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OpenClaw is what Apple intelligence should have been (jakequist.com)
515 points by jakequist 5 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 416 comments




> This is exactly what Apple Intelligence should have been... They could have shipped an agentic AI that actually automated your computer instead of summarizing your notifications. Imagine if Siri could genuinely file your taxes, respond to emails, or manage your calendar by actually using your apps, not through some brittle API layer that breaks every update.

And this is probably coming, a few years from now. Because remember, Apple doesn't usually invent new products. It takes proven ones and then makes its own much nicer version.

Let other companies figure out the model. Let the industry figure out how to make it secure. Then Apple can integrate it with hardware and software in a way no other company can.

Right now we are still in very, very, very early days.


I don’t believe this was ever confirmed by Apple, but there was widespread speculation at the time[1] that the delay was due to the very prompt injection attacks OpenClaw users are now discovering. It would be genuinely catastrophic to ship an insecure system with this kind of data access, even with an ‘unsafe mode’.

These kinds of risks can only be _consented to_ by technical people who correctly understand them, let alone borne by them, but if this shipped there would be thousands of Facebook videos explaining to the elderly how to disable the safety features and open themselves up to identity theft.

The article also confuses me because Apple _are_ shipping this, it’s pretty much exactly the demo they gave at WWDC24, it’s just delayed while they iron this out (if that is at all possible). By all accounts it might ship as early as next week in the iOS 26.4 beta.

[1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/delaying-personalized-s...


Exactly. Apple operates at a scale where it's very difficult to deploy this technology for its sexy applications. The tech is simply too broken and flawed at this point. (Whatever Apple does deploy, you can bet it will be heavily guardrailed.) With ~2.5 billion devices in active use, they can't take the Tesla approach of letting AI drive cars into fire trucks.

This is so obvious I'm kind of surprised the author used to be a software engineer at Google (based on his Linkedin).

OpenClaw is very much a greenfield idea and there's plenty of startups like Raycast working in this area.


Being good at leetcode grinding isn’t the same as being a good product person.

iOS 26 is proof that many product managers at Apple need to find another calling. The usability enshittification in that release is severe and embarrassing.

Or maybe, while being as good as they are at their jobs, they were forced to follow a broken vision with a non-negotiable release date.

And simply chose to keep their jobs.


Which also suggests that they need a new calling

shots fired!

Ouch. You could have taken a statistical approach "google is not known for high quality product development and likely therefore does not select candidates for qualities in product-development domain" - I'm talking too much to Gemini, aren't I?

I'm not that surprised because of how pervasive the 'move fast and break things' culture is in Silicon Valley, and what is essentially AI accelerationism. You see this reflected all over HN as well, e.g. when Cloudflare goes down and it's a good thing because it gives you a break from the screen. Who cares that it broke? That's just how it is.

This is just not how software engineering goes in many other places, particularly where the stakes are much higher and can be life altering, if not threatening.


It is obvious if viewed through an Apple lens. It wouldn't be so obvious if viewed through a Google lens. Google doesn't hesitate to throw whatever its got out there to see what sticks; quickly cancelling anything that doesn't work out, even if some users come to love the offering.

Regardless of how Apple will solve this, please just solve it. Siri is borderline useless these days.

> Will it rain today? Please unlock your iphone for that

> Any new messages from Chris? You will need to unlock your iphone for that

> Please play youtube music Playing youtube music... please open youtube music app to do that

All settings and permission granted. Utterly painful.


You'll need to unlock your iPhone first. Even though you're staring at the screen and just asked me to do something, and you saw the unlocked icon at the top of your screen before/while triggering me, please continue staring at this message for at least 5 seconds before I actually attempt FaceID to unlock your phone to do what you asked.

I think half your examples are made up, or not Apple's fault, but it sounds like what you really want is to disable your passcode.