Happy 50th, Apple

In the 1983 movie "WarGames," a young Matthew Broderick and a likeable AI come to a tense nuclear moment. The AI concludes "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Today, in 2026, amidst a tense AI spend and scramble, Apple has come to the same conclusion: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

An article in Yahoo Finance -- Apple Skipped the AI Arms Race ... -- shows how Apple is thinking different.  Instead of spending billions like Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, Apple will use its platform to host AI assistants -- Claude, Gemini, Copilot -- and let the user choose among them. Apple, with its M series chips and unified memory, can support AI locally and privately on the device, rather than remotely, in a data center somewhere.

Admittedly, success is also partly luck. Apple avoided the AI scramble because it struggled to upgrade the foundations of Siri. Viewed as a running race, Apple was still lacing up its sneakers while the others were completing the first lap. But credit goes to Apple for seeing another way; rather than participate as a runner, they could be the winners podium and host the top three finishers.

Here's to 50 more years of Apple thinking different. Happy anniversary Apple.