OpenClaw is What Apple Intelligence Should Have Been

Mac Minis are selling out as users buy them specifically to run OpenClaw, an open-source framework enabling AI agents like Claude and GPT-5 to control computers and automate workflows. This represents a missed opportunity for Apple, who could have built agentic AI into their ecosystem instead of limited features like notification summaries. Apple had the hardware, trust, and data to create a defensible platform moat by owning the agent layer across devices, but likely avoided it due to liability concerns and potential conflicts with other tech platforms. By ceding this space to third parties, Apple captures hardware revenue but misses the more valuable platform revenue that could define the next decade of computing.