"Apple doesn't have their own LLM. They can't innovate."

They also don't have their own search engine yet they make $20B+ a year from search.

Lesson in there.

when you are that size you make money off of anything. but are you maxing?

the argument is more of a 'could they have made more if they had their own search/ad'
-- google makes more than 20b off of their traffic otherwise they wouldn't pay 20b for it

Apple‘s partnership within Anthropic points to local models. Probably running in earbuds.

OS level integration of LLMs is akin to the hardware differentiation you mention
-- plenty of earbuds on the market (LLMs as apps) but airpods slap (OS level LLM integration could too)
-- not to mention running models locally which is literally hardware differentiation

agree that 'don't have a model, can't innovate' is wrong 
but because it's actually reverse 
if they were innovating they would've done better already

Apple is a hardware company that's good enough in software. Always has been.

They win when it's about hardware differentiation + vertical integration.

Frontier LLM doesn't matter if there are 3 other ones and every one of them is available as an app.