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Apple Explains iPhone 15 Pro Requirement for Apple Intelligence
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And yet, you are here, 13 years later? Why, when it's clearly that Apple's behaviour makes you angry?
Yes, but they surely knew the AI RAM requirements a few months ago when they released the base M3 MBA, iMac, and MBP that have 8GB. So, if additional RAM is going to be required, why didn't they up the memory then?
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I do sort of wonder what the uptake will be (or not) on their AI stuff with it being so widely unavailable to their existing install base
Apple thinks it's fortunate how strong the incentive is to get a 15 Pro/Max or newer just to escape the barely functional Siri we've had to deal with for over a decade.
Limiting all iPhones but 15 Pro/Max to 6GB RAM is like a money printing machine that Apple started building 5 years ago.
And everyone was so keen on arguing how efficient iOS is and doesn't need more RAM.
Efficient? Yes, at getting us all to upgrade to new iPhones now despite sitting on market-leading SoCs in 2-3 year-old Pro/Max models.
Timmy C knows his 4D chess. No sarcasm.
And none of them, AFAIK, runs locally on mobile phones with 6Gb of RAM or less.
The problem with these other models, they can't do tasks on the iPhone or use information which is stored in various databases and apps on the iPhone. That's where Apple Intelligence will be supreme.
It makes sense too as iPhone sales are actually slowing whereas Mac sales have been increasing. They need to do something to encourage users to upgrade their phones!
Google Pixel 8 already runs on-device LLM and has only 8 GB RAM. It is running those activities today. Apple's AI is still vapor(soft)ware. It does not have such powerful CPU or NPU, but still able to run these activities.
Many people will care because they want to simplify tasks on their devices.
Things like "Show the best pictures from my vacation to Paris" to "Send my mother a text message" to "Archive emails older than 3 weeks".
Only Apple can really solve this for the iPhone.
So proving a point that 6GB is not enough.
Tell that to the battery charge limit, action mode, etc.
Because Google is a small player on the phone market and actually listens to customers. Everyone’s been telling Apple they put way too little RAM in their devices and they decided to penny-pinch regardless. Now they’ve been caught unprepared. Flagship Samsung from 2019 (with a nice 500+ PPI gorgeous OLED screen, telephoto camera etc, while Apple was giving us a bad LCD on the similarly priced device) had 8GB, so there really is no excuse.
All this simply shows that apple was caught pants down not knowing what to do. People are rightfully angry with the choice made to only support the latest devices with 8gb of RAM simply because apple could decide that older device send all the requests directly to the ultra private apple intelligence servers for processing instead of on-device.
However this is not possible because apple is not yet ready with their server farm and later will only be able to accept a limited number of requests (so had to restrict who could access). That's why apple intelligence is not yet in the beta and will not be ready before many months. We might not even see all features deployed before next year's WWDC, let alone in more languages than english!
However this is not possible because apple is not yet ready with their server farm and later will only be able to accept a limited number of requests (so had to restrict who could access). That's why apple intelligence is not yet in the beta and will not be ready before many months. We might not even see all features deployed before next year's WWDC, let alone in more languages than english!
1. Since they have already built a hybrid on-device / cloud functionality what stops them from using more of the cloud processing on devices that don't have the "powerful" neural engine of A17 Pro? *cough*greed*cough*
2. Why won't they improve the outdated, embarrassingly bad Siri on older devices regardless of "Apple Intelligence"? *cough*scheme*cough*
This time they outappled themselves, customers who spent good money a few days ago to buy iPhone 15 (a device that is not even 1 year old) or iPhone 14 Pro, both of which are advertised as super capable and powerful, are now screwed. And if we are to believe the rumor that iPhone 16 Pro will have exclusive AI features due to the "better neural engine" then we're looking at Apple potentially keep announcing exclusive AI features on each Pro model they release. Well played Apple.
2. Why won't they improve the outdated, embarrassingly bad Siri on older devices regardless of "Apple Intelligence"? *cough*scheme*cough*
This time they outappled themselves, customers who spent good money a few days ago to buy iPhone 15 (a device that is not even 1 year old) or iPhone 14 Pro, both of which are advertised as super capable and powerful, are now screwed. And if we are to believe the rumor that iPhone 16 Pro will have exclusive AI features due to the "better neural engine" then we're looking at Apple potentially keep announcing exclusive AI features on each Pro model they release. Well played Apple.
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True, Apple can optimise like no other but they also skimp on the RAM like no other and now the customers will pay the price for it because they wanted to save something like 4 bucks on a very expensive phone :-(
Somehow it shows that Apple was not that forward looking when it got to AI, otherwise their TPU would be better and we would have had more RAM in the current and past Iphone Models.
It is. The thing people take issue with is that Apple has been rationing RAM like it's running out. And now it's coming back to bite in a visible way.
This has been a problem for a long time, it's why we're all conditioned like shocked dogs to app switch as little as possible when there's something important on the screen. Literally just one app switch away and it could just disappear. Maybe it'll reload properly, maybe it won't.
If this finally results in phones with reasonable amounts of RAM, I'm all for it. But it won't, it'll just get eaten up with the LLM.
And as others have pointed out, they keep completely dodging the issue of their "private compute cloud". Why is there any processor requirement aside from support for iOS 18 itself? To blame the processor is just a red herring. I understand that they still have to build out capacity because they didn't realize this was a problem until a few months ago.
I just wish they'd be honest and talk to interviewers who will ask actual questions and not just lob them softballs.
So go buy Samsung or Pixel and stop moaning on MACrumours forum, jeeez.
Because this is the internet's haven for Apple haters. Nobody hates Apple more than MacRumors users!
To stay on topic, it's unfortunate that older devices can't use Apple Intelligence but the reasoning is sound.
In general I don't think this is an issue, but given that these AI models are meant to run in the background alongside existing applications there is bound to be issues. If Apple has known about this for years and not included the necessary memory it is not a great look.
Maybe they'll produce some even smaller lower quality models (if that even makes sense) for use in older devices.
My Samsung S10+ which came out in 2019 had 8GB RAM (there was also a 12GB/1TB version). Did it *need* 8GB? Maybe not. But it's nice having my apps in memory all the time.
(It also had a headphone jack and a microSD card slot, which they dropped in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Courage!!)
Anyway, it's a bit funny to hear it argued here that Apple did not get caught with their pants down on AI *and* that there wasn't time in the design cycle to put 8GB in the iPhone 15.
It's sad day when Apple starts listening to users.
Apple is a company which makes decisions on behalf of its customers. It's why many people like Apple.
It's better to not have a feature than to have it work slowly.