For a while, Apple’s minions in the tech press have been pushing its image that it is the only one that invents anything and other companies just reverse engineer its genius. The reality is that Apple usually sits on the sidelines and works out if the idea has legs before repackaging the whole lot in a nice “design.”

But when it comes to AI, Apple appears to have been caught with its trousers around its ankles. At an internal AI summit Apple held in February, when machine learning and other tech deployments across Apple products were discussed, there was no hint of generative AI. Apple basically “irrigated” its walled garden with AI and told itself how clever it was. This is unusual as it was the first to market an AI-powered voice assistant -- Siri.

Part of the issue is that Apple also missed the boat on cloud services. Chat AI requires massive, bespoke computational clusters that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Apple saw its iCloud as simply a place for its users to store billions of pictures of their breakfasts and did not see any serious use. As a result, the iCloud chief for that division is leaving, to a place where such projects will be taken more seriously.

Meanwhile, Apple has been chasing projects which have doom all over them. Firstly, it is talking about its Apple car which has not seen the light of day despite being on the drawing board for ages. It is also investing significant resources in the augmented-reality headset. Both projects, if they see reality, are going to be extremely expensive.