Very Apple-ish approach to AI catch up: wrap an external tool in a privacy architecture, embed into the OS and productize the orchestration layer.
It will be interesting to see if the Private Cloud Compute + on-device routing can make third-party model capabilities feel like a first-party system without leaking user context to the model provider.
If Apple handles the Google-Apple boundary right, this will be an elegant move on their part, otherwise it will feel like Apple Intelligence with a just a privacy-polished frontend for Gemini.
Is there a meaningful Google-Apple boundary in operation?
They are buying the right to distill their own Gemini models and run them in their data centres (or at least data centres they control); unless I am missing something, this isn't going to be infrastructure that Google has operational control over.
If Apple is running the inference from Apple iPhones and Apple data centers then Apple has operational control. Google’s influence ends the moment they hand the weights over to Apple.
That is news — I guess not very surprising that they'd need more data centres than before.
But again there is no Apple-to-Google transfer in the inference in the sense of the comment I was originally replying to (I am not suggesting you're implying otherwise, obviously)
But I stand happily corrected where I said they aren't in the picture at all.
That is an interesting press release because it outlines what they would have had to do with any data centre they were outsourcing to.
This is probably why Google had to rent compute from SpaceX. They needed to free up NVIDIA GPUs for Apple so they probably moved internal workloads to SpaceX compute.
Right — I suppose I mis-phrased my first sentence a bit, because I guess it can be interpreted as me saying the boundary is blurred, when what I was trying to write is: in operation there is nothing crossing any boundary; Google are not in the picture.
As someone who doesn't use Android, they showed a lot of integration into the apps, which I think is where the real magic happens, and it's not something I can do with any 3rd party chatbots today (that I'm aware of). I also don't know that I would trust the other 3rd parties with the access required to pull it off.
If anything, having Shortcuts built-in at the OS level was a very long play that’s going to pay off.
I'm interested in how it feels to use: whether there is any context leaking, as you mentioned, if it introduces latency, and whether there are any pricing implications? I know they weighed a variety of factors, including the smaller models, but cost had to be a big concern, too... I feel like Google is the only provider giving away so much AI inference for free.
This will further blur the picture about when and how consumers / employees are supposed to pay for AI services. For example, they showed consumer rather than coding tasks, but could you select five files and ask Siri to write a Python script or a small app? Will enterprises just disable Siri AI functionality, or will they be able to route it through their own AI auditing and providers?
> just a privacy-polished frontend for Gemini
I'd use this.
I'd rather have strong privacy guarantees, but this is still good.
Oh yes Apple "wraps" their AI in a "privacy architecture" -- you can't use Carplay unless you turn it (Siri) on.
“Sorry, I don’t know where you are”
How do you expect to use a nav system while driving without voice control?
Before you start driving, at stop lights, while waiting in lines, etc.
I don't know how it works on CarPlay but when I turn my car on I have a bunch of suggested addresses (home, work, parents, recent Maps searches, etc) that I just touch-to-go. Having to use voice every time you want to navigate not only sounds unnecessary, but cumbersome.
Oh so exactly like Apple Maps via Carplay then.
Yep, shouldn't require Siri at all
Put in the destination before start driving?
CarPlay does not work at all if you have not enabled Siri. As in it won’t even connect.
You don’t need to enable Gemini or voice assistant on android to use android auto. Some functionality is lost, of course, but you can still navigate and play music.
I almost never use Siri in my car and use a "nav system" every time I am driving.
Very American point of view...
I set it before I start moving, and then don't touch it while in motion.
I never use Siri when using CarPlay? I’m confused by your question.
If you disable Siri, you cannot connect to Carplay
I use Carplay all the time and I didn't even realize it has voice control. I just set things up on my phone and drive.
All I know is that Siri is a terrible user experience.
Not launching in EU feels like a smell. It does look interesting enough for me to try it out before disabling Apple Intelligence again.
It’s the DMA regulation that forces Apple to give the same access as they have to other AI chat apps.
Once it leaves the device Apple does not know what those other ai chat apps will do with the gathered data.
> Siri AI is private by design and deeply integrated across Apple’s platforms using on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, which extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud. However, under EU regulators’ extreme interpretation of the DMA, Apple would have to give any virtual assistant direct access to users’ private data — and the ability to directly control other installed applications — as soon as Siri AI is made available in the EU, without the essential protections necessary to keep users and their data safe.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-de...
Apple loves to play dumb about this stuff. The EU imposes a pretty straightforward regulation regarding equality of access. Apple seems to come up with all sorts of "solutions" to this "problem", and each one never amounts to true equality of access. They could easily just allow users to decide "Do you want to give this app unfettered access to all your device data, including other apps' data?". Let users decide. 99% of Apple users in the EU will probably click "no". I'm sure they'll make the user warnings scary enough to ward off anybody who doesn't know what's going on.
There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
The other possibility is that the sky does not fall, and Apple looks both silly and malicious at the same time for ever having suggested that it would, which was clearly in bad faith.
Clearly, Apple cannot afford scenario #2, so I think they will probably never give their users the actual freedom that the MDA requires them to. They will just exit Europe entirely before allowing that to happen.
> Do you want to give this app unfettered access to all your device data, including other apps' data?
Which Facebook and instagram will present as “tee hee updated terms of service” in the first 15 seconds, and people will tick it, because they’re not interested in reading T&C’s, just want to message their friend about dinner, and aren’t suddenly expected be deceived like that.
Obviously there should be a system dialog to grant system permissions. I'm not aware of any kind of system with a capability-based permissions system (e.g. Android, MacOS, browsers, etc.) where apps are allowed to show their own dialog to request permissions. You always have to do something in the system settings to grant permissions.
That's how it should be done. And that would be the responsible way to comply with the DMA.
Ah yes something a trillion dollar tech company definitely is too inept to solve!
Why bother when some round-rimmed glasses wearing suit in Brussels named Klaus will immediately begin working on the next set of demands?
Did they really circumvent this exact restriction which was imposed on them on OS level by Apple?
> There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
I'd prefer they focus on safeguarding my data instead of playing a ridiculous game of brinksmanship with regulators to make a point.
> There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
I don't think that is what will happen. People, and the media, will blame Apple: it is them after all giving that data over because they hold it. No that doesn't make logical sense, but that has never mattered before why would it matter now.
Once Apple loses that trust re. data privacy, its gone forever. I get why they're being particular about it.
Yeah and we've already seen this with Facebook getting blamed for Cambridge Analytica.
People will absolutely not blame Apple if the exact thing they warned would happen, and said would be really bad, actually turns out to happen and be really bad.
Apple has very well-funded PR. They will make sure that the EC is blamed.
Then, they get to be the heroes once the law is changed to allow them to come to everyone's rescue by banishing all third-party app access forever. They would ultimately be the saviours.
> EU regulators’ extreme interpretation of the DMA
It's not extreme interpretation, it's the intent.
Just say it would break your vendor lock-in.
I don't want my apps that have AI implemented to be able to read my messages because Europe mandates feature parity. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. For Apple it means building all the APIs that probably already exist but this time to be requested by apps, which would be a huge attack surface, even Apple's own apps suffers from security breaches (like Message before the switch to closed container execution). AI breaks the separation of concerns, which can lead to disastrous consequences.
EU has great intentions, and of course, feature parity should be offered so that competition can exist, but I don't find it crazy that it is more complicated on a product like that. As tech people things are very obvious to us but we need to remember that we are talking about a product used by everyone.
It’s not clear how it is significantly different from allowing apps access to your contacts, calendar, photos, and so on. And Apple doesn’t say that they merely need more time to properly implement it, the claim that they are unable to implement it without compromising privacy and security. And the latter I don’t really see, with the proper set of permissions presented in the way users are already used to.
As an Apple user I feel more patronized than empowered here.
> It’s not clear how it is significantly different from allowing apps access to your contacts, calendar, photos, and so on
Those are allowed via contextual consent prompts, several of which are for specific contacts, specific photos you wish to share, and so on.
Examples of the level of access an AI agent has include:
1. To read all indexed personal data from every app installed on the device
2. To perform actions in every supporting app on the device on the user's behalf
3. To read the current displayed apps for additional context as well as sensor data like current location
If you were regulated such that you had to allow any organization this level of access, and if you were hand-tied in how much you could convey the seriousness of accepting that consent prompt to an ordinary end user, and felt that it would be you, not any legal authority, who would ultimately suffer the reputational and legal consequences for the results - what would your yes/no decision be on shipping the feature in that jurisdiction?
How is this substantially different from Safari extensions that can effectively see and act upon everything you do in the browser?
One can imagine contextual prompts for all of the examples that you give, like which data sources and which apps the AI provider is given access to — similar to how you can choose for a Safari extension which websites it has access to — and for how long.
That all seams reasonably implementable. You could even use multiple AI providers in parallel with different subsets of data and apps, which would allow you to compartementalize access by different providers in a way that isn't possible with Apple's AI.
Such integration interfaces are necessary in the long run if we don't want to lock in our whole life to a singular combination of hardware, OS, and AI provider.
> don't want my apps that have AI implemented to be able to read my messages because Europe mandates feature parit
App permissions.
Beside you don't have to install any third party app, I only have Google assistant installed on my Android.
I heard the same kind of talk when the eu forced apple to switch to USB C...
There is a real, strong, monopolistic issue with some American companies that their government refuse to deal with because it's so corrupt. It would be fine if it didn't impact us in Europe, but it does.
The law does not require Apple to grant all permissions to all apps for all users. It just requires Apple to ask users if the user wants to grant elevated permissions to specific apps that they download. The user can always say "no", which should obviously be the default.
The situation is that Apple won't even allow users to grant elevated permissions to any 3rd party app, even if the user wants to.
> I don't want my apps that have AI implemented to be able to read my messages because Europe mandates feature parity.
The AI provider would still be YOUR choice. You could stick with Apple's if you don't trust the other ones.
so to translate:
- Apple has powerful capabilities in iOS to enable Siri AI.
- EU's DMA requires them to allow users to install third-party AI backends.
- Apple doesn't think parties other than themselves should be trusted with those iOS permissions.
I guess it'd be like if Apple allowed a first-party screen reader for iOS, so they refused to allow third-party screen readers.
As a screen reader user, Apple does have a first party screen reader, VoiceOver, and does indeed not let you run a third party one. In fact, it does not work well even on the more open MacOS. So essentially it's VoiceOver or nothing. Luckily, especially on iOS, VoiceOver mostly works well.
I'm glad it works decently on iOS, at least. my mom has little central vision, and she struggles on iOS just using high contrast plus scaling plus magnifier. I think she has just enough vision to not absolutely need VoiceOver but it still makes using her phone a frustrating and tiring experience.
I don't think they're "trusting Google" with anything. It's a Google model run by Apple, just like you download a model from Hugging Face to run when you want to.
> It's a Google model run by Apple
Run by Apple where? Do they really have enough hardware to run it in-house?
Yes, and if they don't, they can lease datacentre capacity like anyone else can. SpaceX seems to have plenty for rent.
Apparently it's now a Google model run by Apple on GPUs rented from Google.
updated my post to reflect this, thanks.
> Apple doesn't think parties other than themselves should be trusted with those iOS permissions.
I think we have ample evidence that regardless of whether Apple in particular is to be trusted, tech companies by default are certainly not.
Opening up access to users’ private data requires not just any given app to be trustworthy, but all of them.
> It’s the DMA regulation that forces Apple to give the same access as they have to other AI chat apps.
But why can Tesla ship Grok to their cars in the EU without any problems? Why aren't they required to let me choose between Grok, OpenAI etc or even a custom endpoint?
The are not a "gatekeeper" under DMA (not enough users). Same as macOS.
Tesla is not marked as a gatekeeper by the EU and thus the law does not apply.
Because Tesla hasn't been classified as a gate-keeper in the DMA.
> But why can Tesla ship Grok to their cars in the EU without any problems?
Simply because they are too small in user count. EU DMA, DSA etc. only apply at certain thresholds. Twitter for example falls under the scope, but Tesla is a distinct entity from Twitter and even if they were merged together, they would still be distinct services in the eye of the law.
> Once it leaves the device Apple does not know what those other ai chat apps will do with the gathered data.
It's the user's data. Not Apple's. And it should be the user's right to send it to whoever for whatever results, imo
I think there’s a case that Apple’s commitment to privacy here will increase participation by 3rd party developers.
For example, if I’m maintaining a secure chat app, I think I’d be more likely to adopt the APIs to share the chat messages with the system AI due to Apple’s promises that the data will either be processed On Device, or in their Private Compute Cloud.
If I instead believe that sharing the chat messages with the system AI would cause those messages to be sent to unknown-to-me other entities, I think I’d be less likely to participate in the new API.
This user might be okay with their data going to this other provider, but what about the people they’re messaging? I have a responsibility and a commitment to _all_ of my users to protect their data.
I might not be able to control what any specific user does with the data, but proactively writing the code that sends the chat messages to this other system is something that I have control over.
And that's exactly how it works for apps you download from the App Store. Apple even makes app publishers declare data collection and privacy practices on the App Store before you install apps.
It's clearly just Apple not wanting to further open up their platform to competition.
Meta would probably start a massive ad campain to pay people money to install Meta iPhone AI.
They wouldn’t even need to do that. It’s pretty easy to come up with any number of pernicious approaches they’d use:
- “instagram is better with MetaAi: yes/ask-me-later”.
- updated ToS which bundles a “we’ll use our own ai, and do whatever we waaaaant”
Lying, gaslighting and underhanded “growth hacking” tricks are their bread-and-butter, and you can be sure that whatever they’d have you install would blindly slurp up as much as they possibly can with zero regard for user privacy.
> Once it leaves the device Apple does not know what those other ai chat apps will do with the gathered data.
Yeah, that's the whole fucking point.
> Or that they wouldn't let you set default maps app outside of the EU
They were mandated to create a scheme in isolation on a deadline, without having input either from navigation apps or from consumers, and without any requirement that web browsers or other operating systems would need to support the same scheme.
As another comment pointed out - it doesn't work. Websites and apps still integrate with a navigation product directly, rather than use this scheme. And why wouldn't they? Even if it was launched worldwide on iOS, it still is just a defined subset of any particular navigation product functionality. It also is just yet another navigation option to integrate into your platform, since the feature still wouldn't be available on desktops/Android.
Until everyone is sitting at the table wanting to work towards interoperability, the feature simply can't work. So why perpetuate a broken chooser into other markets?
This is such a shallow take. There are obvious privacy and security tradeoffs here. The EU competition framework is good in many ways, but this is actually something I don’t think we have the regulatory frameworks in place to handle yet , or social norms and understanding about why giving any Tom dick and Harry root on all your data is a bad idea.
It’s paternalistic, but I agree with Apple that free for all access to this kind of data is not a great idea. Ironically, before this could work we’d actually need much more EU style data regulation, and more consistently enforced.
I dunno, I trust the EU regulators more than I'd trust any US based company.
I do too, but in this case the choice isn't between apple and the EU. It's between apple and the <random rapacious vc backed ai startup looking to hoover your data> your non-technical friends foolishly trust, without much understanding of the implications for them or society as a whole.
Ultimately I think it's important for the EU to regulate companies like apple to ensure competition. But in this instance, it doesn't seem like we have all the other pieces in place that would be necessary for a sensible rollout of that.
what's the missing piece exactly? In every other situation where a company wants to launch an iphone app to hoover your data, Apple gives a clear message telling you what types of data you're giving access to. Why is this situation different?
For me, it's real regulations about what data can reasonably be hoovered, what it's used for, for how long. And a culture where the majority don't blindly click yes to all messages like that because the only alternative is not to use the shiny new thing they have been sold. I don't think it could ever appear in the US, which is why it's a good thing apple won't be forced to open up there.
But if the EU does insist, they should be careful what they wish for and plan for the negative consequences of a free for all.
There's nothing shallow about my take.
Apple uses "privacy and security" as a cudgel to prevent anyone from breaking into the vendor lock in. To the point that EU actually had to explicitly tell Apple what to do [1], as Apple delayed features, made them extremely hard or convoluted for third-parties to use, and pulled every trick out of the malicious compliance manual.
This whole virtual assistants thing will drag on for another several years.
Edit: I mean they show their models accessing and changing a password on the user's bank site at the same time as accessing and changing passwords on another random site. Which is one prompt away from exfiltrating user data. So spare me the "Apple knows best about privacy and security so they should keep any access to their platforms locked down"
[1] https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/developer-portal/in...
It's shallow because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a real tradeoff. I share a lot of your cynicism about US tech companies, but I think you need to be realistic about the state of the market and how the incentives align.
Apples incentives are not, currently, as strongly misaligned with their user interests as many other tech firms (meta, google, random startups, etc). Going slowly might not be a bad idea for most people here.
That said, I hadn't seen the demo you mention. If they do do that (bank passwords etc) they are stupider than I thought they would be.
Sounds like Apple PR bullshit.
Unless Apple proves otherwise I'm more inclined to believe they're either 1. Using this to try and shape the DMA in their own interest (definitely not their users' interest) or 2. Doing something with the data that would not be allowed in the EU (also not in their users' interest at all) or both.
Because outsourcing to Google is so much trustworthy...
I believe Google provides the weights, compute is apple owned
From the link "Nvidia has its own “confidential computing” feature that encrypts data as it’s being processed, which will be used with other privacy and security measures to protect user data"
Do you know if it end to end encrypted or the keys are managed by Google?
I think the keys are directly from Nvidia and Intel.
Yes, and how does the data get there?
From your link:
> Apple’s going to try to run as much of the new Siri as possible on-device
Anthropic and OpenAI don't have edge models.
It's not magic to those paying attention. The current model runs on device. And gemma e4b is already demonstrably capable on iPhone hardware, which is likely to be similar to what this is.
I don't see what the issue is. The user could then select Apple (or Mistral) for strong privacy or another provider for customers that don't care.
I primarily want Apple to provide extension points so that I can select my own provider, just as I can choose where to host my mail or install another app as my instant messenger.
Sure, I could install another provider's app, but it wouldn't have the same integrations, similar to how an instant messaging app would be less useful if notifications were limited to iMessage.
I'd love to select Mistral over Google Gemini.
> I'd love to select Mistral over Google Gemini
Apple doesn’t want to configure its private cloud to run every model. This seems fine.
This is moving goal posts, DMA is not requiring Apple to run anything on their cloud but merely provide third parties with same device API access.
It is a smell. But it's the EU that smells bad, when it comes to tech regulation. It's the smell of cookie popup warnings.
Nothing in the law requires the pop up. It definitely doesn’t require the obnoxious bullshit that most companies put up (aka the dark pattern to get you to agree to every unreasonable part of their terms just to read the page).
The alternative would be to just stop invasive tracking and add the cookie when it’s actually needed.
Yet somehow all the government/EU-institution pages I visit also choose to track and throw the popup.
Yes, there's a lot of cargo culting in web development.
Many US based companies also do this for US visitors, which is absolutely not required by the GDPR and related regulations, because they don't apply there.
The law states:
> Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies.
Strictly necessary:
> These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies.
https://gdpr.eu/cookies/
You don't need consent for MOST reasonable uses of cookies.
If compliance theatre wasn't such an industry the web would be a lot tidier and we could stop blaming the EU for implementing important privacy and data controls.
The cookie popup also more often than not doesn't satisfy GDPR, since the option to remove consent disappears with the popup. These dark patterns emerged because the GDPR was used selectively as a club rather than properly enforced. That led to what another comment refers to as "compliance theatre" rather than actual corporate compliance.
The smell is that Apple doesn't want to give the same level of access to third-party AI assistants that Siri will get.
For what it's worth, Apple claimed they proposed an "equivalent access" framework with some kind of "trusted agent framework" approach, but that it was shot down by the EU. I suspect it was way more inconvenient for third-party developers than Apple lets on.
This has been the case for quite a while. Like Reminders - You can't replace the phrase "Siri, remind me to ___" with a third party app. I'm surprised the EU lets them ship Reminders there.
Nothing obligates companies to face steep EU regulation and fines and launch there from the get go.
If anything it should concern fellow Europeans that consumers are paying more for less and later.
> The company reiterated that Apple Intelligence relies on on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, with a promise that user data is only used to execute the immediate request and is not accessible to Apple or third parties. Apple added that outside experts can verify those privacy guarantees "at any time."
Yes, the "Apple needs to look at your data to do this, but we don't have any way to look at the data if we wanted to". That's impossible, unless they open souce iOS and let people take control over their devices, and let people self host inference, so people can check that there is no network traffic. If it is as they say, they could let people host it without any downsides.
Apple's PCC is the best option for this kind of offload that exists.
However the PCC root keys are still signed by Apple which requires you to trust Apple and the laws in the jurisdiction Apple operates in.
Edit: for this update they seems to be running Gemini on Nvidia GPUs in Google's cloud[0]. How key management works for this part is unknown, but the standard setup for this is that Nvidia and Google would have keys too.
It does use the OHTTP relay[1] which makes it hard - maybe impossible - for Apple to hand over the keys for a particular person's data. Maybe that provides some additional protection in US courts against overreach.
Is this a problem for most people? Probably not - but it is something to be aware of.
I think Apple have made a great attempt to make this as safe and private as possible, but until we have a truly trustless E2E encrypted execution environment I don't see how compute offload technologies gets around this problem.
[0] > And to bring this model to production, we work with both Google and Nvidia to extend our Private Cloud Compute infrastructure to NVIDIA GPUs in Google’s cloud, while maintaining Apple’s unmatched privacy guarantees
https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/08/craig-federighi-details-apple...
[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9458
I would love to learn more about what's actually powering Apple Intelligence now. Are they using flagship Gemini models behind their own prompts? Fine-tuning? Pre-training their own models based on Gemini?
Is there a meaningful distinction between the Gemini-powered models and Apple Foundation Models? Does that distinction vary for on-device vs hosted models? Are some models running on Apple's Private Cloud Compute and others running on Google iron?
Edit: they elaborated significantly in a "keynote tech-talk": [0]
According to Apple, there are five models:
On-Device
- AFM Core: Dense architecture; the standard next-gen on-device model
- AFM Core Advanced: Sparse architecture, natively multimodal; enables features like image understanding and expressive voices
Private Cloud Compute
- AFM Cloud: Workhorse server model optimized for latency and cost
- AFM Cloud Image: Image generation and editing
- AFM Cloud Pro: Most capable model, Gemini frontier-level quality, for complex reasoning and agentic tasks; runs on NVIDIA GPUs in Google's cloud under Apple's PCC privacy guarantees
Everything excluding Cloud Pro are custom models running on Apple Silicon, "refined" using Google Gemini. About Cloud Pro, they say "this is our most capable model with quality similar to Gemini frontier models." So I might read between the lines and say this is a wrapped Gemini.
[0]: https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/08/craig-federighi-details-apples-collaboration-with-google-for-siri-ai-in-ios-27/
I think what they mean by “now” is the stuff announced today.
It's more complicated than that (see my edit above).
Local is probably similar to Gemma e4b you can get right now on Google Edge Gallery (the ios and Android app). Guessing that the more powerful version that will only work on the 12gb ram devices will be something unreleased that is similar but a bit larger
Google also awhile back announced being able to run full Gemini by leasing / renting hardware in your own datacenters so companies can train or access data without needing to send things to their datacenters. Nvidia based. Guessing Private Compute might just be Apple leasing a ton of those?
Apple Private Cloud Compute is running on M2/M3 Ultra. I'm not sure if Gemini Flash can fit in that amount of RAM.
Am I reading this correctly? Their chosen cloud providers run the PCC stack on their hardware, so the compute provider is responsible for ensuring the privacy guarantees? I assume that would add to the potential security surface area.
Intel and Nvidia are responsible for enforcing their privacy features. The cloud operator (Google in this case) has no access to any data.
Yes, that seems to be the case, and is an evolution/deviation of the original PCC model, which relied on Apple Silicon exclusively.
Gemini (at least public free version) hallucinates way too much. If it's like that, it can go very badly for Apple.
I used Gemini exclusively via the API but downloaded the app last week for something. Even on max settings, it is ridiculously nerfed!
Unfortunately, even the API variant got RLHF'd pretty hard into being that dumb end-user assistant personality :(
But beside that, I feel like the app variant got worse the day they've had that wwdc-style release thing recently.
Previously it was a sparring partner that could actually keep up. But now it just doesn't.
Truly a shame. And nothing that could be fixed by local models any time soon, given that you need the size for the (cross-)domain knowledge.
The public version of Gemini is ridiculous. At least half their search "answers" are just wrong. If you then start a follow up chat the answers change but usually still half wrong.
Search would be better without the added AI hallucinations above it. If I want an AI answer I'll go and ask Claude, the quality difference is huge.
> The public version of Gemini is ridiculous. At least half their search "answers" are just wrong.
That's not Gemini, that's AI Mode (in Search), they're different products built by fairly different part of Google (actually one is built by Deepmind).
(I don't think it's much comparable to https://gemini.google.com/app at least in the past you'd get very different results)
And it's extremely poor marketing by Google to do this - the general perception people have is that Google AI is dumb due to this.
It has to be really because think of how fast it has to come up with an answer (ie time for a regular google query) and the immense scale of billions of people querying it many times a day, all for free.
Just like search itself, caching does wonders. What do 90% of the people ask anyway but mundane, totally predictable questions?
It's strange to me that Apple would choose to disadvantage themselves by selecting Google as their provider as opposed to, say, Anthropic or even OpenAI. Doesn't this mean they'll struggle more to differentiate themselves from the assistant on Android phones? Thinking more cynically, couldn't Google, if they wanted, feed Apple an inferior version of Gemini, ensuring they stay ahead?
As the consumer, this just sucks because it means no matter which phone platform you choose, you're getting the same thing underneath, and there's no way to avoid it (besides not using an assistant entirely, which I recognize a lot of people do, myself included).
I'd wager that for 99.9% of "Apple Intelligence" tasks, Google's models perform just as well as other frontier labs. Google also has done more work on getting LLMs running on edge devices compared to anthropic and openAI.
The source also says
> The new architecture centers on Apple Foundation Models co-developed with Google, which Apple says are adapted to run both on-device and on servers through its existing Private Cloud Compute infrastructure
Which could mean Google and Apple have trained some custom models, probably the on-device ones, specifically tailored towards Apple's hardware.
That's not the point of OP. The point of OP is that Google is a direct competitor of Apple for phones / OS, so them giving the "key of the house" to Google is risky
What indicates they’ve given google anything other than a truckload of cash? There’s zero data sharing in the arrangement and the stuff is running on apple devices and in Apples Private Compute.
Not even Apple has access to it, by design.
A large portion of Apple's screens come from Samsung. Once a company is large enough, growing your business through supporting a competitor of another group at the company could be seen as a win-win.
The other half comes from LG….
Apple and Google have been dealing with each other for quite a long time. My guess is that they want to replicate the relationship they have with Safari, where Apple provides the users and Google provides the search engine (and money).
Last year the announced they were working with OpenAI. It looks like this went nowhere, so it's not really surprising to see them try someone else.
Yes, but you get less risk in other areas. Google is a long standing publicly traded company. Apple knows that they know their stuff, and that they’re gonna stick around. Anthropic and openAI are new kids on the block when it comes to software as a whole, and that’s a risk.
They're also kind of in the same bucket regarding regulators, which might be something they're keeping an eye on regarding AI integrations.
They already have a very codependent relationship because of their revenue share over putting Google search up front in iPhones so I doubt either party would put that at risk.
I see it differently… Apple has chosen to treat the model as a commodity. By making Gemini an implementation detail, they leave the door open to swap it out for Anthropic or OpenAI without end-users even knowing or caring. So I think they're creating leverage in any future negotiation.
And at the same time they claim it can't be rolled out in Europe because the DMA would force them to allow selection of other AI providers? Which would not even be true if this was an Apple product built on the models of Google, just like the DMA does not force them to pick a different datacenter of office cleaning provider.
There's a post here: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-de...
Take it with a grain of salt but I don't think it's other AI providers that Apple is upset about. The DMA would require users to be able install any openclaw like thing onto their device with access to everything that Siri can access today. There are all sorts of arguments to be made here but I can understand why Apple feels this way and wants to offer a good experience here.
Looks like the problem with DMA has more to do with giving full access to other providers outside of the on-device + private cloud compute architecture. The way I interpret the newsroom post [1], Apple doesn't want to give third-party providers full access to user data when the third-party providers cannot run on private cloud compute for privacy reasons, but the EU wants them to offer the choice anyway.
[1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-de...
> they claim it can't be rolled out in Europe because the DMA would force them to allow selection of other AI providers
They don't claim that. All they said is "later in the EU as we look into privacy and security" after spending two hours saying how private and secure everything is.
DMA would force them to allow usage from other apps than their own and other assitants than Siri, especially for on-device models.
Edit I stand somewhat corrected but it's regular Apple bullshit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48451012
In time Apple will swap it out for a in house model like many other things they’re swapped out in the last 25 years, Apple appears to be a company that doesn’t waste money and seem to execute long range projects if necessary I don’t think the Google models will be there for long. I think they will be swapped out when the M series GPUs get to the performance level they want.
> I see it differently… Apple has chosen to treat the model as a commodity
It didn't work out well for Yahoo.com. It turned out that Google Search was the value and yahoo.com just skin around it. It might be the same for Apple. Gemini is the valuable part, what particular device you use it on matters less.
Google search was leaps and bounds better than any other search engine when it came along and dominated. Yahoo couldn’t build their own, and nobody else they could buy from compared.
As i understand it, no LLM is miles ahead of the others right now, especially when it comes to simple agentic stuff. Hell, Qwen3.6-35B-A3 quantized to 3bits running on an 8 year old consumer GPU handles most agentic stuff fine, if a bit slow.
Differences in LLMs boil down to mostly the harness and the compute to run the models. Even for high complexity tasks like coding, the differences between openai, anthropic, google, and the bigger qwen models aren’t that dramatic.
We’re clearly in a different situation at the moment. Google is far from the only useful back end language model provider.
That’s exactly what a model should be: Implementation detail.
It’s a bit like when Steve Jobs turned down acquiring Dropbox telling them they’re just a feature, not a product
And then they created icloud and now it makes them like $110 billion a year while dropbox makes like $2.5b. I think history has proven them right.
(Ok so $110b is all services revenue not just icloud, but icloud’s a solid chunk of that)
Maybe they're looking for stability and trust Google to be around longer than Antrophic or OpenAI when the storm starts.
Google was the right choice stability and it only cost Apple $1 billion per year that’s pretty much of a no-brainer, and with Apple’s history, they probably will use Gemini for as long as they need it and then use their own model in time.
Bingo. They see this as the future commodity it will be. Customers will choose AI providers much way they choose a car: taste, price, a few other factors.
And to your point, Google has a massive balance sheet, produces their own AI chips, and is not going anywhere anytime soon.
People are not even going to choose their AI providers in the future, it's going to be a part of some other product.
And Apple already has a $20B search partnership with Google they can build on.
I am familiar what Google has killed before, but a contract with Apple is not something they'll throw out of the window for no reasons.
I may be jaded, but I do not trust Google for product offering stability. Obviously, Apple is a way bigger fish.
It's not a popular opinion on HN but Google is actually super stable from a B2B perspective. Even app engine (2008) is still kicking.
> It's strange to me that Apple would choose to disadvantage themselves by selecting Google as their provider as opposed to, say, Anthropic or even OpenAI. Doesn't this mean they'll struggle more to differentiate themselves from the assistant on Android phones? Thinking more cynically, couldn't Google, if they wanted, feed Apple an inferior version of Gemini, ensuring they stay ahead?
Is it really all that difference from Apple defaulting to Google's search engine?
> Is it really all that difference from Apple defaulting to Google's search engine?
Not really, because the business model isn't there (at least not in this iteration.
1. The models are Apple models, co-developed with Google. They are not white-label Gemini.
2. There's not currently a Google failover or UX
3. Because of that, there's no user monetization to share.
Apple does have a ChatGPT integration, with failover UX, and with a suspected revenue share deal. However, one could see this deal in a precarious situation, since at the time it started it was expected Apple would not focus much at all on a model capable with world knowledge.
Depends on which way the money is flowing. Google pays Apple for default search engine. Is Google paying Apple for using Gemini? That feels like a much heavier investment if they are
Yes, Google can do that just like Intel, Samsung, Nvidia or Qualcomm yes Google can drag their feet, we know in the end it will all lead to tears and then they will separate.
At the time Apple made this decision there wasn’t as strong of a difference in model quality between Google, anthropic, and OpenAI as there is now. Also Apple definitely burnt some bridges with OpenAI on the agreement they made together a year earlier.
> wasn’t as strong of a difference in model quality between Google, anthropic, and OpenAI as there is now
What's the difference now? I would guess 9/10 people here would have a very hard time telling the models apart in a blind taste test.
Especially if you are not asking siri to code stuff. If your use case is still "personal context" with "conversation", even if there is a 9/10 difference, the users may see their abilities going from 3/10 presently to 6/10 or 7/10, and still a massive upgrade for most of them. I think therapy and scientific research may remain in the domain of frontier chat interfaces for another year.
> What's the difference now?
Well, which ones are on my Mac locally?
Which ones are in my iPhone locally?
Only Google was willing to do what Apple wanted for a reasonable price.
They licensed Gemini and Google infrastructure not just for use, but to accelerate the creation of the three independent Apple Foundation Models announced today:
- AFM Core
- AFM Core Advanced
- AFM Cloud
Google also worked to be able to host AFM Cloud on their infrastructure per Apple's private cloud compute architecture, including some form of independent third party review/audit.
I suspect the only two organizations with both the model and the infrastructure needed for Apple were Google and xAI - and I'm not sure Apple would touch Grok with a ten foot pole, even if xAI were willing to let it be used for training.
OpenAI and Anthropic don't make small models. Google happens to already have a billion devices that would benefit from small models, so they made one.
Google basically gets 1 billion per year for free*.
Gemini is better than either at multi modal, google also has their tensor processor stuff with ridiculously high T/s output they need for acceptable UX
It may be a clever move. By using the same models as android (contractually?), they can compete on the user experience which they typically handle better than android phone providers.
Google will probably eventually pay Apple to be the assistant, a la search.
Google pays to be the default search because they make more from selling ads on those searches than they are paying for the search.
I don't see the same thing here. Google isn't making any money from being the assistant in Apple, so why would they pay to be it?
Yet? Maybe they are but embedding adds or paid signal amplification/probability tweaking has already been floated on the market and may already be a product.
For Google, search quality is a moat. And it's becoming apparent that AI quality is a moat as well.
It doesn't matter if it's classic search or LLM. They can monetize tracking information as easily as they can sell ads. They'll have fast cheap custom-built assistant models that run on device by default, keeping things profitable. In time they'll likely double-dip again by injecting product placement in results.
Google can't track information in private inference. That's kinda the point.
Maybe. Search ads likely make Google more money than they pay apple. For AI, Google currently loses money. If they eventually make money via ads, then sure. Else, apple will have to pay them
Apple has started adding ads to iOS (e.g. maps), just like Microsoft.
I guarantee you Google will start letting people pay to influence the output of the Gemini models once they figure out how to do it.
Search has ads but Siri doesn't. And when Apple puts ads in Siri they won't be Google ads. I don't think Google benefits from this deal enough to be worth paying.
Eventually? I bet they already are.
This is the most likely explanation. Apple manufacturers some of the best inference silicon on earth. Apache licensed models are already 1000x smarter than siri and strongly outperform anthropic, openai and google in the 8-128GiB of RAM range. The article says Apple can run this stuff on customers’ hardware, so that’s the range of model sizes that actually matter.
> Apache licensed models are already 1000x smarter than siri and strongly outperform anthropic, openai and google in the 8-128GiB of RAM range
smart is a weird term, gemma4 is an amazing omni model better than qwen3.6 for non coding tasks (as for all Gemini models). For Apple Intelligence gemma4 makes a lot more sense.
Not if the privacy situation is what Apple says in the Keynote. Only if they can tap that data.
Google was likely the only lab grown up enough that could handle Apple's volume and requests.
Apple was not going to hand over the keys to AI to just anyone.
Apple is a Fortune 5 company with a brand value alone worth more than any of these AI labs besides Google.
There's too much at stake for them to not play it safe. There's almost nothing to gain taking a risk
Didn’t Apple talked to Anthropic as their first choice, but they couldn’t agree on an amount, almost similar to BeOS and Next remember them?
We don't really know, we just saw a leak when the deal fell through. I suspect Apple wouldn't reach out to just one AI company at a time.
> It's strange to me that Apple would choose to disadvantage themselves
How exactly are they disadvantaging themselves? Perhaps expand on that opinion a bit, and the data/assumptions you're making in forming it.
My naive assumption is that they're going to do what everyone is doing: make tooling that lets you swap in any model.
I don't think it's fair to assume incompetence, on their part. I think it's much safer to assume they're doing what's best for them, and it's very clear to them what's best (money, support, etc).
> My naive assumption is that they're going to do what everyone is doing: make tooling that lets you swap in any model.
They are a ways away from that for Siri, as they can't guarantee third party tooling meets their security and privacy requirements. Meeting those security and privacy requirements also makes it harder for a third party to monetize their investment or ongoing use of infrastructure.
But I suspect you will see integration in other areas, such as image generation.
Google are the only one of the big three who can tick the boxes on being multimodal, price / performance and having Apple-level of compute available
They tried with OpenAI and that deal fell apart. My hunch is that they're considering their own device play given they brought Jony Ive on board.
Anthropic doesn't have the spare compute laying around to do this deal. Even they're buying compute from Google.
Anthropic or OpenAI have no foothold into the mobile market. Google has integrated a shitton of AI functionality into their latest Pixel phones. That’s what would scare me if I was Apple and worried that if AI prevails this could steal some market share from me. The other two are irrelevant in this context.
Maybe openai wasn’t up to the level of customization and privacy they needed
Also openai and Jonny Ive (love from) are cooking some device — may be personal
I'm speculating, but it's likely that Google is the only provider who is willing to adhere to the inference compute requirements that Apple sets out for their foundation models. They are, after all, the only provider that will let you host their FMs in your data center.
Didn't they famously have a search deal with Google (that they were also ultimately fined for - in the EU at least)? So there's definitely precedent with Google as a "partner".
A functioning FTC would not allow this. Insane that there will be no competition for integrated smartphone AI because the existing duopoly at the OS level has agreed to team up.
Or... because the existing duopoly of frontier/SOTA models (Anthropic and OpenAI) agreed to team up and not licence their weights.
Anthropic would never provide weight to anyone for local hosting
What part of using Gemini do you think is a disadvantage?
Also important to remember how immature OpenAI and Anthropic are as companies. It would be a huge technical, legal, and reputational risk to commit to using them.
Google has very good small models which can run locally on a phone - Gemma4.
OpenAI/Anthropic have nothing in this segment.
Did Apple indicate they are using local models?
That was their original design with Apple Intelligence: do as much locally as possible, only invoke the cloud in a very controlled way when necessary.
Anthropic and OpenAI are stuck on slower and more expensive nvidia hardware. It doesn’t scale like googles TPUs.
Google's TPU and Groq's LPU are the only real, commercially viable ways to provide all the compute required for the inference people want.
Just having an ungodly amount of capex by blanketing the Midwest with datacenters full of GPUs is a disaster in slow motion.
You can be pretty sure that Google will be around us in a two year timeframe. Can't say the same neither about Anthropic or OpenAI.
The agent harness matters just as much as the AI model. Using Hermes or OpenClaw feels like night vs day when using OpenAI’s apps even when using the same exact model.
You can even see difference in agent harnesses using the same model in the same company if you compare Gemini CLI with AntiGrav. They are different experiences.
I’m pretty sure Apple’s agent harness will be drastically different from Google’s even with the same model
The differentiation is the integration, not the model itself which is mostly fungible. And afaik Apple is running these models on their own compute, so I don't think google can pull a bait and switch.
I've been a paid subscriber to Claude for a couple of years, but lately I've been reaching for the free Gemini app on my Android Pixel 9 because it's so good at doing searches as part of its answers. The model feels fresh and up to date. Whether Apple can incorporate that search is an open question
Maybe I'm wrong, but this seems to strongly undercut Apple's claims about privacy.
>The company reiterated that Apple Intelligence relies on on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, with a promise that user data is only used to execute the immediate request and is not accessible to Apple or third parties. Apple added that outside experts can verify those privacy guarantees "at any time."
If you want to independently audit it from the outside, then you might not be an expert for Apple
> Apple added that outside experts can verify those privacy guarantees "at any time."
To my understanding, these "outside experts" have to go through a vetting process by Apple first. There are no publicly available audits of the infrastructure planned right now.
I don't think so. They will be running on their servers, or running in the future on Google's servers with privacy guarantees.
Do you think Google doesn't protect privacy for large paying customers?
For years I have enjoyed using Google products that I pay for, and they are clear about privacy guarantees.
A lot of people are missing that Google is light years ahead in terms of edge AI. They've been going on about it even before the GPT-craze. Pixel phones have had live captions (on edge transcriber) for a while.
How good is their offline (on-device) ai offering?
Apple ships iPhones with their neural engine since 2017.
This move kind of reminds me of the original iPhone with google maps. You're competing with google, but you're using their infrastructure. Why wouldn't they just go with another provider like OpenAI or Anthropic?
Given that they had originally selected OpenAI for Siri, and that deal fell through, I would guess something about their relationship with OpenAI fell through. Maybe OpenAI wouldn't let Apple run their model on Apple's servers.
To be fair, with the original iPhone they weren't competing. Google did backend web stuff well, so Apple partnered with them and made nice local apps that were fed by Google's cloud data. The same was true for the YouTube app.
After Google saw the iPhone (before the public), they pivoted their vision for Android (it was originally on blackberry-style hardware), and that's when the "thermonuclear war" started. Kind of interesting Steve Jobs would have showed the iPhone off like that, when something very similar happened with Bill Gates, which prompted the development of Windows (according to Jobs).
19 years later, it's probably time to be pragmatic again. If Apple isn't able to deliver on some of these AI integrations into the OS, they risk losing users to Android. If they have to pay someone for a model, they might as well choose the one they think is going to be best for their users. This keeps existing iPhone users on iPhone, and may pull over some Android users looking for the same features, but with better privacy. That seems like a win for Apple. To pay OpenAI instead of Google would just be spite at this point. Maybe well deserved, but the leadership has all changed over in the last two decades, so they'd be fighting old wars. Though I think they should still think twice before showing Google anything that hasn't yet been released.
Google is almost closer to a conglomerate than a coherent horizontally integrated corporation. The individual parts of Google are like Fortune500 companies themselves, and tend to act in their own interest.
OpenAI or Anthropic are not anywhere as well funded as Google. Apple already has everyone in their pocket via the ecosystem, they just have to not crap the bed. They value stability over the competitive component here.
Pretty much all of big tech compete with each other in some areas and partner in others.
Google probably gave them the best deal. When you're the #3 player you'll sacrifice margins to drive volume.
not just google maps but google search itself has been on the iphone since it launched
Are they competing with Google?
What do you consider Android to be, if not a competitor of iOS?
Most Android devices aren't even Google products, and for much of Android's existence, none of them were. Android is a way to get ads in front of people... as is their partnerships with Apple.
That describes Google's business. For Apple, Google is a competitor. An Android user is one less iOS user.
Then it's in their best interest to enable many Google products in iOS to give people less of a reason to buy an Android phone.
yeah or Magento teaming up with the X-Men to defeat the military in X2. XD
It is weird and disturbing that Apple has no native AI capability.
This is one of the most cash rich companies in the world and it has failed to have any position in the most critical technology development perhaps ever.
It's a clear signal that Apple became the most incredible operational/execution company under Tim Cook, but lost its innovation leadership.
I take it as a signal they don't see any of their value being provided by the models. They're strong point was never frontier technologies. It's always been the delivery of the technology.
You don't stay the most cash-rich company by chasing every expensive fad and they've been equally conservative with other "THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING" tech fads such as Cryptocurrency and VR. I don't blame them for not rushing to light Billions a month on fire like the other big players; their play always seems to be to let things shake out and then deliver something refined and sophisticated.
There also doesn't seem like any real opportunity for them to Apple-ify this tech (any more than today's announcement). There's lots of rough edges and the underlying technology is fundamentally janky and extremely problematic in Apple's second differentiator of privacy.
I have been using their on define AFM models for a year - for small models they are good. Their Secure Enclave server bases AFM model is good, but not in the same class as gemini 3.5 flash or deep seek v4 flash.
They are a hardware company at heart, the do software as software is needed.
For building a competitive AI they'd have to hire the talent, which is expensive and then do a massive investment, which may still end up far behind the competition. (See there attempts with Siri)
Now they can pick the model they want and if time is right they can still build their own.
In the end they still want to sell devices. They aren't doing a search engine (while they could), they are not doing an LLM model, ...
>> They are a hardware company at heart, the do software as software is needed.
This has never been true, not since Steve Jobs returned.
The heart of Apple is software and hardware integration.
Hardware companies that do software just to prop up the hardware business do terrible software, and (no doubt the Apple haters gonna hate this) but Apple does - for the most part - amazing software.
>> which is expensive and then do a massive investment
Apple has $145 billion in cash.
Well it's half-and-half, why did Apple struggle for so long with Siri and its pre-LLM era technology, during the time of AlphaGo and so forth, and then after Covid why didn't Apple pivot to something like their own version of Gemini?
But there are lots of differing possible reasons for this, and I think it is premature to conclude with any one in particular.
Really I don’t think this is a strong take at all. If anything this has positioned them extremely, extremely well for when the bubble bursts and they can go with the winner to provide reasonable capabilities.
Wait, if it's Gemini why do they call it "Apple Intelligence"? Is Google okay with that?
Google sold Apple the ability to run certain Gemini models on Apple's data-center hardware, using Google's orchestration layer. Apple hooks into that not dissimilar from an API-provider, and then builds everything upstream.
Meaning the system prompt(s), harness, entry and exit points, and skills. So the product is still "Siri AI", because of all the stuff that takes it from a raw infrastructure concern upon up into a "product" is Apple's responsibility.
Google are "okay with that" because Apple pays them $1B a year, per press reports, to be.
Any business can do this now actually - you just need to lease/rent hardware through a Google partner and you can run an Nvidia based server in your own datacenter running (supposedly) the latest full Gemini models.
If iCloud is implemented on Google Cloud Storage, why do they call it iCloud?
There's loads of AI features out there that are powered by a model provider, yet are not branded by them. Why would this be different?
I don't think you conceptualize Google's game plan. all these companies care about is b2b contracts so they can inflate their balance sheets because when it's digital, it doesn't have to actually exist for it to "make money"
People keep saying Gemini but it's not clear that the models are Gemini. They might be separate models.
I'm happy with this so long as the cloud side of things can be entirely disabled.
Google apps are the most downloaded apps in the Apple App Store already. This reminds me of the original Apple Maps, which was just a front end for Google Maps.
Just as long as you speak a major language
I'm really not looking forward to Gemini models on my devices.
Gemini models clearly gaslight the user and hallucinate, they're also SUPER verbose, as shown in the demos from the keynote.
Plus, if they're not charging a subscription for this, you know we're getting the dumbest models...
If you pay for Gemini, then it is good. I recently used Gemini Ultra for a month and the gemini models are very good (and of course, you get a lot of Claude Opus tokens to use through the same plan).
I also pay for Proton's Lumo+ private chat and for what it is it is also good.
The free plans from all the providers are bad, which is fare enough.
I use Apple devices and I expect to be paying for Gemini tokens after the integration.
Any word on pricing for Private Cloud model usage? (It's only free if your app has had <2 million downloads, and it has rate limits.)
what i think why they are too much relying on Google is coz they are way much towards making models open source and launching more much better models to public as if in future apple part way from google they might still have much better models to rely on and if we see the history google has been partnered with Apple since the launch of first Iphone
So they run on TPUs and not Nvidia chips?
The heaviest models run on Nvidia
No, Siri runs on Apple Silicon.
Thanks. That's still very interesting that they don't need Nvidia to do any of this. Nvidia stock has been priced like AI isn't possible without them.
I honestly don’t understand how anyone can believe that Apple is limiting user options for privacy reasons, rather than trying to maintain an unfair advantage over other vendors.
I’m not saying people who hold this view are being dishonest at all. But sometimes, to me, brands like Harley-Davidson or Apple seem closer to a cult than to a typical corporation.
> ...closer to a cult...
When you have to image a highly irrational reason to explain why groups of people do the things they do, there's a decent chance you just don't understand their perspective. They may be acting reasonably rationally from their own perspective. (As you said yourself: "I honestly don't understand...")
One can be rational but still be in a bubble or cult.
I think it's pretty clear that the previous poster characterized the Apple brand as a cult to specifically express the idea that people have an irrational devotion to it.
Well, they do have an irrational devotion to it. But even if it were rational, that again doesn't mean they're not in a cult.
Because privacy is actually a big feature, many people are skeptical about AI and the big model providers and don't trust them. They're less skeptical about on-device AI and so Apple is pushing that and making privacy a core feature of their online offering as well.
I probably wouldn't use it without that. It's one thing sending my shitty code to be trained on, and another thing entirely to give these companies access to my personal life and information.
That still doesn't explain why my data can only be sent to Apple and not to another vendor of my choice.
Oh by the way, who decides if the data stays on device or gets sent to Apple?
I bet it's Apple and not the user.
Because Apple has Private Cloud Compute tech that other vendors do not have.
I have created a more private cloud compute that is superior to Apple's implementation. Why can't Apple users choose my better service?
Sounds like Apple offered to implement that, but it didn’t fit the EU’s requirements.
I suspect if you paid apple enough money, and were willing to prove that your personal Private Cloud Compute did meet their requirements, it wouldn’t be impossible.
That would be a good argument to take to the EU.
If they let me use my own server, they won't even know my usage patterns, which is even better for privacy.
Even if other vendors had Apple's hardware, it's doubtful that Apple would give competing services equal footing. See: The App Store.
The hardware isn't a real justification, just a convenient fig leaf.
Maybe now we'll get a good voice prompt experience with Gemini on iPhone out of this deal.
Another one bites the dust
What a blunder, they resisted AI for like 2 years when it was all the buzz, and now when the bubble is about to bust and every user has AI fatigue they decide to finally dip into the fad?
Before it was as if avoiding AI was a conscious design decision, and if there was an AI crash, Apple would be the only survivor left. Now it feels like they weren't in on the meme out of incompetence and are now late to the party.
No one can know what Jobs' stance would be, but I like to think he would be anti-slop
I agree that many AI businesses will go bust and they deserve it, but the tech is good.
I can recommend my own layered approach, using the lowest capability models that get stuff done:
1. I maximally use local models like gemma4:26b-a4b-it-qat for everything that works with this free option.
2. I like paying for inexpensive APIs for mid-tier models like deepseek v4 flash, gcp-5-mini, gemini-2-flash for things that option 1. fails at. This option is almost free.
3. Pay for more expensive APIs like deepseek v4 pro, gemini 3.5 flash, etc. This option is not too expensive.
4. If all else fails on a class of tasks, then pay for awesomeness of Claude Opus. $$ expensive, I try not to use unless absolutely necessary.
I think developers and companies that just cram everything into Claude Opus are unprofessional.
When people say the AI bubble is about to bust, I don't think anybody means that "the use of AI is going to go away." AI is absurdly useful. I think what people mean is "the valuations of these companies will have to snap to a reality that is actually attached to their market value."
Exactly, small edge models is the future, highly personal experiences, and not these massive models that the cloud providers currently shove down our throats. While massive models are useful, these massive platforms are about to burst out of their promises. All while we’re supper happy with tiny 4b up to 12b models working amazing for all these “omg ai thinks” daily tasks.
Apple could have done something like bedrock and used a SOTA model but instead they are fiddling with local models or whatever.
Also I have seen that Apple has some strange lust towards image generation as if that's what people really want. I have this slop image generation thing on my phone and it is useless.
Here's what I want: natural language interaction to achieve complex workflows in iPhone. Example: find the cheapest way to go from A to B and book it using the Deutsche Bahn Train app.
Local Gemini is a light year ahead of whatever Siri is so this is a big improvement already.
If they don’t like this in the future they can just change to the less convenient, less secure, and likely more expensive bedrock + SOTA.
I don't disagree that local Gemini is better but if you've tried it in iPhone, it is slow, hallucinates and overheats the phone. For anything slightly non-trivial like the workflow example I gave, I think it will be close to useless.
Why is Apple providing people with a photorealistic deepfake generator so they can participate in dressing down women, digital blackface, and god knows what else? This is crossing a line, and simply saying "well other big tech companies crossed it first!" is not an excuse.
Nah, they crossed the line when they allowed photo editing apps on the AppStore which can do all the things you listed and more. It’s disgusting.
That is a completely ridiculous and absurd reply, and you know it.
How so? Can you not create all sorts of unethical imagery with the photo editing apps on the App Store? And do they not make the production of unethical imagery much easier and accessible? Which part of my comment is ridiculous and absurd?