Apple's AI-powered Siri assistant is likely to succeed due to hardware-level integration driving public adoption.

Moving on to Apple, the stock of the week at 3.31, shares rose by about 1.2% to end the week at 3.36. This comes as Evercore ISI surveys indicate that nearly 53% of people, at least among the 4,000 consumers surveyed, will upgrade to the new iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max.

This compares to an average of 51% last year, I think, with 32% of respondents saying they would be inclined to buy the higher-end "Pro Max" version, which features a larger screen and slightly more memory, I believe.

This compares to 29%, an increase of 3% over last year.

However, if the survey is any indication, Apple is likely to achieve great success with its new phones. Now, they are also considering building their own servers, something the company hasn't done in over a decade.

These servers are interesting because they will take advantage of the company's own "m-series ultra" chips, which they put in their high-end devices such as "MacBooks," but they will pair them with networking equipment from "Nvidia".

Now, the company has launched its long-awaited new version of the Siri assistant. The AI-powered Siri assistant is now available in beta, allowing you to switch to AI agents and providing greater compatibility within your phone, where apps can communicate with each other.

I actually believe that this project has a great chance of success, because it could become one of the interfaces that many people use on their phones. Instead of clicking on different apps or opening your email, something like this will be able to do all that for you.

Apple's integration of this at the hardware level makes it much more likely that the general public will use it.

This is not the case with Amazon. This is not the case with Meta. This is not the case with Google. This is not the case with Apple.

We've talked about how to pair the company's networking equipment with Apple devices, and that's interesting. We'll see if Nvidia continues to develop this, perhaps with other partners.

Apple, wow, look at that. Beautiful move. It didn't quite reach its 200-day moving average , but it came a little close to it and then reversed quickly and is now retesting the highs near the 350 level.