Apple's mistake was building *privacy* into their AI model. Nobody else did that, and it crippled Apple's solution. Apple pushed 5GB of AI model data to everyone's phone, and everyone complained about the space usage. Next up their AI is slow because it is using resources on the phone instead of big data centers. Apple did what everyone asked for, but users were ultimately unwilling to accept the compromise.
Personally, I liked the Apple solution better. On Android, if I lose internet for 2 seconds, and say to my phone "Call Bob Smith" it sits there for several minutes then times out with "try again later". BUT IT GETS WORSE: The local hardware transcribed the text perfectly. So there was no need for a server to be involved at all!
Apple's old approach was the right one, so it is really sad that they botched it.