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While iOS 18 brings a host of new visual changes to all compatible iPhones, the platform places limitations on Apple Intelligence, which is only available on iPhone 15 Pro models. Apple Intelligence requires raw power to operate its on-device generative AI large-scale language models to boost performance, and the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro is ideally suited to handle such tasks. In addition to iPhones, Apple’s new AI utility is also limited to iPads and Macs with at least the M1 chip. An Apple executive detailed why Apple Intelligence is available on Apple Silicon-powered iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
Apple explains why Apple Intelligence is limited to iPhone 15 Pro models, iPads, and Apple Silicon Macs
Ever since the company unveiled Apple Intelligence onstage, users have been asking why the AI features are only available on iPhone 15 Pro models and Apple Silicon-powered iPads and Macs. During a talk show at WWDC 2024, Apple’s head of machine learning and AI John Giannandrea, head of marketing Greg Joswiak, and head of software Craig Federighi told Daring Fireball’s John Gruber why Apple Intelligence isn’t available on older devices and why it’s not just a ploy to sell more iPhones.
Giannandrea: “Running these models at runtime is called inference, and inference on large language models is computationally very expensive, so it’s a combination of device bandwidth, the size of the Apple Neural Engine, and the power of the device that makes these models run fast enough to be of any practical use. In theory, even very old devices could run these models, but they would be so slow that they would be useless.
When Gruber asked if this was a plan to sell more iPhones, Joswiak said that if it was, the company would be smart enough to add the latest iPads and Macs to the requirements. Craig Federighi also said that introducing features that can be ported to older devices is a top priority for Apple, but in the case of Apple Intelligence, it is purely a hardware requirement. He also said, “It would be very cool to have a model of this power running on an iPhone.”
The A17 Pro chip has a 16-core Neural Engine, which is twice as powerful as the A16 Bionic chip in the standard iPhone 15 model. It turns out that Apple isn’t intentionally trying to sell new iPhones, but rather considers the latest iPhones to be the only devices capable of processing Apple Intelligence features.
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