Apple has chosen to be the Microsoft of the 90s. They are good and bad news at the same time

They are late for the AI ​​revolution, but compensate Apple Intelligence in Invisible and indispensable infrastructure.

There was a particularly revealing moment in the Keynote of the WWDC 2025: While the technological world lives its greatest revolution since the arrival of the Internet, Apple dedicated fifty -two seconds to talk about Apple Intelligence. The rest of the time spent talking about things such as the new telephone app or personalized funds for Imessage.

Then they spent more time talking about Foundation Models and integrations, but the most explicit Apple Intelligence for the user was relegated. It is as if in 1996, in the middle of the Internet explosion, Microsoft had focused its Keynote on improving the Windows Paint and lonely.

The analogy is not accidental because Apple is repeating part of the Microsoft strategy of the nineties: Arrive late to a technological revolution and compensate with deep integration what they lack in pure innovation.

When the Internet began to change the world, Microsoft did not create the best browser, protocols or web servers. But Internet integrated so deeply in Windows that it became impossible to avoid. They did not lead that technology, but made it indispensable within their territory.

Apple is executing the same pattern, although with a nuance of the size of Alicante: they have developed their own models for Apple Intelligence. And now they translate into new specific functions:

• Machine translation.
• Calling spam.
• Personalized sports motivation.

Your Foundation Models gives developers direct access to that local intelligence. But when you need real conversation, complex reasoning, advanced creativity … there they turn to Chatgpt.

The Current Siri Without Openai remains the usual: appropriate for basic commands, but it is lost as soon as you leave the script. For the conversational and productive jump that defines this era, Apple depends on others.

Your strategy is intelligent:

1. Controlling the everyday and routine where integration matters more than gross power.
2. Subcontracting the advanced where they still cannot compete.

They do not sell as a product, but make it a kind of digital oxygen. You breathe it without realizing it.

Google, Openai or Anthropic compete to create the best chatbot and surround it with functions that underpin it. Apple opts to integrate intelligence in each basic interaction of its devices.

• You do not need to open chatgpt to translate a message, it simply occurs.
• You don’t look for an app to filter spam calls, your iPhone takes care of that.

It is the difference between selling electricity and selling appliances that work with electricity.

Amazon executed a similar strategy when he arrived late to the conversational. They cannot compete with chatgpt in headlines, but they are making Its AI is the easiest option for companies that already live in AWS. They do not define the future of AI, but they do domesticate it within the infrastructure they live.

The problem is that This defensive strategy comes with expiration date. The Microsoft of the nineties had serious problems when it lost the train that took him from the PC to the mobile. His domain by integration evaporated as soon as the dominant platform changed.

Apple did manage to reinvent himself with the iPhone and with the Wearablebut AI is moving much faster than previous transitions. The PC Revolution → Mobile took a decade, the AI ​​revolution is happening in less than a five years.

Apple Silicon took another decade of internal development to Apple. To lead the conversational that defines this era they would need a similar investment in research. The question is if they are ten years old. The window closes every time Openai presents a more capable modelevery time Google Integra Gemini more deeply in Androidevery moment they lose defining what the conversational means for the end user.

Apple, for the moment, is playing the perfect letter for the short term. Its integration is superior, its most credible privacy, its most polished experience. They control infrastructure and experience, but they subcontract the intelligence that really differentiates this era from all the above. It’s like perfectly controlling iPhone’s hardware but depending on Google for apps that people really want to use.

And this is especially paradoxical coming from Apple, A company that has invested decades and billions in controlling fundamental technologies:

• They developed their own operating systems so as not to depend on Microsoft or Google.
• They created Apple Silicon not to depend on the cycles and limitations of Intel.
• They are developing their own modems so as not to depend on Qualcomm and The C1 already debuted with the iPhone 16E.

Apple understands better than anyone who controls base technologies controls the future. But with the generative AI they have chosen to be the best integrators instead of competing frontally for creating the best models in the world. It is a conscious resignation to that ‘big’ competition that defines the technological ages. “

Apple Intelligence works, and it works better the less explicit it is. It shines in the subtle, in the rear layer. But the history of technology teaches us that defensive strategies have limits. Microsoft dominated the nineties with superior integration, until a platform came where that integration no longer matters.

The question is not whether Apple can continue to be the best integrator of others. The question is yes, when the redefine completely how we interact with technology, it will be enough to have been the perfect host of a revolution that others wrote.

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Outstanding image | Apple