted in them having to back track and take down some references to Apple Intelligence from their website – what a very un-Apple like mess this is.
For years now we have had the September iPhone event which is orchestrated to within an inch of its life. Since the pandemic, it’s even worse as they’re pre-recorded events with perfect slots dropped in for each of the devices they’re peddling.
But, that’s the Apple way. Their view is that it’s always worked, so why bother to change it?
With a banker like the iPhone, that’s one thing. That will sell almost come what may, but when it came to the Vision Pro and most certainly Apple Intelligence they needed to throw away the playbook.
And because they didn’t, there is another problem looming on the horizon – and that is this year’s WWDC. For starters, what the hell are they going to talk about, secondly, why should we now take anything they tell as the gospel truth?
Can they go back to those dark days of not mentioning AI at their events? Nope, that’s not an option – they’ve pulled the chord and somehow Apple’s marketing team needs to pull this one out of the fire. How, I’ve no idea, and luckily, that’s not my problem. But somewhere, a bunch of people are being asked to perform the impossible and make Apple credible again.
The once flawless and mighty has been battered and bruised.
The sad thing is, that Apple were actually ahead of the game for many years. Some of their Machine Learning features like Live Text, Live Caption, Facial Recognition in the photos app and even Face ID – all these subtle, almost invisible features were all ML powered. Apple recognised the importance of a voice assistant and bought Siri Inc. back in 2010 – but somewhere down the line they got lost and bloated.
And now we’re hearing that we might be getting a massive overhaul to iOS and iPadOS this year. Welcome as that may be, don’t you think now might not be the time to risk it. I know they need something to talk about at WWDC, but if that were to go wrong…
Is too late for Apple?
They’re in a pickle – that’s for sure. Will they bounce back? Yeah, most likely, but it’s a mess they should never have found themselves in.
Even through the recent months of mess, Apple has still managed to show its good side though. Apple has bared their teeth and shown they are serious about privacy with the fight against opening up any back doors for governments worldwide. It would have been easier for them to roll over, but they are showing that they really do care about your privacy.
I mentioned that our phones hold so much data about us now it’s kind of hard to comprehend. Apple’s intentions were right with their plan to have the majority of the personal context features happening on device. Yes, they made the task impossibly hard for themselves, but even the jaundiced me is starting to believe that through it all, Apple is serious about protecting our privacy.
But with all that said, I want to leave you with a question…
How much does AI matter to you? I’m not denying that AI and LLMs will have some part to play in our futures – but will it be to the extent we are currently being led to believe?
Surely we’re capable of writing our own emails and texts, aren’t we? Just because we can throw an LLM at something doesn’t mean that we should use it. AI is the buzzword and every company no matter what it is seems to think that AI is the way forward.
Are we being sold the next big thing with no one taking the time to say do we need it?
Make no mistake, Apple is in a mess over the way they’ve handled their attempt to get into the AI race – but when the dust settles, it’ll be interesting to see if it was worth it after all.
Do I pick up my iPhone and wish it had more AI on it? Nope, not really.
AI will have its place in my life, as it will yours, but is it the be-all-and-end-all that we’re being told it is…
You tell me!
