Happy 50th, Apple

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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."

yahoo/finance's article 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.

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