If you really want to understand where Apple is today, ignore the overproduced (and under-delivering) WWDC show. Look past the perfectly choreographed transitions and the new "liquid glass" UI design (don't even get me started on that). Instead, pay attention to a research paper they quietly dropped a few days earlier. It says way more about Apple's state of mind than any keynote ever could.

It's called The Illusion of Thinking, and the main claim is simple:

Today's advanced AI models are all smoke and mirrors.

Except… the paper isn't really science. It's a signal. A red flag from a company that's lost its creative engine, stuck watching the world shift around it - fast. It's Apple, not innovating, but reacting. Not leading, but defending.

And they're scared.

Before we continue...

Let me be clear: I say all this as someone who genuinely wants to root for Apple. I've been in the ecosystem for years. I don't want to go back to Windows. But if Apple keeps losing the plot, we may not get a choice.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's continue.

The research is a smokescreen

The paper was obviously engineered to fail AI models. Tasks were deliberately impossible. The models weren't allowed to use code. It was set up so they'd look dumb. Why? To plant doubt. To confuse the market. To soften the blow just before Apple had to show how far behind it really is.

This wasn't science. It was strategy. And a desperate one.

The Jobs momentum is gone

Apple hasn't truly innovated in over a decade. That's not a hot take - it's just math.

Steve Jobs left them with a 15-year tailwind. A soft cushion of innovation. Under Tim Cook, they squeezed every drop from that lead: optimized the supply chain, maximized profits, and turned the iPhone into a cash machine. But they didn't use that time to invent the next act.

Now that cushion is gone.

And what do we get? A rebranded Siri with the buzzword "intelligence" slapped on it.

Apple Intelligence isn't a leap forward. It's a scramble to catch up. Worse - it locks core AI features behind a hardware paywall. Want the basics everyone else is offering for free? That'll be $1,200 for a new iPhone.

The walled garden that once protected the user is now locking them in.

The real threat? It's not Google or OpenAI – it's Johnny and Sam.

Apple knows the next big shift won't come from Cupertino.

It's coming from Johnny Ive - the guy who made Apple look like Apple - teaming up with Sam Altman - the guy who's redefining what software can be.

They're not building an app. They're building a new kind of device. One that might make the iPhone feel like a relic, just like the iPhone did to Nokia.

That's the existential threat. And Apple sees it.

A closer look at the "research"

If you're wondering why the AI community rolled its eyes, here's a quick breakdown of the paper's greatest hits:

Claim #1: "We created a clean test environment with no known solutions"

Reality: They used textbook problems like Towers of Hanoi – solved a million times, in every comp-sci course and all over the web. The models knew exactly what they were dealing with.

Claim #2: "The model collapses on hard tasks, so it's not really thinking"

Reality: That's not failure – that's resource management. The model knows the task is too long and complicated to be worth solving. That's efficiency, not a breakdown.

Claim #3: "We banned the use of code to test pure reasoning"

Reality: That's like testing a chef but banning knives. Translating problems into code is the reasoning method for machines. You can't strip it away and pretend the result means something.

Claim #4: "The models failed because of weak reasoning"

Reality: They failed because the test was physically impossible. The token limit was too small to contain the full solution. The test was rigged.

Claim #5: "This is a rigorous scientific study"

Reality: Real AI research happens across labs, universities, and companies. This was an Apple-only paper, published at a perfect PR moment. It's not science. It's marketing.

So where does that leave Apple?

When a company stops building the future, it starts defending the past.

And that's exactly what we're seeing here: a fear response. From a brand that once defined what's next, now trying to slow the train down with whitepapers and lock-in strategies.

"Apple Intelligence" isn't about insight. It's a brand patch. And the research that came with it doesn't tell us anything new – except that Apple's leadership doesn't get what's happening.

Are today's models perfect? Of course not.

Should we rely on them blindly? Definitely not.

But right now, millions of people, companies, and teams are using AI to get things done.

This isn't theory. It's happening.

And Apple is standing on the sidelines, publishing papers designed to convince you it's all fake.

But here's the thing: you don't release something like that unless you're scared.

And Apple seems to be terrified.