a record adoption rate for iOS 18.1 (and Apple's AI)

An excellent adoption rate

According to Tim Cook, this deployment is a real success with a very high adoption rate. We're already receiving great feedback from customers and developers and very early stats, which cover only three days of data: users are adopting iOS 18.1 at twice the rate they adopted iOS 17.1 over of the quarter of the previous year.

Obviously, we must qualify this statement a little. On the one hand, there is iOS 18.1, the final version of which was deployed on Monday at the same time as the presentation of the iMac M4. The latter includes writing tools, notification summaries and cleaning in the Photos application. In contrast, iOS 17.1 was a minor update, which only included changes to AirDrop, StandBy, and the Music app, as well as several bug fixes.

The comparison seems a little disproportionate and can frankly only work to the disadvantage of iOS 17.1. Indeed, iOS 18.1 is the update eagerly awaited by everyone, since it marks Apple's official entry into the world of Artificial Intelligencewith some delay.

Likewise, certain important details are missing to understand the extent of the adoption rate. It's unclear if this is a global rate or just in the United States (which is the only region benefitting from Apple Intelligence. Tim Cook also didn't mention adoption numbers for macOS Sequoiawhich was released the same day and opens AI functions to more users.

Apple, late so what?

Just ten days ago, Tim Cook had already intervened on the question of Cupertino's delay in AI. In an interview with Wall Street Journalhe was more calm and brushed the question aside. For him, Apple has been working with AI for at least ten years, via machine learning (Machine Learning). As for public deployment, the fact that the firm is not the first does not matter.

Concerning Apple Intelligence, he specifies: We weren't the first to do intelligence, but we did it in a way that we thought was best for the customer…/… We have no problem not being the first. Turns out it takes a while for it to be truly great.