$Apple(AAPL)$  I am amazed by all the excuses people can make for apple and their decision to collaborate with google's gemini as their AI solution for Siri (which has been struggling to keep up). Talking how it cuts down costs and all, but it raises the issue that this aspect will not be fully done in-house.

Siri looked like a competent assistant at Inception, but apple seemed to not keep working on it, a surprising approach, considering apple either goes all out or brutally amputates the limbs that do not flourish (look at the production of their own in house chips for their macbooks, it not only phases out intel as an external supplier, but boosts performance while using lesser power).

Choosing to work with someone else (a fairly big competitor in google at that) for a fairly big aspect of modern day "computing" and the shareholder buzzword (AI) feels out of sorts for such a big tech company. It almost seems like an admission that they were caught flatfooted and are absolutely incapable of catching up. (Do not forget that apple vision has been unimpressive but was still bestowed a second generation)

AI may be a fad for the next handful of years, and eventually die out, but that has not stopped tech companies from trying to join in, whether they believe in the cause or otherwise (look at the slop windows keep trying to push out - anything to show shareholders you are involved in the AI wave). Apple not giving it a real go is surprising, and shareholders must be rueing the miss opportunity to get more "cheap" value generated.