Apple Explains iPhone 15 Pro Requirement for Apple Intelligence

[CheffyDude]

Apple saying that this isn't a scheme to sell knew iPhones is hilarious. Of COURSE it is. If it wasn't, then every phone, iPad and Mac that can take the update should be able to run "Apple Intelligence" I just wish they were honest with their customers and stop trying to be a "caring" company.

 

[Ctrlos]

It's about RAM. You need RAM to run LLMs locally, that's the sole reason.

^^This guy gets it.

Newer iPhones have 8gb RAM; older ones 6. If iOS runs fine on 6gb then they can use the spare 2gb for LLM.

They wrote a whole research paper on it.

M-series devices all have 8gb min.

 

[2761216]

What a load of BS. Things like Genmojis and Image Playground are gimmicks. You'll use it once or twice and forget about it.

Not if you’re a teenager who’s on their device texting 24/7

 

[JapanApple]

"“If you still want Apple Intelligence in your pocket but don't have an iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro, you may want to hold out for the iPhone 16 series, which is expected to launch when iOS 18 is released in the fall.”"

oh well. for me. But my family is upgrading this year their iPhone.​

 

[pksv]

"Federighi hinted that RAM is also another aspect of the system that the new AI features require, so it is perhaps no coincidence that all the devices compatible with Apple Intelligence have at least 8GB of RAM."

All large language models (LLM) run on the same thing: VRAM. You need VRAM, not CPU power to run it. When it comes to M and A-chips because of their shared architecture RAM=VRAM. Running it on 8GB is still quite impressive. People coming up with conspiracy scenarios have no idea how AI models work.

 

[John_Blackthorne]

None of this should be surprising. If you're old enough, you'll remember how the 3Gs had video and the 3G didn't. You could jailbreak the 3G to get video, but the experience was worse because the chip wasn't as powerful as the 3Gs.

If the experience is at all a little janky, Apple generally won't support it on older devices.

 

[AppleInLVX]

I feel like if I live long enough, everything will be a conspiracy. Sigh.

 

[2761216]

Apple saying that this isn't a scheme to sell knew iPhones is hilarious. Of COURSE it is. If it wasn't, then every phone, iPad and Mac that can take the update should be able to run "Apple Intelligence" I just wish they were honest with their customers and stop trying to be a "caring" company.

Maybe you should brush up on technical aspects of LLMs before you turn everything into another conspiracy theory.
Having said that they should’ve gone with 8GB on the entire 15 lineup since they’d been working on the AI for awhile and know the limitations of the lower memory instead of trying to extend their profit margins on the 15/Plus models.

 

[HouseLannister]

Everyone is so cynical and jaded. I believe they could get it to work on older hardware if they wanted to, but they saw some limitation that would cause it to give slow responses or lag the whole OS and deemed that unacceptable. They don't want another batterygate situation where people accuse them of slowing down their phone to force them to upgrade. They also probably wanted to make sure they had enough headroom for all the Apple Intelligence stuff they have planned for 2025 and 2026.

That said, new software should drive a need for new hardware. We have had far too many years of having more hardware than we need for our software, so it is nice to see the limits being pushed again. This will hopefully raise the bar. If the current best phone is now a bare minimum, that means we will get much better phones across the entire product line this year and next. It means we might see 16 RAM phones. Maybe a phone with an M-class processor or an A-series-Max processor or whatever they call it. I'm excited to see what they come up with.

And, in conclusion, he who dies with the most toys wins. 😆

 

[pksv]

^^This guy gets it.

Newer iPhones have 8gb RAM; older ones 6. If iOS runs fine on 6gb then they can use the spare 2gb for LLM.

They wrote a whole research paper on it.

M-series devices all have 8gb min.

I believe someone tested it or it was posted somewhere that it needs around 5GB to run it, and the OS takes up around 3 GB. So it dumps everything else to swap memory for a run, there is zero RAM overhead on base M-chip models and A17 Pro.

 

[John_Blackthorne]

Naïve it was to think them answer like “yeah, man. For sure! Poors gonna pay for these new expensive tech, you know”

What did he think they were going to say? "Yeah, John, that's exactly why we did that." Gruber is such a shill. I mean, good on him--he has managed to make a tremendous amount of money while doing nothing except occasional reviews on his blog, dropping raw and unhinged political screeds, and an elitist, patronizing podcast where is he is joined by The Little Apple Bloggers. You know, the little Apple podcast dorks who somehow had Blue Checkmarks in the Twitter days despite having like, 2,000 followers.

 

[Biro]

Buying the repackaged iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max [iPhone 15 and 15 Plus] seems to be a very not so wise decision if you are planning to use the Apple Intelligence features offered in iOS 18... This is the earliest that newly released [2023] models are immediately obsolete.

So it’s a good thing I don’t want to use the Apple Intelligence features offered in iOS 18 then. The truth is, most AI features being offered to consumers right now are answers to questions nobody asked. That may change in time; we’ll have to see. Come to think of it, this is true of most new features Apple has introduced over the past few years. I think I have at least 90 percent of new features brought out in the past five years turned off if I have a choice.

 

[verniesgarden]

The things that companies make up to get you to buy their products 🤦‍♂️

it's almost like it's reason they exist

 

[GrayFlannel]

Apple Intelligence and AI are hype and prevarications. A scheme indeed. Everyone from Apple to Gruber to website bloggers to Reddit are planting unicorn rumors with random delivery dates about fabulous and amazing things all brought to us by incredible Apple Intelligence and AI so trust us, read us, make excuses for us and be sure to pay up at the counter for us. Yada yada yada.

 

[MilaM]

It's PR bullsh*t. It's just about the RAM - 8GB minimum. There are so many recent researches, that proves A17 Pro NPU is not much faster than previous year. 35 TOPS, but measured in INT8. A16, A15 ects are measured in FP16. So basically A17 Pro is 17.5 TOPS in FP16 vs A16's 17.

It's a very interesting thesis. But it's hard to find good info on this topic.

I was already very sceptical when I saw the NPU specs for the iPhone 15 Pro. The jump in performance (TOPS) from the previous generation was just too good to be true, considering that the number of NPU cores is not that different.

 

[Fuzzball84]

Apple have always been super conservative on RAM. And unfortunately it appears to be the weakness in all of its devices when new technologies such as AI come along. There are older iPads and iPhones with some super advanced AI features on the SoC, but not enough RAM to make use of it. 🤔

 

[fatTribble]

I know they could make this run on my TRS-80 from 1978 if they really wanted to

 

[Datalinks]

How much battery is this going to hoover up?

All of it

 

[atoqir]

Well they did have their private cloud compute thing to process it in the cloud.

All the other AI providers work good and fast today on iOS, so if Apple wanted it they could easily bring a modified version to older phones that processes queries in their cloud and deliver it back. They just chose not to.

 

[spcopsmac21]

With iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, Apple is introducing a new personalized AI experience called Apple Intelligence that uses on-device, generative large-language models to enhance the user experience across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

These new AI features require Apple's latest iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max models to work, while only Macs and iPads with M1 or later chips will support Apple Intelligence. Since the news came to light, many users have been asking what the reason is for the cut-off.

In The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2024, Daring Fireball's John Gruber put the question to Apple's AI/machine learning head John Giannandrea, marketing chief Greg Joswiak, and software engineering chief Craig Federighi, and this was the response.
Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that the company's first move with any new feature is to work out how to bring it back to older devices as far as possible. But when it comes to Apple Intelligence, "This is the hardware that it takes... It's a pretty extraordinary thing to run models of this power on an iPhone," he added.

The iPhone 15 Pro models use the A17 Pro chip, which has a 16-core Neural Engine that's up to 2x faster than the A16 chip found in the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, performing nearly 35 trillion operations per second. Federighi hinted that RAM is also another aspect of the system that the new AI features require, so it is perhaps no coincidence that all the devices compatible with Apple Intelligence have at least 8GB of RAM.

Despite the cutoff, owners of older iPhones still have plenty to look forward to in Apple's upcoming software update: iOS 18 boasts several new features besides Apple Intelligence, and every iPhone that can run iOS 17 is compatible iOS 18. That includes the iPhone XR from 2018.

If you still want Apple Intelligence in your pocket but don't have an iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro, you may want to hold out for the iPhone 16 series, which is expected to launch when iOS 18 is released in the fall.

Article Link: Apple Explains iPhone 15 Pro Requirement for Apple Intelligence

So never upgrade from my 14PM.
Thanks. I want absolutely zero to do with AI. My iPhone is already easy to use. I don’t use Siri AT ALL. It’s turned completely off.
So Apple has sealed the deal for me to keep this phone until it can physically no longer function.

Thanks for saving me money Apple. I really appreciate it.

 

[Account25476]

Gruber: "So it's not a scheme to sell new iPhones?"

Joswiak: "Yes, yes it is."

 

[spcopsmac21]

I totally agree - actually my latest iPhone was a 12 Pro Max and if I were to upgrade to a new iPhone today, it would be a 14 Plus (I hate the "dynamic island").

You and everyone on earth. My Dynamic Island is more like a cancerous tumor that had to be gutted from my iPhone in order to save the rest of the screen. It’s an abomination that has no reason for existing.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Well they did have their private cloud compute thing to process it in the cloud.

All the other AI providers work good and fast today on iOS, so if Apple wanted it they could easily bring a modified version to older phones that processes queries in their cloud and deliver it back. They just chose not to.

Of course they want it on-device first; running giant cloud instances is expensive.

While I have no interest, whatsoever, in AI, I would prefer it be 100% local. I don't trust my data to the cloud.

 

[Fuzzball84]

There is basically no forward planning here. The names of their devices are the most telling indicator.

It’s an Air… but it’s not the thinnest or lightest. It’s a Pro, but not as Pro as others. It’s a MacBook, the thinnest and lightest, lighter than MacBook Air. Its a Mini, but not an Air, despite it being the smallest and lightest.

🤔🙄

 

[Doodah7]

What did he think they were going to say? "Yeah, John, that's exactly why we did that." Gruber is such a shill. I mean, good on him--he has managed to make a tremendous amount of money while doing nothing except occasional reviews on his blog, dropping raw and unhinged political screeds, and an elitist, patronizing podcast where is he is joined by The Little Apple Bloggers. You know, the little Apple podcast dorks who somehow had Blue Checkmarks in the Twitter days despite having like, 2,000 followers.

And what have you done that is sooo noteworthy other than peck away on your keyboard like the warrior you think you are.