AI: Little longer for 'Apple Intelligence'. RTZ #432

...bleeding edge AI products taking bit longer to get right

Good things come to those who wait, they say. And it looks that may be true for Apple’s latest AI feastures as well.

As I’ve recounted before, Apple’s ‘Apple Intelligence’ strategy due to roll out later this year, is one of the most differentiated AI plans in these early days of the AI Tech Wave. We have an update on that rollout, as Bloomberg reorts in “Apple Intelligence to Miss Initial Launch of Upcoming iOS 18 Overhaul”:

“Developers will get to test AI features as soon as this week”.

“Apple is betting on enhancements to help sell iPhone 16 line”

“Apple Inc.’s upcoming artificial intelligence features will arrive later than anticipated, missing the initial launch of its upcoming iPhone and iPad software overhauls but giving the company more time to fix bugs.”

“The company is planning to begin rolling out Apple Intelligence to customers as part of software updates coming by October, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That means the AI features will arrive a few weeks after the initial iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 releases planned for September, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing unannounced release details.”

“Still, the iPhone maker is planning to make Apple Intelligence available to software developers for the first time for early testing as soon as this week via iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 betas, they added. The strategy is atypical as the company doesn’t usually release previews of follow-up updates until around the time the initial version of the new software generation is released publicly.”

The glass half full aspect here is that Developers will have access to the beta versions of the Apple Intelligence features in a few days soon. As Bloomberg goes on to outline:

“The stakes are higher than usual. In order to ensure a smooth consumer release of its big bet on AI, Apple needs support from developers to help iron out issues and test features on a wider scale. Concerns over the stability of Apple Intelligence features, in part, led the company to split the features from the initial launch of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18.”

“Even when Apple Intelligence launches with iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1, it will be missing some features. That includes some of the most significant changes to Siri, such as the ability to use on-device data to help field queries and for the system to use what is on a person’s screen to provide context for answers.”

“The company is planning to roll out its full set of Apple Intelligence features via multiple updates to iOS 18 across the end of 2024 and through the first half of 2025, Bloomberg News has reported. Beyond the iPhone and iPad, Apple Intelligence will come to its Mac computers with in-house Apple chips as part of macOS Sequoia. It’s also in development for the Vision Pro, but a release for that device isn’t planned until later.”

There is a broader theme here applicable to all the Big Tech companies like OpenAI, Google and others. The best, bleeding edge AI features, like OpenAI’s ‘SearchGP’, text to video software Sora, Google’s AI reasoning and agentic features, etc., all will take a bit longer than their announcements earlier this year implied.

Part of it is getting these latest technologies to work as advertised at the right costs at Scale. And part of it getting the AI datacenter and compute infrastructure in place to deliver these features to mainstream audiences.

That for the reasons I’ve highlighted in earlier, may take a bit longer than we all would like. But these types of modest delays in this AI Tech Wave is for now part for the course. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)