Apple is right not to rush headlong into generative AI

livemint.com:

antitrust, Asian competition, the existential question of innovation and growth—there are parallels between then and now. Competition watchdogs in the EU are demanding compliance from March 7th with rules that for the first time breach the “walled garden" which keeps users and developers bound within Apple’s playpen. On March 4th they fined the company €1.8bn ($2bn) for allegedly stifling competition in music streaming.

In America the DoJ may soon launch a case against Apple. In China, Huawei, a domestic mastodon, is seizing market share. Hanging over everything is the nagging concern, amid a levelling off in iPhone sales, that Mr Cook is missing the chance to pull another rabbit out of the hat with generative artificial intelligence (gen AI).

In short, with its market value down by 10% since mid-December, and Microsoft, thanks to gen AI, vaulting past it to become the world’s most valuable company, sceptics wonder if Apple is now so dominant it has lost its mojo. So jaded is the narrative that many pay little heed to the buzz about the Vision Pro, Apple’s snazzy—though lavishly priced—mixed-reality headset. What hopes they have are pinned on the company’s annual developer conference in June, when they want Mr Cook to announce whizzy gen-AI upgrades proving that Apple can join the chatbot hypefest.

That, though, is not how the company does things. Nor should it be. Go back to the threat from Samsung in Mr Cook’s early days.

Back then investors pestered Apple to come up with a bigger phone, just as now they want it to match Samsung’s models with gen-AI bells and whistles. But Apple doesn’t rush things. It wasn’t until the launch of the iPhone 6 in 2014 that it produced a large-screen device.