Apple stamped its entry into the AI era this year with the release of Apple Intelligence. But 2024 also marked the year when Apple’s staggered release plan for feature updates was also slower than usual. 2025 might not be much different.
According to Bloomberg, Apple has pushed an unspecified number of features that were otherwise supposed to arrive with the iOS 19 update next year. Earlier this week, the outlet also reported that a planned Siri upgrade that would give it more conversational chops has been delayed until Spring 2026.
“I’m told that a larger-than-usual number of features scheduled for iOS 19 (beyond the new Siri) are already postponed until spring 2026 (when iOS 19.4 debuts),” says the Bloomberg report. The theme isn’t too different from what Apple has followed so far with iOS 18.
Merely weeks after the WWDC 2024 conference in June, it was reported that the company had delayed some of the most promising Siri and Apple Intelligence features. Some of those features, including the promised integration with third-party apps, are yet to arrive and are expected to roll out publicly next year.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, a senior Apple executive hinted that the company is taking a cautiously slow approach to releasing new features in the Apple Intelligence stack.
“You could put something out there and have it be sort of a mess. Apple’s point of view is more like, ‘Let’s try to get each piece right and release it when it’s ready,’” SVP of Software Engineering at Apple, Craig Federighi, told the outlet.
Now, Apple Intelligence hasn’t quite run into the same kind of problems as rival products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, or Microsoft’s Copilot. Generative tools like those mentioned above already have their own set of inherent problems, such as hallucinations, blatantly making up inaccurate facts, and going haywire.
In his experiment with Google’s Pixel Studio app, Digital Trends’ Joe Maring witnessed the app generating deeply problematic images, such as a Nazi-influenced SpongeBob. My own experience with products like Gemini and ChatGPT has mostly varied between “meh” and “laughably bad.”
This well-documented error-prone nature of Generative AI products might also explain why Apple has been on the fence about going all-in with AI stuffing into its software. Unsurprisingly, Apple Intelligence has mostly stuck with low-stakes scenarios, instead of chasing ambitious goalposts with a high-risk, high-rewards caveat.
At the same time, Apple also risks lagging behind the competition. The likes of Google and Microsoft have already integrated their respective AI tools at the heart of popular products like Workspace and Office 365, alongside OS-level integrations here and there.
We are still over half a year away from getting a taste of what Apple has planned for iOS 19. Moreover, multiple iOS 18 features that were showcased months ago at Apple’s annual developers conference are still in line for a public release.
Looking over at the competition, Google is now planning to showcase its own big innovations in roughly the same time frame as Apple. The company has already released the first Developer Preview of Android 16, and aims to reach platform stability in the first half of the year.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Google aims to spoil Apple’s glitzy June event covering yearly software updates, or so assures the search giant. However, with Apple’s feature cadence reportedly running into delays, Google has a chance to wow smartphone enthusiasts with new software tricks ahead of Apple.
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