I think it's the right strategy for Apple.

They're not a model company. The risks of deploying something half-baked to their users is unacceptable. They're taking it slow and trying to do it in a way that doesn't damage/erode their brand.

Wait it out, let the best model(s) rise to the surface (and the hallucination problems to get sufficiently mitigated), and then either partner with a proprietary provider or deploy one of the open source models. Makes more sense than burning billions of dollars training a new foundation model

This is a reasonable approach, but unfortunately misses what made Apple soooo successful. Apple is the master of controlling the brand. Apple DOES NOT like to highlight their suppliers. Nobody knows who makes iPhones displays, or sensors, or RAMs.

They love to "invent" brands that they control, so that they can commodotize the underlying supplier. Hey user, it is a retina display and dont worry whether it is LG or Samsung is making it.

Apple tried this with AI, calling it "Apple Intelligence". Unfortunately that faltered. Now Apple will have to come out and say "iPhone with ChatGPT" or "Siri with Claude". AND APPLE HATES THAT. HATES IT WITH PASSION.

People will start to associate smartness with ChatGPT or Claude, and Apple loses control and OpenAI/Anthropic's leverage goes up.

Apple has painted themselves into a corner. And as I said elsewhere, it is a train-wreck happening in slowmotion.

They already deployed half-baked models (eg needing to disable news summaries because they were so bad), and haven't delivered on other aspects of apple intelligence. This is hard to call being cautious, this is them not being able to keep up.

Exactly. Another mobile.me moment that adversely impacts customers is worse than making something useful that works. Anyone that “needs” AI can use an app.