Is apple putting out these papers just to justify their seeming inability to properly integrate them into their software?

They seem to be very skeptical against Large models.

While everyone learned the bitter lesson, apple chose to focus on small on-device models even after the explosion of chatgpt.

I think it's because they are betting on JEPA and they're trying to carve out brand identity by being special little Steve Jobs clones. They're taking "Think Different" to its neurotic limits.

"See this is why we can't build with transformers and had to use JEPA and look how much better it is!"