While the rest of Big Tech is sprinting headfirst into AI hype, Apple is taking a walk—and not in a hurry.
At its latest WWDC, Apple unveiled “Apple Intelligence,” a suite of AI-powered tools like smarter Siri, on-device writing help, and app suggestions. But here’s the catch: these features won’t be widely available until sometime in 2026.
Yes, 2026. In a world where AI news moves at lightning speed, that sounds like a lifetime. But maybe—just maybe—Apple knows exactly what it’s doing.
Most of us have seen what happens when AI tools are rushed out. Microsoft’s Copilot occasionally makes things up. ChatGPT sometimes hallucinates facts. Gemini and Claude can be brilliant for a few moments and frustratingly vague the next. And let’s not even talk about using these tools for something mission-critical like writing production-level code—developers will tell you it’s often easier to do it yourself than to fix what AI spits out.
Apple, on the other hand, has always played the long game. Whether it was the first iPhone or Face ID, they wait until a product is not just shiny, but reliable. Their delay in rolling out Apple Intelligence might not be a weakness—it might be a statement: “We’re not just shipping AI. We’re making it make sense.”
While others are flooding devices with buggy AI assistants and unfinished tools, Apple is staying quiet, refining its tech, and choosing substance over speed. Siri isn’t suddenly your new coworker. There’s no half-baked chatbot lurking in every corner of iOS. And maybe that’s the whole point.
The takeaway? Apple isn’t late. It’s just not interested in impressing us fast—it wants to get it right. And in the AI race, that might be the smartest move of all.
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