Apple’s Containment Strategy: Be Boring
Design First. Answers Later.
Apple’s reputation has long rested on a few sacred principles: polished products, strategic control, and a refusal to rush. The past year has tested those pillars like never before. And while Apple’s disciplined comms around the delayed rollout of Apple Intelligence may have spared it from a full-blown crisis, it’s clear the company is entering unfamiliar territory.
For months, users waited for the promised reinvention of Siri and system-wide intelligence updates teased in iOS 18. But nothing came. No update. No launch. No comment. Just a delayed promise.
When Apple finally broke the silence, the update was comically short:
“As we’ve shared, we’re continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal. This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.” — Craig Federighi
Compare that to Sonos. The audio company launched a redesigned app in May, only to be met with a firestorm of user complaints. The backlash was immediate and intense, resulting in a formal apology, an executive shake-up, and what I’d call extreme transparency—angry customers were even given a Trello board to track the company’s fixes. Eventually, CEO Patrick Spence took responsibility and announced he would step down. The new headphones didn’t sell well, and the brand lost its “just works” reputation.
In contrast, Apple over-promised and then… went quiet. They never shipped a broken product, which may be why their delay wasn’t as damaging. By the time WWDC 2025 rolled around, Apple took a deliberate tack: keep the AI update short, clinical, and boring—and shift attention to something more traditionally Apple: design.
Enter liquid glass, a new visual language for iOS. By pivoting the conversation from intelligence to aesthetics, Apple bought itself time. Critics called it the most boring WWDC in recent memory. But from a comms perspective, boring was the point. Boring was strategic. Boring was control.
The Missing Voices
But the post-keynote communications strategy was just as revealing as the keynote itself.
Apple declined to participate in John Gruber’s annual post-WWDC talk show for the first time in a decade. For context: Gruber is arguably the most influential Apple blogger and one of its longest-standing fan-critics. He had just published a sharply worded piece titled Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino, reflecting a growing unease that many tech journalists were already whispering.
Ironically, one of Gruber’s usual interview slots—traditionally filled by a senior Apple executive—was instead occupied by Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal. Stern had also been one of the few journalists Apple granted an official post-WWDC interview, and she delivered what was arguably the most pointed line of questioning.
In that interview, Stern challenged Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak on the still-unreleased features of Apple Intelligence, pressed them on why their offering lagged behind competitors, and asked directly whether it was, as critics (including Gruber) had claimed, “vaporware.”
Federighi and Joswiak played defense, emphasizing that some features had already shipped, others were coming soon, and that what they presented at 2024’s WWDC wasn’t “demoware” — just unfinished.
Federighi’s insistence that it wasn’t vaporware inspired tech writer and investor M.G. Siegler to publish a sharply funny rebuttal titled Liquid Glasslighting, a play on Apple’s new design language and the gaslighting critics felt Apple was engaged in.
Meanwhile, Tim Cook was notably absent from any AI-related media appearances. His most prominent post-keynote interview? A Variety piece about the upcoming F1 movie. It was hard not to notice that he was willing to talk about anything—except Apple Intelligence.
Still, let’s not confuse containment with recovery.
Apple Intelligence is just one front in what’s becoming a tough year. The company may be facing one of its most serious reputational and strategic reckonings in a decade.
In recent months:
Apple lost a major antitrust case over its App Store, weakening one of its most lucrative businesses—its services margin model. Ironically, the ruling may result in a better user experience.
The DOJ’s case against Apple’s deal with Google—in which Google pays billions to remain the default iPhone search engine—is moving forward, threatening another critical revenue stream.
Hardware sales are declining, especially in China, once Apple’s fastest-growing market.
Vision Pro and Apple Intelligence remain in beta limbo, lacking compelling use cases to offset the perception of stagnation.
Growing supply chain risks, as it tries to make long-term manufacturing decisions amid tariff uncertainty without provoking the ire of Xi or Trump.
Apple’s long-standing fallback—when hardware slows, services will save us—is no longer a safe bet. And while most consumers may not yet be flocking to alternatives like Gemini or ChatGPT-integrated Androids, the landscape is shifting. OpenAI’s partnership with Jony Ive and Google’s IO announcements hint at more integrated competitors on the way.
What’s especially troubling is what these losses represent: Apple no longer appears to be in full control of its own narrative. For decades, Apple dictated the terms. Now, regulatory pressure, developer frustration, media skepticism, and shifting user expectations are all eroding that control.
As Stratechery’s Ben Thompson noted, Apple may never have been well-positioned to lead in AI. Its strengths—hardware, design, ecosystem control—don’t translate easily to fast, open-ended software innovation. The pivot to liquid glass wasn’t just a distraction; it was a return to familiar ground.
But even that ground is shaky. If liquid glass flops—or even feels gimmicky—the backlash won’t just be about design. It’ll raise bigger questions: Is Apple out of touch? Have they lost the plot?
These aren’t just Reddit threads or X rants. They’re questions now surfacing in investor conversations, developer forums, and analyst memos. The shine is wearing off.
Apple’s comms team deserves credit for managing a shaky product cycle without tipping into disaster. But you can only thread the needle so many times. The real test isn’t how well Apple explains a delay — it’s whether it can still deliver something that feels unmistakably Apple.
Because soon, “boring but controlled” won’t be enough. Apple will need to be magic again.
To the Lab:
Here’s the behind-the-scenes workflow I used to get smart on Sonos’ crisis and visualize the timeline of events.
Tools: Google NotebookLM + Claude 4 Sonnet
Step 1: Use Google NotebookLM to synthesize cross-platform sources
I uploaded the best articles and YouTube videos about Apple Intelligence and the Sonos debacle. Then I asked NotebookLM to summarize what each company said and when—creating a clear timeline of comms decisions.
Step 2: Use Claude 4 Sonnet’s Artifact tool to visualize the timeline
Claude’s “Artifacts” feature works really well “vibe coding” complex visualizations. Note this is different from creating images, which often get text wrong. While ChatGPT and Gemini can attempt the same, Claude was the most consistent at turning a simple prompt into legible output.
Loved this piece! So glad to see you writing again. Particularly loved the workflow :)