As AI lag overshadows its ‘Liquid Glass' design updates, is Apple headed the Nokia way?

Indian Express

19 hours ago

Apple just announced iOS 26, the biggest redesign of its software backend in years. After having belatedly stumbled out of the starting blocks in Big Tech's decisive race to leverage the promise of artificial intelligence, the question was whether Apple would redeem itself at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference — a pre-summer rite that draws developers in droves to Apple's Cupertino headquarters in California.
Well, the answer may be a resounding no. Beyond some snazzy updates on its 'Liquid Glass' display and some whittling around the edges when it comes to improving the backend operating system, there doesn't seem to be a real big remarkable breakthrough at WWDC25. The promise of a smarter and more versatile version of its virtual assistant, Siri, continues to be just that – a promise. Incremental steps notwithstanding, analysts point to the potential mistake of Apple persisting with attempts to basically build on Siri, rather than starting from scratch in the way that some of the other AI companies have done.
In 2023, Apple unveiled a mixed-reality headset that has been little more than a niche product, and last year's WWDC heralded its first major foray into the AI space with a range of new software features accompanied by the promise of a more versatile and smarter version of Siri. This was all part of what the company called Apple Intelligence. Apple's stock surged by more than $200 billion the following day — one of the biggest single-day gains of any company in American history.
The showing at this year's WWDC is clearly more underwhelming, renewing analyst calls that it might have been better served to start over from scratch rather than merely attempt to improve Siri. One way to do that could be to invest in companies such as Perplexity, just like what Microsoft did early on. It is now reaping the benefits of ChatGPT-driven Copilot being integrated into Microsoft systems. Apple Intelligence is, for instance, not a patch on other voice-activated AI assistance bots such as Google's Gemini.
Despite the fact that it was one of the early movers into the backend chip design business, and given that the company has the resources to spend on R&D, Apple is seen as falling continuously behind in the software pivot. So much so that comparisons are being drawn to Finnish telecoms major Nokia, a market leader in handsets that was disrupted by Apple itself in the mid-2000s.
To be fair, Apple has acknowledged that its hardware bestseller, the smartphone, could be a thing of the past in less than a decade. And even as Apple's rivals have been faster off the block to explore new use cases, with both Google and Meta betting on AI-infused smart glasses, alongside Chinese competitors including Xiaomi and Baidu. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT where Microsoft has a stake, has meanwhile announced a software-to-hardware pivot, after it recently announced a $6.4 billion deal to buy a firm created by Jony Ive, Apple's former chief designer for more than 25 years, to build an AI device.
While Apple has a product of the future in its Vision Pro headset, it is still a big clunky device as compared to the new Meta glasses. And now as Jony Ive works with OpenAI, the collaboration could include wearables, meaning Apple could have another big problem on its hands.
At the same time, though, Apple still has a billion phones out there, and most of the world's premium users to boot. But there again, Apple's unwillingness to hoover up customers' individual information, however creditable that might be from a privacy point of view, makes it harder for the company to train personalised AI models. As part of its 'differential privacy' policy, Apple uses collective insights, rather than the granular data scraped up by companies such as Google. Also, according to the Economist, privacy has encouraged Apple to prioritise AI that runs on its own devices, rather than investing in cloud infrastructure, even as chatbots have advanced more rapidly in the cloud because the models can be much bigger in scale. The result being that Apple has had to offer some users of Apple Intelligence an opt-in to ChatGPT – clearly a compromise of sorts.
Apple's struggle on the AI front is also being compared to its other previous shortcomings: the Apple TV project and the Apple car, both of which never materialised despite years of backend work.
Not that iOS 26 is all fuzz. The big change this year is the customer interface redesign. 'Liquid Glass' in Applespeak is a new translucent interface that does make the OS look sleek and the app icons can be customised with a glass look. Popular apps such as Safari and the camera have also been redesigned to make the screen look and feel bigger. CarPlay has been tweaked.
Then, the big change is while using the phone. There is now an automatic call screening facility that jumps in to answer a call from an unknown number, which then prompts the caller to say who they are. Once the caller shares their name and the reason for their call, then only does the phone ring.
Then there's hold assist, which basically detects when there is hold music, and the phone will sit on hold for the user and alert the user only when a human has come on the line.
But in all of this, Apple is merely playing catch up to Google and Samsung. And that really is the problem for the Silicon Valley-based electronics major.
Anil Sasi is National Business Editor with the Indian Express and writes on business and finance issues. He has worked with The Hindu Business Line and Business Standard and is an alumnus of Delhi University. ... Read More