 "Why limit AI features to iPhone 15 Pro models and onwards? Apple explains")
At its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2024, Apple unveiled a suite of artificial intelligence features that will collectively be called the Apple Intelligence. The US-based technology giant is poised to bring AI-powered features to devices based on Apple A17 Pro and M1 and onwards chips. This essentially limits the Apple Intelligence to iPhone 15 Pro models in the current iPhone line-up. Naturally, the future iPhones will support AI features, but older generation models and the baseline models in the latest iPhone 15 series are excluded. Why? Apple executives explained:
According to a report by Fonearena, during a talk show at the Apple’s annual developers conference, Apple’s software engineering chief, Craig Federighi, said that while Apple wants to bring new features to older devices, Apple Intelligence features require specific hardware to function correctly.
The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are powered by A17 Pro chip, which features a 16-core Neural engine. It is this section of the processor that is tasked with handling AI workloads. Compared to the Neural engine on the A16 bionic chip, which powers the vanilla iPhone 15 models, A17 Pro offers more processing power. Federighi also said that all Apple Intelligence compatible devices need to have at least 8GB RAM, which is also a key aspect for running AI tasks.
However, older generation Apple devices are not completely incapable of running AI models. During the talk show, Apple’s head of the machine learning department, John Giannandrea said, “You could, in theory, run these models on a very old device, but it would be so slow that it would not be useful.” He explained that inference, which is essentially the process of running a large language model (LLM), is “incredibly computationally expensive” and depends on “a combination of bandwidth in the device” along with the size of the Neural Engine.
When asked if limiting the Apple Intelligence to recent iPhones is part of a plan to boost sales of newer and more expensive iPhone models, Greg Joswiak, Apple’s marketing chief denied it and said that if that would have been the case, “we would have been smart enough just to do our most recent iPads and Macs too, wouldn’t we?”