Apple just dropped a bomb at WWDC 2024, & its name is Apple Intelligence. For the past year, the App Store has been flooded with AI apps, a digital gold rush where developers slapped a pretty UI on an OpenAI API call & watched the subscriptions roll in. It was a good run. But with AI now baked directly into the operating system of over 2.2 billion active devices, you have to ask: is the party over for standalone AI apps? Yeah, for a whole lot of them, it absolutely is.
What Even Is Apple Intelligence?
Let’s get this straight. Apple Intelligence isn’t a single app you download. It’s not “AppleGPT.” Think of it as a new, smarter layer woven deep into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, & macOS Sequoia. It’s designed to be personal, private, & deeply integrated. Most of the processing happens right on your device, using Apple’s own powerful silicon. For more complex tasks, it uses a system they’re calling Private Cloud Compute, which they swear up & down is just as secure. The whole system powers a bunch of new features: revamped Writing Tools that can rewrite or summarize text anywhere, an Image Playground for creating goofy pics on the fly, generative emoji (Genmoji, lol), & a version of Siri that’s finally, maybe, not completely useless.
The Writing on the Wall for “Thin Wrapper” Apps
The immediate victims here are the “thin wrapper” apps. You know the ones. They do one simple AI trick & charge you $9.99 a month for it. The AI app market has been booming, with apps like ChatGPT becoming one of the highest-earning mobile apps on the planet. But that revenue stream is now under direct threat. Why would a casual user pay for a separate grammar checker, text summarizer, or image generator when a perfectly good, context-aware version is now built into their iPhone for free? They won’t. Apple is leveraging its greatest unfair advantage: the operating system. It’s the ultimate distribution channel, & it just made a huge category of apps redundant overnight.
The Great App Cull: Who’s on the Chopping Block?
The impact won’t be evenly distributed. A specific type of app is about to face an extinction-level event. The casual, general-purpose AI tool is now a feature, not a product.
Grammar & Writing Assistants
Grammarly has to be sweating. Apple’s new Writing Tools are system-wide. You can select text in Mail, Notes, Pages, or even third-party apps & have it proofread, rewritten in a different tone, or summarized into a neat list. This isn’t just about catching typos; it’s about changing the very essence of your text. While pro writers might still want a dedicated tool with more features, the massive casual user base that just wants to sound smarter in an email has no reason to look elsewhere anymore.
Simple Image Generators
The “make me a pic of a corgi in a chef’s hat” market is now cornered. Image Playground offers on-device image generation in a few simple styles (Animation, Illustration, Sketch). It’s integrated into Messages, Keynote, & more. Sure, it’s not Midjourney or Stable Diffusion in terms of raw power or photorealism. But for the 99% of people who just want to make a funny image for a group chat or a custom emoji, it’s more than enough. The novelty of apps like Lensa AI is gone when a similar, faster, & more private tool is just a tap away.
Personal Assistant & Scheduling Apps
This is where the new Siri could do the most damage. For years, startups have tried to build the perfect AI assistant to manage your chaotic digital life. The new Siri, with its on-screen awareness & deep app integrations, is designed to be that assistant. It can see what’s on your screen & take multi-step actions. For example, a friend texts you their new address. You can just say, “Siri, add this address to their contact card,” & it just does it. It can find a podcast your partner sent you days ago or pull up pics from a specific event without you needing to remember where they are. This contextual power, if it works as advertised, makes most third-party organizer apps look clumsy & obsolete.
So, Is Everyone Doomed? Nope.
This isn’t an apocalypse for all AI software. It’s a culling of the unoriginal. Apple Intelligence, for all its integration, is a generalist. As one analyst aptly put it, it’s a B- student at everything. It’s good enough for most people, most of the time. But it leaves a massive opening for A+ students: specialized apps that do one thing exceptionally well.
Pro-level creative tools aren’t in danger. Adobe Firefly in Photoshop & Illustrator offers a level of control & quality that Image Playground can’t touch. AI-powered coding assistants like GitHub Copilot are for a professional audience Apple isn’t targeting. Highly specialized B2B apps for legal, medical, or financial analysis are safe. The key is specialization. Apps that serve a niche audience with specific, powerful needs will thrive. Perplexity AI, with its focus on being an “answer engine” complete with citations, offers a different value proposition than a generalist assistant. The future isn’t about being an AI app; it’s about being the best app in your category, powered by AI.
Actionable Advice: How to Survive the Cull
If you’re a developer or founder in this space, despair isn’t a strategy. It’s time to adapt. First, don’t compete on free, general features. You can’t win a price & distribution war against the OS. Second, go niche or go home. Find a specific industry, workflow, or user type & build the absolute best tool for them. Be the A+ student. Third, and this is crucial, integrate, don’t just replicate. Apple is providing a new & improved App Intents framework that lets your app’s features be accessible to Siri. Instead of being replaced by Siri, make your app a superpower that Siri can call upon. If your app does something unique, teach Siri how to use it. This makes your app *more* valuable in the age of Apple Intelligence, not less.
The ChatGPT Elephant in the Room & The Ethics Question
Of course, Apple couldn’t build it all themselves. For queries that are beyond its own models, Apple Intelligence will punt the request to an external model, starting with OpenAI’s GPT-4o. This is a huge deal. Apple, the self-proclaimed high priest of privacy, is integrating its biggest rival directly into its core experience. They’ve put up some guardrails: users will be asked for permission before their query is sent, their IP is obscured, & OpenAI promises not to store the requests. But it’s still a handoff to a third party, creating a level of complexity & trust that is very un-Apple. The success of this partnership hinges entirely on whether users trust that handoff, a detail that Apple’s privacy marketing carefully frames but can’t completely erase.
Ultimately, Apple Intelligence is a powerful, necessary, & long-overdue step forward. It will make iPhones & Macs smarter & more useful for millions of people. But it’s also a declaration of war on mediocrity. The gold rush for easy money from simple AI wrappers is officially over. The future belongs to specialized, deeply integrated, & truly useful applications that solve real problems a generalist B- student can’t. The culling has begun. Time to prove your app deserves to survive.
