iPhone Needs To Go Back To Its Roots To Salvage AI

ONE REASON APPLE'S brand is so valuable is that for decades, it had a reputation for only making promises it could keep.

- Bloomberg

It did this thanks to a notoriously stubborn and difficult chief executive officer in Steve Jobs, who surrounded himself with talented lieutenants and listened to what his investors thought but ultimately made all of his decisions by consulting with a Congress of one: himself.

Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs, and that's been fine for the years since Jobs has no longer been with us. Cook's long stint, and a gift for supply chain logistics, made him the right CEO when Apple's largest challenge seemed to be iterating and building the iPhone to sell billions of them. In his own way, Cook was as good a promise keeper as Jobs.

Yet, all of a sudden, Captain Cook seems to be in uncharted territory. He's found himself there thanks to opening up his decision-making to the whims of Wall Street, which was demanding some big news on what Apple would do with artificial intelligence. By prematurely introducing Apple Intelligence to the world, Cook gave his company a deadline it wasn't sure it could meet, and now it hasn't. The company has broken promises to customers, with TV spots trumpeting features that are still nowhere near completion, nudging customers to buy a smartphone that costs $1,000 and more and does not do as advertised. (Naturally, there was small print.)