What just happened? If there's one thing that stays the same in the ever-changing tech world, it's companies mocking Apple in their ads. The latest comes from Google, which goes straight for Cupertino's throat in the new Pixel 10 ad.
Google's ad for its upcoming Pixel 10 suggests that if you buy "a new phone because of a feature that's coming soon, but it's been coming soon for a full year," you might want to change your definition of soon or "just change your phone."
The Snoop Dogg-soundtracked ad is, of course, talking about Apple's promise last year of an iPhone 16 featuring a more personalized version of Siri powered by Apple Intelligence.
Apple was so confident that its feature would meet expectations and arrive on time that it commissioned a series of ads featuring The Last of Us and Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey demonstrating the upgraded Siri's capabilities.
However, months after the ads had been running, Apple confirmed in March that the upgraded Siri would not be arriving until 2026. The company never gave any reasons for the delay beyond it taking "longer than we thought to deliver." The YouTube ads were pulled, and Apple was hit with a false advertising lawsuit.
The suit claimed that Apple's advertisements created the expectation that the Apple Intelligence features would be available with the iPhone 16's release. It added that while Apple pulled the ad from YouTube, it failed to retract all the similarly false representations in the market that began in the summer of 2024.
Apple boss Tim Cook said during the company's earning call last week that progress was being made on Siri's personalized features and that they were still expected to release next year.
According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple's SVP of software Craig Federighi recently said in an all-hands meeting that the delays were due to Apple trying to use a hybrid architecture for Siri. The company is now said to be using a new version of the digital assistant with an updated architecture.
"This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned," said Federighi.
Going back to the Pixel 10 ad, it also confirms that Google's new devices will launch on August 20.
This isn't the first time Google has taken aim at Apple in a Pixel ad. It released a series of commercials in 2023 that claimed the iPhone had plateaued and could no longer keep up with modern handsets that boasted AI features.