After months of hype, delays, and a missing Siri upgrade, Hanzala Fayaz argues that Apple Intelligence is not useless – but it is nowhere near the AI revolution Apple made it sound like.
When Apple announced Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, I was sold. Completely sold.
As someone who has followed Apple for years, watched the keynotes, installed the betas, defended the weird decisions, I was excited. Finally, Apple was entering the AI race. After ChatGPT exploded into everyday life, Apple had an answer.
Most importantly, Siri had an answer.
That was the bit I cared about. Not Genmoji. Not image generation. Not some clever email summary. Siri. The assistant that has spent years misunderstanding the most basic questions, sending us to the web when it should know the answer, and behaving like it was built in 2011 and then abandoned.
Apple made it sound as if Siri was finally going to grow up. It would understand personal context. It would know what was on your screen. It would move between apps. It would actually help. And then it didn’t arrive.
‘It felt like Apple saw the AI hype train leaving the station and sprinted after it with one shoe on’
The iPhone 16 launched with Apple calling it “Built for Apple Intelligence”, which sounded brilliant until people brought the phone and realised the intelligence was not really there yet. iOS 18 came out. Nothing. Then iOS 18.1 arrived with Apple Intelligence, and as a public beta tester I was ready.
Instead, I got Writing Tools. I do not want to sound ungrateful. Some features are decent. Notification summaries are useful. Priority messages and Reduce Interruptions are helpful when your phone is shouting for attention. Clean Up in Photos works well enough. Visual Intelligence is one of the best bits, especially pointing your camera at a poster or flyer and turning it into a calendar event. That feels like the quietly clever Apple feature I love.
But the rest? Mid. Writing Tools feel like something most people will forget exists. Image Playground is boring compared to proper image generators. Genmoji is fun for five minutes, then becomes something you show someone once and never mention again. The ChatGPT integration is useful, but it proves the problem. If Siri needs to hand the difficult stuff to ChatGPT, then it is Siri asking someone else for help.
The real star was meant to be Siri. Apple hyped it. Apple advertised it. Apple showed us a future where Siri finally understood us.
Then Apple had to delay it.
This is what annoys me the most. I understand why Apple delayed it. If the new Siri was slow, unreliable, hallucinating, misunderstanding my commands or triggering the wrong actions, then yes, keep it away from my phone. I would rather wait than have a broken assistant messing with my messages and apps like a toddler.
But why announce it like it was ready?
This is the bit Apple got wrong. This is not some start-up promising a flying car by Christmas. This is Apple. The company that built its reputation on polish. On “it just works”. On arriving late to a category but making everyone else look messy once it turns up.
With Apple Intelligence, it felt different. It felt like Apple saw the AI hype train leaving the station and sprinted after it with one shoe on.
The result is strange. Apple Intelligence is not useless. It has good ideas. It has privacy advantages. It has features I use. But it also feels like a trailer for a film that has not been finished.
And that is the failure.
Not that Apple tried AI. It had to. Not even that Siri was delayed. Delays happen. The failure is that Apple sold us the exciting version of Apple Intelligence before it could deliver the exciting version.
As an Apple fan, I still want them to get it right. I want the new Siri to arrive and make this look like a necessary wait. I want to ask my phone something complicated and not feel like I am negotiating with a confused sat nav.
But until then, Apple Intelligence remains a promise with a glowing animation around the edge.
Pretty, polished, and still not quite the thing we were waiting for.
