Apple unveils cool equipment, but questions remain on its AI strategy

Apple promoted its annual launch event on Tuesday under the name of “Awe Dossing”. But in the middle of its new models of airpods, iPhones and smart watches, what the most stood out can be what Apple Tim Cook CEO doesn’t Talk a lot: artificial intelligence.

There were a lot of adjustments to some of the most successful products in the technology giant. Particularly notable was the more focused on health and fitness capacities, such as heart rate detection technology in AirPods Pro 3 and new health characteristics in Apple Watch – including what Apple says is the capacity to detect models in the behavior of blood vessels that may indicate hypertension.

Cook even promoted the watch by saying that “helps save so many lives”, showing a promotional coil of various users who said they had avoided a health crisis because of the new technology. (Although there are no difficult data shared on these incidents.)

But at a time when the world of technology is obsessed with AI, the relative silence on Apple’s plans for its integration into its products raises questions on the longer -term strategy of the company in this space.

The company already has a series of features grouped under Apple Intelligence, initially introduced at the end of 2024, which it recently strengthened. This includes things like live translation (including for the new Airpod Pro 3 and some older models) – and the Apple Visual Intelligence functionality identifies objects or places that you point with your camera and allows people to use the search engine or Google cat to find out more. Users can generate unique images by describing what they want, relying again on Chatgpt to do the real generation.

Questions about the future

Thus, while users can take advantage of these new features, a large part is based on the programs of other companies – and this has led to murmurs on Apple late in AI advances.

Apple has “years behind” its competitors with regard to AI, wrote Michael Muchmore recently in PCMAG, but it still has the possibility of becoming competitive in this area.

“But he must commit to this goal with a feeling of urgency to have a chance to catch Google and Microsoft”, ” He wrote. “Otherwise, he will never be able to meet the expectations and the excitement of consumers and thus may miss the decisive technology of this decade.

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In particular, while the technological sector is trying to transform a cool generative AI into real products that people will find useful (and generate income), Siri’s latest performance – which arrived early in the digital assistance market in 2011 – was largely considered, at best, disappointing. Because even if Apple said that Siri has “new superpowers” and more integration with Chatgpt-the question is: why is Apple rely on Chatgpt instead of making its own version?

Build software and hardware

This comes at a time when the major players in this part of the technological industry have evolved towards the development of their own Have and binding it to their own material. Google, for example, is integrating his gemini ai into many devices. He announcement In the spring, he brings Gemini to his watches, to cars with Android Auto and Google integrated and on Google TV. Gemini arrives on Google Home Devices on October 1.

On the other side of the room, Openai, creator of Chatgpt, pointed out in May that he intended to penetrate the material market. It was at this point that he announced a partnership with the legendary designer Jony IVE on what is largely reported to be new personal equipment. IVE was the famous Apple design manager and the brain behind the design of the iPhone and other emblematic Apple products such as iPod and IMAC. He left Apple in 2019.

The promise, at least, of the integration of hardware and software lies in the user offer a more personalized experience while technology begins to know more about you and your routines, because you access the same AI software wherever you are throughout the day – and on different devices.

But this can also raise confidentiality problems for certain users.

Strategic options

Apple has long underlined its user confidentiality and presented Apple Intelligence to consumers as offering a confidentiality AI “For the rest of us. “Users can currently choose to integrate chatgpt with Apple Intelligence – or not.

Apple has other options in addition to going forward with the creation of an internal product. According to a Bloomberg reportApple planned to work with Google Gemini or Anthropic Claude. It would be a gap in relation to the hardware and software strategy that Google, Openai and even Meta continue, but the equipment has long been AS of Apple in the hole.

The Apple AI dilemma arrives at a pivotal moment in the technological sector. Although AI was an enormous objective for investors, there is now a discussion on the question of whether we are in the middle of a bubble of AI because we see signs that adoption would soften. Recent data from the American census, for example, suggest that the adoption of AI companies in companies with more than 250 people has been declining In recent weeks.

So the rush to add the AI ​​to everything can also cool.