In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh with a promise: we were here to smash the monolithic, droning conformity of Big Brother. We were the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. We bought computers not to balance spreadsheets or optimize logistics, but to write the great American novel in a coffee shop and edit films that would never make it into Sundance.
Apple sold us the “Bicycle for the Mind.” It was a tool that amplified human capability.
So, why is the company currently pivoting to sell us the “Uber for the Mind”—where you just sit in the back seat, drooling, while an algorithm drives you to a destination you didn’t choose?
The “Creative” Identity Crisis
Let’s be honest about who buys a Mac Studio or a loaded iPad Pro. It isn’t the guy trying to automate his dropshipping email campaign. It is the person who believes, perhaps with a touch of unearned arrogance, that they have a vision.
Apple’s entire marketing history is built on the veneration of the human spark. It’s Picasso painting on glass. It’s Lennon on the white piano. It is the distinct, messy, inefficient process of human creation.
The pivot to Generative AI is a direct insult to the ecosystem’s most profitable demographic: The Narcissistic Creative.
To an Apple user, AI is not a feature; it is an existential threat. We didn’t spend $4,000 on a brushed-aluminum slab to become “Prompt Engineers.” We view ourselves as creators, not synthesizers. We are the chefs; AI is the microwave. Apple investing in AI is like a Michelin-star restaurant announcing they are pivoting to Soylent because it’s “more efficient.”
Why Apple Intelligence Should Suck
There is a growing theory among the faithful that Apple’s AI lags behind OpenAI and Google not because of technical incompetence, but out of moral fortitude. Perhaps Siri is terrible on purpose.
Maybe when you ask Siri to “Draft a heartwarming email to my wife,” and she responds by playing Despacito on Apple Music, she is doing it to save your soul. She is saying, “No, Dave. Write it yourself. You are a human being. Have some dignity.”
If Apple truly “thinks different,” their AI strategy should be total incompetence. A truly “Pro” feature would be an AI that refuses to do the work for you.
User: “Siri, generate an image of a cat in the style of Van Gogh.”
Apple Intelligence: “I found some paintbrushes on Amazon. Create it yourself, you hack. Here is a playlist for focus.”
That is the courage we expect from Cupertino.
The Synthesizer vs. The Creator
The current tech industry narrative is that thinking is a bug, not a feature. They want to remove the friction of thought. But for the Apple demographic, the friction is the point.
When you use a Mac, you are signaling that you are part of the cognitive elite. You are the one who makes the things that the AI scrapes to train its models. If Apple turns the iPhone into a device that thinks for you, they are democratizing mediocrity. They are handing the keys to the kingdom to the Windows users—the people who just want to get the job done.
We don’t want to get the job done. We want to obsess over the kerning of a font for three hours. We want to struggle.
The Beige Box of the Soul
If Apple succeeds in AI, they fail at Apple.
If the iPhone 17 can write your poetry, edit your photos, and compose your emails with a single button press, then the “Crazy Ones” are extinct. We become the very drones from the 1984 commercial, marching in lockstep, mouths open, letting the machine feed us processed content.
So, here is the plea from the creatives, the designers, and the insufferable writers in Starbucks: Please, Apple, let your AI suck.
Let the others have the hallucinations and the automated plagiarism. Keep selling us the illusion that we are special, that our thoughts matter, and that the machine is subservient to the man.
Don’t make us “Think, Optionally.” Let us keep thinking different. Or at least, let us keep thinking we are.