And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version.
Let other companies figure out the model. Let the industry figure out how to make it secure. Then Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can.
Right now we are still in very, very, very early days.
While this was true about ten years ago, it's been a while since we've seen this model of software development from Apple succeed in recent years. I'm not at all confident that the Apple that gave us Mac OS 26 is capable of doing this anymore.
That's a pretty optimistic outlook. All considered, you're not convinced they'll just use it as a platform to sell advertisements and lock-out competitors a-la the App Store "because everyone does it"?
First Mover effect seems only relevant when goverment warrants are involved. Think radio licenses, medical patents, etc. Everywhere else, being a first mover doesnt seem to correlate like it should to success.
The OS maker does not have to make all the killer software. In fact, Apple's pretty much the only game in town that's making hardware and software both.
See social media, bitcoin, iOS App Store, blu-ray, Xbox live, and I’m sure more I can’t think of rn.
The software has been where most of the complaints have been in recent years.
Except this doesn't stand up to scrutiny, when you look at Siri. FOURTEEN years and it is still spectacularly useless.
I have no idea what Siri is a "much nicer version" of.
> Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can.
And in the case of Apple products, oftentimes "because Apple won't let them".
Lest I be called an Apple hater, I have 3 Apple TVs in my home, my daily driver is a M2 Ultra Studio with a ProDisplay XDR, and an iPad Pro that shows my calendar and Slack during the day and comes off at night. iPhone, Apple Watch Ultra.
But this is way too worshipful of Apple.
These kinds of risks can only be _consented to_ by technical people who correctly understand them, let alone borne by them, but if this shipped there would be thousands of Facebook videos explaining to the elderly how to disable the safety features and open themselves up to identity theft.
The article also confuses me because Apple _are_ shipping this, it’s pretty much exactly the demo they gave at WWDC24, it’s just delayed while they iron this out (if that is at all possible). By all accounts it might ship as early as next week in the iOS 26.4 beta.
[1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/delaying-personalized-s...
For example: https://x.com/michael_chomsky/status/2017686846910959668.
There are plenty of Android/Windows things that Apple has had for $today-5 years that work the exact same way.
One side isn’t better than the other, it’s really just that they copy each other doing various things at a different pace or arrive at that point in different ways.
Some examples:
- Android is/was years behind on granular permissions, e.g. ability to grant limited photo library access to apps
- Android has no platform-wide equivalent to AirTags
- Hardware-backed key storage (Secure Enclave about 5 years ahead of StrongBox)
- system-wide screen recording
There are lots of failed products in nearly every company’s portfolio.
AirTags were mentioned elsewhere, but I can think of others too. Perfected might be too fuzzy & subjective a term though.
It's a huge, diverse ecosystem of players and that's probably why Android has always gotten the coolest stuff first. But it's also its achilles' heel in some ways.
A "bicycle for the mind" got replaced with a "kiosk for your pocketbook".
The Vision Pro has an amazing interface, but it's set up as a place to rent videos and buy throwaway novelty iPad-style apps. It allows you to import a Mac screen as a single window, instead of expanding the Mac interface, with its Mac power and flexibility, into the spacial world.
Great hardware. Interesting, but locked down software.
If Tim Cook wanted to leave a real legacy product, it should have been a Vision Pro aimed as an upgrade on the Mac interface and productivity. Apple's new highest end interface/device for the future. Not another mid/low-capability iPad type device. So close. So far.
$3500 for an enforced toy. (And I say all this as someone who still uses it with my Mac, but despairs at the lack of software vision.)
AirTag is a perfect example of their hardware prowess that even Google fails to replicate to this date.
And then some of its misinterpretations were hilariously bad.
Even now, I get at a technical level that CarPlay and Siri might be separate "apps" (although CarPlay really seems like it should be a service), and as such, might have separate permissions but then you have the comical scenario of:
Being in your car, CarPlay is running and actively navigating you somewhere, and you press your steering wheel voice control button. "Give me directions to the nearest Starbucks" and Siri dutifully replies, "Sorry, I don't know where you are."
Sure why not, what could go wrong?
"Siri, find me a good tax lawyer."
"Your honor, my client's AI agent had no intent to willfully evade anything."
OpenClaw is very much a greenfield idea and there's plenty of startups like Raycast working in this area.
Both of which have been absolutely underwhelming if not outright laughable in certain ways.
Apple has done plenty right. These two, which are the closest to the article, are not it.
> And this is probably coming, a few years from now.
Given how often I say "Hey Siri, fast forward", expecting her to skip the audio forward by 30 seconds, and she replies "Calling Troy S" a roofing contractor who quoted some work for me last year, and then just starts calling him without confirmation, which is massively embarassing...
This idea terrifies me.
Imagine if the government would just tell everyone how much they owed and obviated the need for effing literal artificial intelligence to get taxes done!
>> respond to emails
If we have an AI that can respond properly to emails, then the email doesn't need to be sent in the first place. (Indeed, many do not need to be sent nowadays either!)
I've thought this too. Apple might be one of the only companies that could pull off bringing an existing consumer operating system into 3D space, and they just... didn't.
On Windows, I tried using screen captures to separate windows into 3D space, but my 3090 would run out of texture space and crash.
Maybe the second best would be some kind of Wayland compositor.
Google has been making their own phone hardware since 2010. And surely they can call up Qualcomm and Samsung if they want to.
Tiny open source projects can just say "use at your own risk" and offload all responsibility.
The one you linked to looks clearly like a pump-and-dump scam, though.
An agent that can truly “use your computer” is incredibly powerful, but it's also the first time the system has to act as you, not just for you. That shifts the problem from product design to permission, auditability, and undoability.
Summarizing notifications is boring, but it’s also reversible. Filing taxes or sending emails isn’t.
It feels less like Apple missing the idea, and more like waiting until they can make the irreversible actions feel safe.
All steps before it are reversible, and reviewable.
Bigger problem is attacker tricking your agent to leak your emails / financial data that your agent has access to.
Actually most of the things people use it for is of this kind, instead actually solving the problem (which is out of scope for them to be fair) it’s just adding more things on top that can go wrong.
Privacy is definitely good but it's not at all an example of the success mentioned in the parent comment. It's deep in the company culture.
Happened to me too while being in the car. With every message written by Siri it feels like you need to confirm 2 or 3 times (I think it is only once but again) but it calls happily people from your phone book.
How in the world can you double check the AI-generated tax filing without going back and preparing your taxes by hand?
You might skim an ai-written email.
> Will it rain today? Please unlock your iphone for that
> Any new messages from Chris? You will need to unlock your iphone for that
> Please play youtube music Playing youtube music... please open youtube music app to do that
All settings and permission granted. Utterly painful.
Funny seeing this repeated again in response to Siri which is just... not very good.
Apple probably realised they were hugely behind and then spent time hand wringing over whether they remained cautious or got into the brawl. And they decided to watch from the sidelines, buy in some tech, and see how it develops.
So far that looks entirely reasonable as a decision. If Claude wins, for example, apple need only be sure Claude tools work on Mac to avoid losing users, and they can second-move once things are not so chaotic.
This is just not how software engineering goes in many other places, particularly where the stakes are much higher and can be life altering, if not threatening.
There should exist something between "don't allow anything without unlocking phone first" and "leave the phone unlocked for anyone to access", like "allow certain voice commands to be available to anyone even with phone locked"
.
https://www.wiz.io/blog/exposed-moltbook-database-reveals-mi...
I think you repeated their marketing, I don't believe this is actually true.
But as a user I want to be able to give it permission to run selected commands even with the phone locked. Like I don't care if someone searches google for something or puts a song via spotify. If I don't hide notifications when locked, what does it matter that someone who has my phone reads them or listens to them?
And being fair ClawBot is a complete meme/fad at this point rather than an actual product. Using it for anything serious is pretty much the equivalent of throwing your credit cards, ids and sticky notes with passwords and waiting to see what happens…
I do see the appeal and potential case of the general concept of course. The product itself (and the author has admitted it themselves) is literally is a garbage pile..
For reading messages, IIRC it depends on whether you have text notification previews enabled on the lock screen (they don’t document this anywhere that I can see.) The logic is that if you block people from seeing your texts from the lock screen without unlocking your device, Siri should be blocked from reading them too.
Edit: Nope, you’re right. I just enabled notification previews for Messages on the lock screen and Siri still requires an unlock. That’s a bug. One of many, many, many Siri bugs that just sort of pile up over time.