Apple’s new iPhone 16 with artificial intelligence looks… boring. That could be good.

As expected, AI was the centerpiece of Monday afternoon’s event. Apple spent much of the presentation emphasizing how the iPhone 16 was “built from the ground up to deliver Apple Intelligence.”

For me, the most interesting features coming to Apple Intelligence are the writing tools, AI-generated emojis, and the camera’s visual intelligence capabilities. However, I wasn’t wowed by any of the demos – especially given the spectacular announcements from big AI players like OpenAI and Google that were showing off super-intelligent assistants with human-like conversational abilities.

But Apple doesn’t need to wow consumers right away with a game-changing product — and maybe that’s okay. With 1.5 billion iPhones worldwide, according to Wedbush Securities, the foundation of its empire is solid enough to build to the moon.

Because it has the trust of those people, who are already in the Apple ecosystem, perhaps it means that it is in no rush to push the limits in AI, compared to making life easier for Apple users – and compared to their less dominant competitors.

All it needs to do is what Apple already does — and better than almost everyone else: make our everyday lives easier. And it’s hard to demonstrate that in a 30-second skit showing Apple Intelligence.

Maybe it’s also a matter of optics. It’s hard to show in an interesting way exactly how many times someone might need a ChatGPT-assisted Siri to search for something without having to pull out their phone, open the app, and type in the question.

That thought was echoed by Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster, who attended the event at Apple Park. He said the main video doesn’t do the new iPhone 16 justice.

“It’s a new paradigm, and the paradigm is going to change the way almost all people are going to interact with technology,” Munster said.

This paradigm shift, which Munster compared to the shift from flip phones to touchscreens, will be driven by people testing these products in Apple stores.

And it seems Apple knows it.

The tech giant reportedly began briefing its retail employees on all things Apple Intelligence weeks before the iPhone 16 lineup was released. It seems to me that Apple is gearing up for consumers to see its new AI technology for themselves before deciding to upgrade.

It turns out that slow and steady may actually be the best way to avoid being labeled boring.