Your iPhone might not be Apple Intelligence compatible, we explain why

Apple Intelligence, announced at WWDC 2024, is expected to offer new features based on artificial intelligence in Apple products. The problem is that if all iPad and Mac models with M1 or higher chips will be compatible with Apple Intelligence, very few iPhones will be compatible. Until the launch of the iPhone 16 series, only the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max officially support this new feature.

This is why many iPhone users will be left behind, and we know more about the reasons for this situation. In a talk show hosted by John Gruber (full video available at the end of the article), three Apple executives made statements regarding this lack of support for current models.

Insufficient hardware for Apple Intelligence

John Giannandrea, head of Apple’s machine learning business, says running a language model natively requires a lot of resources. “Theoretically you could run these models on a very old device, but that would be so slow it wouldn’t be useful.”, states. Craig Federighi, director of software engineering, adds that every new feature of the iPhone is designed to be integrated into as many models as possible, but in this case there are very strong hardware limitations. He believes that having managed to run Apple Intelligence on a smartphone is already an achievement. “Something quite extraordinary”.

A17 Pro chip in iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, 16 core neural engineThis could be twice as efficient as the A16 chip in the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus. The A17 Pro SoC is capable of performing up to 35 trillion operations per second, allowing it to perform machine learning operations efficiently. RAM is another factor to consider: An iPhone with only 6GB of RAM will have difficulty supporting Apple Intelligence.

Marketing manager Greg Joswiak denies this is a ploy to sell new iPhones. Moreover, iOS 18 will bring its share of new features beyond artificial intelligence. Some iPads and Macs that are a few years old but efficient enough to benefit from Apple Intelligence are also compatible.

Source : MacRumors