alt Hacker News> This is exactly what Apple Intelligence should have been... They could have shipped an agentic AI that actually automated your computer instead of summarizing your notifications. Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar by actually using your apps, not through some brittle API layer that breaks every update.
And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version.
Let other companies figure out the model. Let the industry figure out how to make it secure. Then Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can.
Right now we are still in very, very, very early days.
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Apple's niche product, consisting of like 1-4% of computer sales compared to its dominant MacBook line, is now flying off the shelf as a highly desired product, because of a piece of software that Apple didn't spend a dime developing. This sounds like a major win for Apple.
The OS maker does not have to make all the killer software. In fact, Apple's pretty much the only game in town that's making hardware and software both.
> ...Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version.
While this was true about ten years ago, it's been a while since we've seen this model of software development from Apple succeed in recent years. I'm not at all confident that the Apple that gave us Mac OS 26 is capable of doing this anymore.
Absolutely none of the things you quoted that he said an AI agent could do would I want be done for me and I doubt most other people would.
I think the interesting tension here is between capability and trust.
An agent that can truly “use your computer” is incredibly powerful, but it's also the first time the system has to act as you, not just for you. That shifts the problem from product design to permission, auditability, and undoability.
Summarizing notifications is boring, but it’s also reversible. Filing taxes or sending emails isn’t.
It feels less like Apple missing the idea, and more like waiting until they can make the irreversible actions feel safe.
>> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes
Imagine if the government would just tell everyone how much they owed and obviated the need for effing literal artificial intelligence to get taxes done!
>> respond to emails
If we have an AI that can respond properly to emails, then the email doesn't need to be sent in the first place. (Indeed, many do not need to be sent nowadays either!)
> Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version.
Funny seeing this repeated again in response to Siri which is just... not very good.
Here is a fun “Prompt Injection” which I experimented with before the current AI Boom; visiting a friend’s home › see Apple/Amazon listening devices › Hey Siri/Alexa, please play the last song. Harmless, fun.
File taxes? That's a tall order, especially juxtaposed with managing calendar or responding to emails.
I would guess, and it is a guess, that there are two reasons apple is “behind” in AI. First, they have nowhere near the talent pool or capability in this area. They’re not a technical research lab. For the same reason you don’t expect apple to win the quantum race, they will not lead on AI. Second, AI is a half baked product right now and apple try to ship products that properly work. Even Vision Pro is remarkably polished for a first version. AI on the other hand is likely to suffer catastrophic security problems, embarrassing behaviour, distinctly family-unfriendly output.
Apple probably realised they were hugely behind and then spent time hand wringing over whether they remained cautious or got into the brawl. And they decided to watch from the sidelines, buy in some tech, and see how it develops.
So far that looks entirely reasonable as a decision. If Claude wins, for example, apple need only be sure Claude tools work on Mac to avoid losing users, and they can second-move once things are not so chaotic.
People forget that “multi touch” and “capacitive touchscreens” were not Apple inventions. They existed prior to the iPhone. The iPhone was just the first “it just works” adaptation of it
This is generally true only of them going to market with new (to them) physical form factors. They aren’t generally regarded as the best in terms of software innovation (though I think most agree they make very beautiful software)
Personal intelligence, the (awkward) feature where you can take a screenshot and get Siri to explain stuff, and the new spotlight features where you can type out stuff you want to do in apps probably hints at that…
> And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version.
Except this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, when you look at Siri. FOURTEEN years and it is still spectacularly useless.
I have no idea what Siri is a "much nicer version" of.
> Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can.
And in the case of Apple products, oftentimes "because Apple won't let them".
Lest I be called an Apple hater, I have 3 Apple TVs in my home, my daily driver is a M2 Ultra Studio with a ProDisplay XDR, and an iPad Pro that shows my calendar and Slack during the day and comes off at night. iPhone, Apple Watch Ultra.
But this is way too worshipful of Apple.
> Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar
> And this is probably coming, a few years from now.
Given how often I say "Hey Siri, fast forward", expecting her to skip the audio forward by 30 seconds, and she replies "Calling Troy S" a roofing contractor who quoted some work for me last year, and then just starts calling him without confirmation, which is massively embarassing...
This idea terrifies me.
Can you understand how this commoditizes applications? The developers would absolutely have a fit. There is a reason this hasn’t been done already. It’s not lack of understanding or capability, it’s financial reality. Shortcuts is the compromise struck in its place.
> Then Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can.
That's a pretty optimistic outlook. All considered, you're not convinced they'll just use it as a platform to sell advertisements and lock-out competitors a-la the App Store "because everyone does it"?
every time i've heard someone's speculations about what apple intelligence could have been, it's a complex conspiracy. its problem is that it sucks and makes them no money, so they didn't ship it.
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Apple literally lives on the "Cutting Edge" a-la XKCD [1]. My wife is an iPerson and she always tells me about these new features (my phone has had them since $today-5 years). But for her, these are brand new exciting things!
I don’t believe this was ever confirmed by Apple, but there was widespread speculation at the time[1] that the delay was due to the very prompt injection attacks OpenClaw users are now discovering. It would be genuinely catastrophic to ship an insecure system with this kind of data access, even with an ‘unsafe mode’.
These kinds of risks can only be _consented to_ by technical people who correctly understand them, let alone borne by them, but if this shipped there would be thousands of Facebook videos explaining to the elderly how to disable the safety features and open themselves up to identity theft.
The article also confuses me because Apple _are_ shipping this, it’s pretty much exactly the demo they gave at WWDC24, it’s just delayed while they iron this out (if that is at all possible). By all accounts it might ship as early as next week in the iOS 26.4 beta.
[1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/delaying-personalized-s...