alt Hacker NewsI think Apple will become increasingly draconian about LLMs. Very soon people won't need to buy many of their apps. They can just make them. This threatens Apple's entire business model.
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But… why would I put the effort into getting an llm to make me an app when a there’s an existing app that I don’t have to maintain? I don’t want to have to make every app I use?
Apple's business model isn't really affected by 2% of its users choosing not to spend $100/yr on the App Store. That isn't even a blip on the radar.
A kid playing Roblox can spend more than that in a good weekend.
They are said to be introducing a framework to make it easier to integrate modern LLMs into apps in a couple of months at WWDC.
https://9to5mac.com/2026/03/01/apple-replacing-core-ml-with-...
VibeOS. It’s just an LLM from which all other userspace is vibed.
I guess I am not seeing why would I want to abandon most (if any) of my simple, small, purpose-built apps that always do the exact thing I want for a private company’s ever-changing LLM that will approximate what I’m asking and approximate its response utilizing far more resources.
I’m sure there are things on my phone it could replace (though I struggle to think of them) but there are plenty it can’t. My black magic camera app, web browsers, local send, libby/hoopla…
I can’t really think of any apps I use every day - or every week - that an LLM would replace. I’m not coding on my smartphone and aside from that an LLM is basically a more complex, somewhat inconsistent search engine experience right now for most people. Siri didn’t replace any of my apps, for instance. Why would chatGPT?
TL;DR: what apps would an LLM replace on my iPhone?
It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue comes from in app purchases of loot boxes and other pay to win mechanics.
Apple doesn’t care about revenue from a random TODO app.