The AI backlash opens up a door for a product Apple will never make

It’s time once again to check in on AI! Checking in on AI is a community service the Macalope provides periodically free of charge to see just how things are going in the wild, wacky, and heavily litigious world of artificial intelligence!

Let’s go to the headlines!

“ChatGPT wrote her ‘resignation.’ She says she never meant to quit.”

Okay, that doesn’t seem good.

“AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making”

That seems worse, admittedly.

“Meta removes controversial AI feature on Instagram after backlash”

Oh, come on! Meta’s been turning Instagram into a soulless hellscape for years! That’s just standard operating procedure!

Let’s just say that none of these headlines are particularly good. Should someone drive by AI’s house just to see if everything is okay?

(Not it.)

While all this may seem anecdotal, the attitude of investors toward AI in general seems to be slowly shifting. And that’s working out for the one company that was notoriously late to AI.

Huh! It’s almost as if people who said Apple’s slow roll with AI might actually be an asset rather than a liability were right all along! Very unexpected! Well, kudos to those incredibly erudite and remarkably good looking individuals, whoever they may be.

This shift in the zeitgeist has propelled Apple’s stock past Nvidia’s, making it the world’s most valuable company once again. That may seem meaningless, but as the world’s most valuable company, you get 5 percent off on appetizers at participating Chili’s. So. Yeah.

Apple is, of course, still working on AI.

“Khosla-Backed Startup Claims Breakthrough With Largest-Ever AI Model on an iPhone”

Well, why would anyone want to run AI on-device when you could have a giant data center in your town that uses up all your water and electricity? And, please, do not bother the horny one with considerations so jejune as “privacy”! As if people would concern themselves with such a thing if it even existed, which it does not!

“Tons of Peoples’ Claude Chats and Creations are Exposed on Google”

That Macalope said not to bother him about privacy!

The exposed data includes an AI-powered therapy app that someone appears to have vibe-coded, notes on meetings, and a dashboard someone made apparently to analyze medical billing data. Exposed chats reportedly include private cryptocurrency wallet keys and personal information like peoples’ addresses

Well, that’s fun.

It’s great that Apple is concerned with privacy because literally no other company seems to be.

Foundry

Now, like they say down at the colonoscopy center when the furry one makes an appointment, here comes the Macalope’s big “but”.

In an era where the cost of living is beaten only by the alternative, with RAM prices skyrocketing in particular, isn’t there another option here? An out-of-the-box type thinking option? Prices on iPhones are widely expected to jump this fall. And, as Apple struggles to cram more RAM into the iPhone 18 and 18e so they can run Apple Intelligence, prices of the base models will likewise go up when they’re released next spring.

Meanwhile, people are waxing nostalgic for when technology was simpler: “Being a Luddite Is Fun Again”

You don’t have to look far to find ePaper cameras, retrophones that stress simplicty or people getting excited about methods for turning your smartphone into a dumb phone. Even Johnny Ive says he regrets being partly responsible for creating the modern smartphone. That would probably mean a lot more if he wasn’t now working with a guy who says you can’t raise a baby these days without ChatGPT.

(Can we just accept the fact that that is a really weird thing to say?)

The Macalope hasn’t seen any studies but if he had to bet he’d guess that the two things driving throwback mania are social media and AI. (A third thing is probably price but price is currently driven by AI.)

What if, instead of driving up the price of iPhones, Apple sold a phone with less RAM that costs less and was marketed as the non-AI version? The Macalope wonders how well a phone like that might do. For a lot of people, the first thing they do with any new product is figure out how to turn off the AI features. Maybe all these companies making retro kit are barely selling any units at all, the Macalope doesn’t know. But you seem to see more and more of them every day.

To be clear, Apple is not going to do this. They want you to use Apple Intelligence. They want you to tell your family, friends and enemies about how great it is. They want you to buy the most expensive iPhone you can afford. And these days that proposition is getting worse and worse.

This furry prognosticator is of the opinion that AI was largely a solution in search of a market. It became the darling of venture capital, a get rich quick scheme pushed as an inevitability that was declared the next big thing by fiat in order to make their investments in it pay off. RAM was funneled to data centers creating a scarcity that consumers now have to pay for, even if they didn’t want the thing that caused prices to go up in the first place. If you want a new phone, it’ll cost you more whether you want to use AI on it or not.

No wonder people want off this crazy ride. It’s too bad Apple won’t build them an offramp. While the Macalope isn’t necessarily nostalgic for dumb phones, he sure is nostalgic for devices that solved problems rather than created them.