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FEATURE
WWDC—Yawn—2025
After last year's AI fiasco, Apple plays it cool
Issue: 23.4 (July/August 2025)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: Marc taught himself programming in high school when he bought his first computer but had no money for software. He's had fun learning ever since.
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Article Length (in bytes): 12,438
Starting Page Number: 12
Article Number: 23402
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Excerpt of article text...
In June 2025, Apple held its annual developers conference, WWDC. As usual, the keynote address is watched by millions and indicates the direction of Apple's technology for the next year or two.
Last year, Apple made a big push into AI (Artificial "Intelligence") calling their implementation "Apple Intelligence," which might have been a branding mistake as that could easily become a punchline rather than a marketing positive.
While Apple as a company is usually restrained and famously doesn't release tech until it's ready, they apparently got caught up in the AI hype and promised features that weren't ready to ship or possibly didn't even exist. As software developers, we all know that the last 10% of finishing a project takes the longest. Apple apparently forgot that and had to take a big step back a few months ago, announcing that most of the best features of Apple Intelligence—like a smarter Siri—won't ship for another year or so.
While that's a problem, perhaps even worse has been the lackluster AI features Apple did release: Writing Tools, Clean-Up, Image Playground, and so on. While they more or less work, they are of only average ability and often so limited they aren't too useful. For instance, I've found Image Playground generates repetitive, generic images that aren't usable and aren't really what you asked for.
In and of itself, this isn't a huge problem: there are hundreds of AI image generators so everyone is free to find one they like. The problem is that Apple runs a reputational risk by pushing these features as though they are good and represent the state of Apple's technology. If customers try Apple Intelligence and associate it with mediocrity, that's a problem for Apple down the road when they get better models and improved results.
Apple already implements tons of "AI" in its products (image search in Photos, camera enhancements, etc.) but in a "it just works" fashion in the background. That's not what Wall Street wants, however. They want flashy new features.
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