👉 Background: Apple, is the world’s largest company by market cap, thanks to its very shlick products like the iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch. Each year, Apple has its big nerd-conference called Worldwide Developers Conferences (or WWDC) where Apple announces many of its new features and product for the year ahead.

👉 What happened: This year, Apple announced that it won’t be calling its macOS updates things like Yosemite, Mountain Lion or Big Sur anymore. From now, the updates will be called iOS26, macOS26 - named in line with the year it was released (but one year ahead). It’s also released “Liquid Glass” for its screens. But last year, Apple promised some big big improvements to the AI in iPhones. But, despite the big build-up, Apple’s AI-powered Siri still isn’t ready.

👉 What else: According to Apple, Siri had quality issues that held it back. Internal tests showed Siri only worked properly two-thirds of the time (its unclear what happened the other third)! But, even worse, Apple hasn’t even committed to a release date anymore because it wants to perfect the product before release.

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What's the key learning?

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💡In tech, being too early can be costly, but being too late can be fatal. Apple has long been known for its patience in product development. It didn’t launch the first smartphone or smartwatch, but when it does enter a market, it tends to reshape it.

💡In fact, when Apple released the iPhone, it totally squashed Nokia and Blackberry. In 2005, Apple didn’t even exist in the mobile phone market. But now, it has nearly 20% of market share in a much more competitive market.

💡 That's the benefit of a strategic delay. You get time to refine, observe competitors, and deliver something more polished. But, if Apple waits too long on Siri and AI integrations, it risks losing out for the long term.