The difference is that nobody chooses Apple explicitly for their glass. They choose them because they provide a bleeding edge experience without the effort one would need to maintain something like a Linux install, Google now beats them to the punch on several parts of this with their AI approach, especially on-device.

People choose Apple devices because they work well and let them do things they want to do (they don’t buy for the Corning name, they buy for durability). Google has a lot of marketing and we follow developments closely here on HN but I have never heard anyone other than nerds who already included Android in their personal identity say that Gemini does anything substantial for them, and they sound exactly like the way their grandfathers sounded having quasi-religious debates about Ford vs. Chevy while everyone else tried to change the subject.

That doesn’t mean that Apple shouldn’t be following the space closely but I think it’s a mistake to think that normal people are changing their buying decisions based on any of this yet. One trade off here is that Google is spending a ton of money but as of yet is massively in the red on that investment, which means they’ll stick with their own LLM while Apple is free to switch to whoever the market leader is without a large sunk cost factoring into the decision.

One might argue that no one chooses Pixels for Gemini (yet).