HilliTech's Newsletter: Stop asking Apple to be Meta, Google, or OpenAI
Apple isn't a new company. I'd understand covering it like any other company in the year 1984, or even 1997, or perhaps you woke up from under a rock and didn't realize Apple was different in 2007.
It's 2026 and we're multiple revolutions separated from those fateful product launches, yet pundits can't wrap their heads around Apple not behaving like other companies.
Wesley Hilliard
Follow the money
The common reason we see erroneous reporting around Apple is because of the large number fallacy. What goes up must come down, or so it usually goes.
Apple isn't immune to mistakes nor will it last forever. There will be a point in human history where Apple is just a footnote, but that day isn't today nor likely in our lifetimes.
I'm not an Apple historian, but I feel that I have at least some grasp of the company and how it has grown over the past decades. There were moments where the company was absolutely in danger of imploding, but it persisted.
The doom and gloom reporting persisted too. Even as Apple looks to cross $5 trillion in valuation while staying toe-to-toe with Nvidia, Apple reporting is at its silliest. The entire market and Nvidia's valuation are balanced on the thinnest of bubbles to ever exist in tech, yet Apple is the one we're meant to be worried about.
The company invested billions in AI research, some $10 billion going to Apple Car, which was abandoned. But that single rejection birthed Apple's AI initiatives years before ChatGPT came along. However, because Apple didn't dump untold billions, if not trillions, into developing a frontier model and claim "first" to AI, it "lost the race."
That bubble will soon pop, Apple's AI initiatives that were built with user privacy, security, and on-device priority will persist, and the rest will fade to the background. Yet, Apple is being portrayed as a failure, even as it stuck to its goals set early on by Giannandrea. The on-device initiative birthed the neural engine, which is part of what makes Apple Silicon such a desirable product in the AI bubble era.
Oops, I forgot, Apple is supposed to be failing at AI. My bad.
Another interesting narrative has survived nearly two decades, seemingly birthed by the iPhone. At first Apple revolutionized the smartphone market, but analysts saw this as a potential bit of pride before the fall, that the wax wings would melt and Apple's mediocrity would show through. At every turn, every half-assed market idea was heralded as "the next iPhone," or "the iPhone killer."
It didn't matter, every novel idea and execution, good or bad, was Apple's potential downfall. Apple was "too reliant" on iPhone sales. All it would take was one of these "innovators" to step up and take the smartphone crown.
Instead, Apple's product lines diversified, it slowly took market share from Android, and continues to grow a decade on from "peak iPhone" sentiments.
All the while, Apple did diversify with services. But now pundits say that's Apple's weak point. The very thing analysts begged Apple to do will now be their very downfall.
Every new product or service is a "distraction." Apple needs to "focus on what it does best" and "get back to innovation." Those things are said even as every competitor leaps to clone Apple software, initiatives, and even hardware.
Samsung wrote the book on copying iPhone and has become so efficient at it that it releases products ahead of known Apple announcements to "beat" Apple to the punch. But clearly that's a sign of how innovative Apple's competitors are, not of Apple's success in the market.
Apple Vision Pro is another victim of the "Apple failure" chatter. Even with an updated model that included a new chipset, Apple clearly "failed" to innovate and do what its competitors are doing.
Those competitors that apparently have Apple beat to the punch are releasing lower-specced hardware with also-ran software clones hoping to pre-capture a market they think Apple is pursuing. That's Apple's failure somehow, of course.
Instead, the company shelved projects that weren't reaching Apple standards and redistributed talent to keep them busy. It isn't possible to release an upgraded Apple Vision Pro with a lighter weight while maintaining performance. If it were, we'd have seen a competitor do that.
So, sure, Meta will own the $1,299 worse-specced headset market category it invented with this new product. Apple will continue to own the premium headset market. They're just different products and Apple isn't targeting the cheaper headset market the same way it doesn't target $200 smartphones.
For the clicks
I often wonder why there is so much cynicism around Apple. Sure, it's easy to hate the multi-trillion dollar company. Capitalism sucks and these companies are too big, these are all things I sympathize with and understand.
However, look beneath the surface and you can see all of the social, environmental, and yes, even government initiatives Apple participates in. Apple isn't our friend and doesn't care about the individual user, absolutely, but I do think the leadership at Apple does believe in the mantra of "leaving the world better than we found it."
That's why I am often confused by the punditry surrounding Apple. It is good we hold Apple to account, and I am critical when necessary, but in a world filled with Googles, Metas, and OpenAIs, Apple looks almost saintly at times.
It might be easy to assume all of the negative reporting is just for clicks, and some of that might be correct. However, I've heard how these people talk about Apple, and they're certain of Apple's failures. They laugh and talk as if they've figured out some grand secret – Apple is doomed and they're the first to know.
Except, for whatever reason, they're unable to look up long enough to see the narrative they're peddling is weak, unsupported, and just another in a long line of many who were wrong about the company.
Look, I get what today's newsletter reads like, so let me close up with some choice words for Apple. True criticism comes from a place of understanding, and you can't be a proper hater without knowing exactly how to tear something apart to its base layers.
Apple has its flaws, but ones I don't really dwell on much because they are often outweighed by their benefits.
- Apple needs more union representation and to embrace unions as a whole
- Apple employees deserve more pay and benefits for the work they do
- Bug bounties are too low for a company that prides itself on security and audit-ability
- Apple Vision Pro has a developer support problem Apple seems unable to acknowledge or correct
- Apple Intelligence is too present in an ecosystem that prides itself on user choice and consent for information privacy
- Too many features are gated behind artificial limitations introduced and enforced by Apple
- It would be nice if Apple could take a stronger public stance against authoritarianism even though I'm aware Apple can't fight these battles for us.
Apple is just a tech company that will no doubt begin to decline and fumble at some point in the infinite timeline of the future. For now, it stands as the best place for me to get my technology and services, and it isn't even close.
I'm out of time to expand further today. Family plans are keeping me busy, so please respond in the comments here or on social media, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one.
