The recent revelations from The Information and quotes supporting it that came from Gurman last week back up your overall prediction.

Interestingly, Cook is said to be a huge believer in AI, yet he was unable to execute on it, even by making an ideal hire in John Giannandrea. JG toiled at Apple for years, unable to make groundbreaking progress due to Apple's corporate culture. It's an ol' boys club of forceful execs who have worked together for decades, and they all opposed spending what JG wanted.

If JG couldn't make an impact, no one will. What disappoints me the most is that Apple's "Not Invented Here" syndrome is so severe that I suspect they'll never admit full defeat and let users replace the rotten-to-the-core "Siri" assistant with a competent one, no matter how far behind they fall.

Right now it's Google's game to lose. Once Android devices are doing the kinds of things that should be easy for current models to do, real things as useful as a human assistant could do, it'll be the first meaningful challenge to Apple's dominance on the high end of the market. Things like "Answer all my calls while I'm in meetings, tell all sales calls I'm not interested, and for all others, if it isn't an emergency, take a message and tell them I'll call them back, and book 15 minutes on my calendar within the next day to do it."