I think it's a "yes but" here. AI is the first transition point since the smartphone. Apple knows how to make hardware, and knows how to make software. I am extremely unconvinced Apple has a clue about what to do with AI.

You can't just jump in, the lead up to getting this stuff going is a 5 year+ horizon, and Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic are still moving exceptionally fast. Apple has shown they are nowhere near. They missed the boat on buying Anthropic, OpenAI was never going to sell with Musk behind it. There's no path forward for them, let alone catching up.

They also don’t own a search engine, yet google pays them $20B annually

There are a lot of AI companies that don't have a clue about what to do with AI. I would argue almost no one really knows what to do with it, which is why it's being shoehorned in everywhere.

I think Apple is being smart by sitting out this "light barrels of money on fire" phase, because we have no idea where it ends or whether it'll be worth a damn. Apple has a big enough warchest that once real solutions do start to coalesce out of the fog, they can just acquire what they need to build actual products.