If Apple can pull off "Siri with context," it will completely annihilate Microsoft's first mover advantage. They'll be left with a large investment in a zero-margin commodity (OpenAI).
The messiest launch ever. The renewed UI makes it easy to assume that the LLM-backed Siri is already here but just isn't much better than the old one. A marketing disaster.
Yes, although before full "LLM Siri," Apple promised an "enhanced" Siri with contextual understanding in iOS 18. The clock is ticking though—WWDC will be here before you know it.
Apple will not beat Microsoft in any capacity here
Microsoft has all the context in the world just waiting for exploitation: Microsoft Graph data, Teams transcripts and recordings, Office data, Exchange data, Recall data(?), while not context per se even the XBox gaming data
> Apple will not beat Microsoft in any capacity here
I'm sure MS will provide AI to business, but if Apple get things right, they'll be the biggest provider of AI to the masses.
With a Siri that knows your email, calendar, location, history, search history, ability to get data from and do things in 3rd party Apps (with App Intents) and if it runs on your phone for security, it could be used by billions of consumers, not a few hundred million MS office users.
What was that restaurant I went to with Joan last fall? Send linkedin requests to all the people I've had emails from company X.
Of course they could take too long or screw things up.
Siri's success would greatly depend on app developers adopting intents. The major players are going to be hesitant to give Apple that much access to data - the EU may help push them that way, but even still, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and others want their AIs to be the one people use.
Siri is also limited to Apple products, and while lots of people have iPhones, many of them still have a PC, where Siri doesn't work.
Companies are also very concerned about employees accidentally or purposefully exfiltrating data via AI usage. Microsoft is working hard to build in guardrails there and Intune allows companies to block Siri intents, so Apple would have to do a lot to reassure corporate customers how they'll prevent Siri from sending data to a search engine or such.
But you might be right. I think it's way too early to tell, and that's why so much money is being poured into this. All the major players feel that they can't afford to wait on this.
A lot of developers have already adopted intents to support Shortcuts and existing Siri. There will be tremendous business pressure to be able to fit into a request like "Get me a car to my next appointment"
How are any of these unique competitive advantages over iCloud, App Store, Safari, and just generally more locked-in high margin mobile platform users than anyone?
If the money is in providing AI to businesses, to do things humans were previously paid to do - then Microsoft would be in a much better position than Apple, because they already have a big foothold whereas Apple has never really targeted business use.
