{"id":856138,"date":"2025-06-17T09:11:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T14:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/17\/apple-wwdc-starts-today-can-it-catch-up-in-the-ai-race\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T09:11:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T14:11:44","slug":"apple-wwdc-starts-today-can-it-catch-up-in-the-ai-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/17\/apple-wwdc-starts-today-can-it-catch-up-in-the-ai-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple WWDC starts today. Can it catch up in the AI race?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A version of this article originally appeared in Quartz\u2019s members-only Weekend Brief newsletter. Quartz members get access to exclusive newsletters and more.\u00a0<\/em>Sign up here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off Monday with what is becoming a familiar problem for the Cupertino tech giant: The company that once set the pace for consumer technology finds itself playing catch-up in the industry\u2019s most important race.<\/p>\n

While Apple will unveil sweeping visual redesigns across its operating systems \u2014 including a new \u201cdigital glass\u201d interface inspired by its Vision Pro headset \u2014 the AI announcements are\u00a0expected to be underwhelming<\/a>\u00a0compared to the rapid-fire innovations competitors have unleashed in recent months.<\/p>\n

The contrast with Google I\/O\u00a0just three weeks ago<\/a>\u00a0couldn\u2019t be starker. Google\u2019s developer conference was a showcase of AI muscle-flexing: new models that generate music in real-time, realistic video creation from simple prompts, coding assistants that can tackle entire backlogs, and text-to-speech capabilities with customizable voices and accents. Google even introduced tools that can browse the web and use software under user direction \u2014 early examples of the autonomous AI agents that many see as the next frontier.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s most significant AI announcement, meanwhile, will be opening its foundation models to third-party developers. But these models pack just 3 billion parameters \u2014 a fraction of the complexity found in the latest releases from OpenAI, Google, or even Apple\u2019s own internal tools, which are rumored to reach into the trillions of parameters.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg reported more than\u00a0a dozen other small updates<\/a>, including rebranding some existing Safari and Photos features as \u201cAI-powered\u201d and introducing live translation for phone calls and AirPods \u2014 capabilities Google has offered on Android for years. A new AI-powered battery optimization mode might arrive later, developed alongside the slimmer iPhone 17 expected this fall.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most telling is what won\u2019t be announced: the much-anticipated Siri overhaul that Apple promised last year has been indefinitely delayed. The \u201cLLM Siri\u201d that could finally make Apple\u2019s assistant conversational like ChatGPT remains woefully behind schedule,\u00a0according to reports<\/a>. Apple\u2019s AI health service and revamped Health app have been pushed to late 2026.<\/p>\n

Instead, Apple will lean heavily on what it does best: design. The new \u201cSolarium\u201d interface will bring transparency and light effects across iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, and other operating systems. The company is also switching to year-based naming (hence the \u201c26″ designations for software launching later this year) in what appears to be a branding maneuver to project forward momentum.<\/p>\n

The Phone app will get its first major redesign since 2007, combining contacts, recent calls, and voicemails into a single scrollable window. Messages will add polling and background images to compete with WhatsApp. A new centralized Games app will attempt to position Apple devices as serious gaming platforms, though it\u2019s unlikely to challenge Nintendo or Sony\u2019s dominance.<\/p>\n

The hardware struggles are perhaps even more concerning than the AI delays. Apple once owned the premium device space, but competitors are now encroaching on its turf. Meta has\u00a0sold 2 million Ray-Ban smart glasses<\/a>\u00a0since 2023 and plans to produce 10 million units annually by 2026. Meanwhile,\u00a0OpenAI has partnered with Jony Ive<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Apple\u2019s former design chief who created the iPhone and iPad \u2014 on plans for 100 million AI \u201ccompanions\u201d by the end of next year. These aren\u2019t just software competitors; they\u2019re direct threats to Apple\u2019s hardware dominance.<\/p>\n

But these incremental improvements come at a perilous moment for Apple that extends far beyond Monday\u2019s keynote. The company has suffered a brutal 2025: its stock has dropped 20%,\u00a0making it the worst performer<\/a>\u00a0among the \u201cMagnificent Seven\u201d tech stocks and raising questions about whether it even belongs in that elite group anymore. A damaging legal defeat in the Epic Games case threatens its lucrative App Store revenue model, with a federal judge\u00a0finding Apple in contempt<\/a>\u00a0for willfully violating court orders. Mounting tariff costs will add an\u00a0estimated $900 million in expenses<\/a>\u00a0this quarter alone, forcing the company to rapidly reconfigure its China-centric supply chain.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most troubling, Apple\u2019s iPhone shipments in China \u2014 once a growth engine \u2014 cratered by more than 20% in late 2024, according to Counterpoint Research, dropping the company to fifth place in the world\u2019s largest smartphone market. The company can\u2019t even leverage its AI features as a differentiator there, since ChatGPT integration had to be stripped from Chinese iPhones to comply with local regulations.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s bet on taking a \u201cthoughtful\u201d approach to AI \u2014 emphasizing privacy and on-device processing over raw capability \u2014 probably has merit in the long term. But tech cycles move fast, and the company risks ceding significant ground to competitors who are shipping powerful AI features today, not in 2026 or beyond.<\/p>\n

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\n Jackie Snow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A version of this article originally appeared in Quartz\u2019s members-only Weekend Brief newsletter. Quartz members get access to exclusive newsletters and more.\u00a0 Sign up here . Apple\u2019s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off Monday with what is becoming a familiar problem for the Cupertino tech giant: The company that once set the pace for consumer technology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":856139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[376,23522],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-856138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-apple","8":"category-starts"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}