A Skeptical Take on AI: Why Apple's Silence at WWDC 2025 Might Be a Good Thing
Following multiple weeks of grappling with the significance of AI on the Microsoft Surface Pro 12, if Apple's intelligence sector receives scant attention during WWDC 2025, I'll feel a sense of unmitigated delight.
With WWDC 2025 just around the corner, the tech world eagerly anticipates Tim Cook's keynote address and, perhaps, a glimmer of progress from Apple's AI efforts. But, after a year of companies hyping up AI as the next big thing and frustrating admirers like myself, I've grown a bit weary of all this AI hype.
You see, I'm not entirely against AI, or at least the modern tech that a lot of companies are calling AI. The actual technology behind it is fascinating, and for some industries, like scientific research and healthcare, the transformative potential is genuinely exciting. The problem is, companies have been pushing AI into products where the user benefit isn't always clear.
At the Computex 2025 computing show in Taiwan earlier this year, virtually every laptop maker was eager to tell me about their AI features, while seemingly ignoring the cool technical advancements I was actually interested in. Stuff like slimline designs, powerful performance, and long battery lives - those are the things that will make a real difference in how we use our laptops.
But instead, I was treated to tales of AI-powered tools like Copilot (stuffed into Windows 11 by Microsoft) generating images in Paint, writing up work in Word, or summarizing emails. While the companies excitedly listed off all these AI features, I couldn't help but wonder what all the fuss was about. Trying the AI-generated images felt like a mild diversion, at best, and I'd never do it again. Meanwhile, reading and writing emails, something I was told was a time-consuming, difficult, and boring task, has never been an issue for me.
It felt like I was being gaslighted, to be honest. When a spokesperson for a company that is heavily pushing AI told me that they never write emails themselves, they get AI to do it, I felt a bit depressed. It never takes me that long to write an email, and the idea that someone I was talking to might not take that same time, but instead generates a response, didn't exactly fill me with joy. It certainly meant that if I ever received an email from that person, I'd be less inclined to engage with it.
These sorts of disconnects between what the laptop makers are telling me to be excited about and what I'm actually interested in have become all too common. And I felt it again during my recent Surface Pro 12 review (Microsoft's latest tablet and a high-profile 'Copilot+ PC'). This is the company's name for Windows 11 devices with NPUs (Neural Processing Units) capable of on-device AI tasks, and Microsoft is using it to showcase their vision of AI in Windows.
Now, to be fair to Microsoft, they've been more ambitious in their AI integration than many of their competitors, going beyond the usual image generation/asking questions/writing and rewriting text. But while their tools are trying something different, they remain the least interesting aspect of the Surface Pro 12, with tools like Recall still feeling a little creepy and intrusive, while Click to Do just feels pointless at the moment.
So, if the rumors are true, and Apple won't be talking much about AI at WWDC 2025, it would actually make me very happy.
Is Apple Struggling with AI?
There have been quite a few reports suggesting that Apple is struggling to keep up with the AI competition. We've seen little of what Apple Intelligence can do outside of image and text generation, which, to be honest, are as uninspiring to me as similar tools from Microsoft, Google, and the like.
Apple's overhauled virtual assistant, Siri, which is supposed to feature AI, has been AWOL since its announcement. This has led to a general feeling that Apple might not know what to do with AI, and that's the most relatable I've ever found this trillion-dollar company.
Weirdly, Apple was ahead of the game in some respects - their M1 chip, which launched in 2020 and ushered in a new age of the best MacBooks and Macs, was based on Arm architecture, like many flagship Copilot+ PCs, and came with an NPU (the Neural Engine) years before Microsoft and the like got all hot and bothered about it.
But if Apple is struggling to find a way to integrate AI into their products, maybe that's a sign that, at the moment, there's no real benefit to including it in many consumer devices, especially laptops. One suggestion is that Apple has been wary of showing or talking about AI because the tech isn't ready yet and the company's been burned by announcing the all-new Siri and then failing to release it.
Another theory is that Apple is taking a more cautious approach to AI, choosing to focus on refining current technology and delivering genuinely useful features to users, rather than rushing to market with half-baked AI tools. I, for one, hope that's the case. The alternative, with its promises of an AI-powered future and only half-finished features, doesn't exactly fill me with hope.
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Some Enrichment Data for the AI Enthusiast:
- Enhanced Siri: Apple has been developing a more personalized version of Siri that understands personal context, but has faced delays due to errors.
- Visual Intelligence: Unveiled at WWDC 2025, Visual Intelligence allows users to perform image searches based on what they see while browsing. This feature is expected to launch with iOS 26 in late 2025.
- Live Translation: Another feature announced at WWDC 2025, Live Translation enables real-time conversation translation in Messages, FaceTime, and Phone apps, also set to launch with iOS 26.
- Apple Intelligence: A suite of AI tools developed by Apple that allows developers to integrate AI into their apps, offering features like personalized quizzes generated from notes for studying. These tools are still in their beta phase and face challenges such as misleading message summaries and delayed improvements.
- Microsoft and Google: Apple's competition in the AI race. Microsoft focuses on integrating AI into its productivity tools, such as Office and Azure services, while emphasizing cloud-based AI capabilities. Google has been at the forefront of AI development with its Gemini AI service, offering advanced search and generation capabilities that are often cloud-based.
The technology industry's heavy emphasis on AI, as demonstrated by laptop manufacturers, often overshadows significant advancements in areas like slimline designs, powerful performance, and long battery lives - aspects that significantly impact the overall laptop user experience.
In contrast, the transformative potential of AI is genuinely exciting in certain industries, such as scientific research and healthcare, where its application can bring about meaningful changes. However, the integration of these AI features into products where their user benefits are not immediately apparent can lead to confusion and diminished interest.
