The road to the next insanely great Mac is paved with AI

The original Macintosh arrived 42 years ago. Draw a line from that event to this week, in which credible reports suggest that Apple is finally getting close to fulfilling many of the promises it made back in 2024 regarding adding intelligent agents to its devices. Sure, it took licensing Google Gemini to get it done, but we might be on the precipice of Apple Intelligence being what Apple said it might be almost two years ago.

The more I think about it, the more I think that Apple Intelligence might actually be the latest attempt by Apple to fulfill the dream behind the original Mac. In an era where our devices are impossibly powerful and often frustratingly complicated, maybe what we need is A Computer for the Rest of Us again.

The computer as an appliance

As the non-technical guy in the pair of Steves who founded Apple, Steve Jobs was always focused on the end user. In the early days, computers were incredibly complicated. Initially, you had to buy the parts and solder them all together. Over time, they began to resemble consumer products, but they were still arcane systems driven by blinking command lines that required you to know exactly what to type to get the computer to do anything.

Jobs’s vision, one he kept coming back to throughout his career, was that the computer should be more like an appliance. I have never had to read a manual to know how to use my refrigerator, oven, toaster, or washing machine. (If you have to read a manual to toast bread, they blew it.) Jobs knew that computers needed to be like that, too: Pleasant little self-contained boxes of functionality.

Today’s iPhone (and iPad, and Mac) has lost the plot when it comes to the simplicity that Jobs always kept as an ideal.

His first swing at the concept was the original Macintosh–and when he returned to Apple, he made this same swing again, with the iMac.

Today, there are more of the Rest of Us than ever before. Not only are there more Mac users than ever–Apple’s installed base is at an all-time high–but there are vastly more users of Apple devices than ever, thanks to the iPhone.

Looking at an iPhone home screen, you’d think that we’ve reached Peak Simplicity. There’s no pointer, no mouse, just a screen full of brightly colored icons you tap on to run software that is similarly driven by taps and swiped.

And yet I can’t help thinking that today’s iPhone (and iPad, and Mac) has lost the plot when it comes to the simplicity that Jobs always kept as an ideal. In the race to exploit the absurd power of the devices in our hands and on our laps, Apple and its competitors have given these systems incredible powers–but at the cost of increased complexity.

From power to complexity

It’s funny. I became a Mac user in 1990, when every single struggle with the Mac was about it being too slow. In those days, using a computer was about finding the boundaries of functionality and then pushing them to their limits–and anxiously awaiting the next version of the device, which would let the envelope expand a teeny, tiny bit.

Somewhere along the way, the equation changed. For years now, our devices have had all the power they really need. I can’t remember the last time I used an iPad and found it slow. The same goes for the Mac and the iPhone, really. Apple keeps adding processor-intensive features to take advantage of that excess power, and those features can be cool, but it’s filling the envelope, not pushing it.

The problem Apple has today is managing complexity. Every year, the company tosses a half-dozen major new features into the mix, and a lot of them fly right by users who are focused on using their devices rather than learning new things. A few years ago, I sat down with my wife and showed her that she could set her iPhone’s lock screen to shuffle automatically between pictures of our kids–a great feature!–and it hit me how she would never in a million years discover that feature herself. The feature was great, but it was hidden away by complexity.

We live in an era where just adding new features won’t cut it. A new feature that nobody uses is a failure, even if it’s a great feature in isolation. And that means that our devices need to become easier to use, better organized, and more discoverable. (This may be a hard task for an industry that’s spent the last two decades in a land rush to outdo the other guy in terms of shiny new features, while simultaneously de-emphasizing the tough job of building a good user experience and information architecture.)

AI for the rest of us?

I’m neither an AI proponent nor opponent–I think it’s a potentially world-changing technology that is also being overhyped and has some serious issues that need to be addressed.

That being said, it strikes me that one of the ways that Apple’s devices could become less complex is with the addition of AI-driven assistants that could help users do what they want to do with their devices.

This is part of the dream of being a “computer for the rest of us.” Apple’s history is littered with attempts to bring the power of a general-purpose programmable computer to the masses, from BASIC to AppleScript to Automator to Shortcuts to Siri. If today’s devices are just so packed with features, so wildly complicated, that a regular user is never going to be able to take advantage of more than a fraction of features, perhaps the solution is to create a system where we talk to our devices and tell them what we want them to do for us.

This does not absolve Apple of its duties regarding usability. The company really needs a culture shift, alongside its move to AI-driven assistants. Functionality can still increase, but usability needs to be the primary focus. Visual design, content structure, and simplicity of interface will help users navigate this era, with or without the help of Apple Intelligence.

Or to put it another way: The last two decades have proven Apple’s prowess at building computers capable of doing pretty much anything we want them to. The next step is to make it easier for us to do what we want with them. Once again, we need a Computer For the Rest of Us.