Surely Apple knew this was coming. Why limit the non-pro 15 to 6GB if Apple Intelligence requires at least 8GB? I think there will be backlash when this stuff goes live and people with 2 year old phones can’t use much (or any) of it.
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Apple Intelligence "can't" run on an iPhone 15 (with an A16 chip) but can on an M1 chip with a much weaker NPU. The only explanation is money.
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Surely Apple knew this was coming. Why limit the non-pro 15 to 6GB if Apple Intelligence requires at least 8GB? I think there will be backlash when this stuff goes live and people with 2 year old phones can’t use much (or any) of it.
Or simply bad strategy.
The 15 pro was already raised to 8GB, you can't just suddenly also raise it for iphone 15, and then in terms of ram, it would have been superior to iphone 14 pro.
But I also think it does not look good. You can now, until fall, buy the latest iPhone, which apparently will not support Apple Intelligence, new Siri etc.
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It looks like this is going to be another US exclusive feature.
In fact so much of what was previewed in iOS 18 is US exclusive, Apple haven’t even bothered to upload an iOS 18 preview page to the U.K. website.
In fact so much of what was previewed in iOS 18 is US exclusive, Apple haven’t even bothered to upload an iOS 18 preview page to the U.K. website.
I suspect that maybe they thought they'd be able to get it to run on 6GB by the time they were ready to roll it out. Bearing in mind when the iPhone 15 hardware was finalised was well over a year ago.
Only to start with, as when iOS 18 comes out in the Fall, it will be labelled as 'Beta'. Also, they say it's restricted to 'English-US' in the Language settings menu, so just means need to change from 'English UK' in Language, to 'English US'. It's not restricted to the US by your Apple account, like how other things are/were.
But why would I or the rest of us in the U.K., or Canada, Australia etc change it to US English?
That just has a wider consequence on the rest of our phone, with spelling, and grammar all continuously showing to be incorrect when it’s not.
Never has a "higher spec" iPhone aged as fast as the iPhone 14 Pro/ Pro Max. 
Some people do that, to get access to something that's not yet ready for English-UK, etc.
I was just pointing out that it's not strictly restricted to US to start with, unlike some of the other features that were in the past restricted based on country account was created in (like how side loading is for EU countries).
It's a huge feature, and it's not just something dead simple to apply to various other languages straight away. Look at Siri, that's still not in every language yet, and took time to get to the level of languages it is now.
Also, it's only the Apple Intelligence that is English-US at launch, the rest of the announcements are available to UK too, other than the Apple Pay Cash tap to pay thing, which is because we don't have Apple Pay Cash here - which is not Apple's fault as such, it's down to UK Banking being the issue.
I’d love to know the cost to Apple per iPhone of 8GB vs 6GB RAM. It seems like some arbitrary distinction in service of product segmentation. It also seems like Apple uses no more RAM than is required because they don’t really care about future proofing anything.
TO be honest, and I've said it before, I never really got why they went with 6GB of RAM in those devices. I wonder if there was some production issues/limitations that meant they couldn't have enough across the board, or maybe it's just simply 'non-pros can have 6GB & Pro's get 8GB'.
The most frustrating part of this is that we’ve been told for years how RAM isn’t that important and that Apple doesn’t need higher amounts of RAM on its devices because of how optimized iOS is. And now Apple has come across a technology that needs the power that only the premium version of a 9-month old device can handle - and barely at that from what it sounds like.
It seems like a big miscalculation on Apple’s part to build their phones with the most advanced chips around and then hamstring them with insufficient RAM.
Surely both models of the iPhone 16 will have 12GB of RAM of more?? Since AI is here to stay, surely they won’t put the bare minimum 8GB in these new phones??
It seems like a big miscalculation on Apple’s part to build their phones with the most advanced chips around and then hamstring them with insufficient RAM.
Surely both models of the iPhone 16 will have 12GB of RAM of more?? Since AI is here to stay, surely they won’t put the bare minimum 8GB in these new phones??
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It's the ram. Plain and simple. It's not a crazy conspiracy.
Oh yea, until the AI, they had more than enough RAM. It’s definitely poor forward planning by Apple.
I would bet that the entire iPhone 16 range will have at least 8GB RAM, so they all can support Apple Intelligence.
Who told you it‘s not important? Apple certainly never talks about RAM. It‘s the stans that go around defending Apple pushing their margins by optimizing their software to run on X GB of RAM.
Every tech savvy guy can tell you that more RAM is always better (if it‘s used). I‘m sure they could‘ve found ways to use 8GB 2 years ago.
Maybe it is derived from the official statement...
Why Apple is sticking with 8GB RAM for MacBooks, according to company execs
8GB of RAM is 'suitable' enough to handle everyday tasks, execs argue
My estimate (the current outcome was already apparent in February), Apple will use 8GB ram for the whole 16 line (including pro).
I cannot imagine they jump from 6 to 8 and then again to more ram (which would exceed mac base models)
Exactly, and maybe the iPhone 16 pro will have 16GB which means it’s very possible that the iPhone 16 pro might have even more AI features exclusively available. No different than having exclusive camera options. Lately there were less and less reasons to upgrade, but early on I wanted to upgrade every year, I think we might be back to that which I’m happy about, my bank account will not be happy.Here’s one source for you….
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If you research about LLM, ideally they need 16GB to run locally, but can make it work with 8GB as a minimum. The non-pro 15s have 6GB.
Completely agree.
I think Google also has maybe put this idea of 'US exclusives' into peoples minds because they have a very poor habit of not releasing big features worldwide.
Features that took multiple years to show up in the UK:
- Call Screening
- Hold for me
- Direct My Call
- Live Transcription
- Recorder App Transcription
- Google Pay
Features that took one year to show up in the UK:
- Google Gemini
- Magic Compose
- G Board Custom Stickers
Features that are currently not available in the UK:
- Improved Call Screening
- Google Gemini Image Generation
- Google Duplex
- Chrome Summery (Summarise web pages)
- Thermometer app Skin Support
As you can see Google are all over the place when it comes to features being announced and released. I think people need to realise that it isn't that bad for Apple, especially those in the UK where all we are really missing is Apple Pay Cash and Apple Card, for very obvious reasons. Apple Intelligence is too large of an ambition to not release to more countries in a very short space of time, and so I think even though the UK may be a bit behind, it won't take long to gain access. Casing point: Apple Vision Pro which comes out a year later in the UK. I am not saying AI will take a year, but I am just saying that the turn around time between Apple and Google is vastly different.
What's interesting, in MKBHD's new video, he asked about the integration with OpenAI, and how much is done on device, etc.
He was told that almost everything is done on device (so this is clearly why RAM is a factor in things), from Apple built models, and that gives fast responses, etc (whereas the Android devices pushing most of it to the cloud will have slower responses and poor signal will make that even worse) - so to me, it's clear they're aiming for a best user experience with this..... they say that anything that is too complex to run on device, or outside of Apple's on device model's expertise it can try and use Apple's Private Cloud Compute.
If it thinks it's something ChatGPT can do better, it will ask the user if you want to use ChatGPT - and it will ask each individual time. It's not a 'say yes once and it will use ChatGPT whenever', it asks you every single time to confirm if you want to use ChatGPT - which is nice to know, if you never want to use ChatGPT, you just say no. Also, OpenAI is not allowed to ever store any of the requests and your IP address will be obscured, so OpenAI cannot connect multiple requests to profile you.
He was told that almost everything is done on device (so this is clearly why RAM is a factor in things), from Apple built models, and that gives fast responses, etc (whereas the Android devices pushing most of it to the cloud will have slower responses and poor signal will make that even worse) - so to me, it's clear they're aiming for a best user experience with this..... they say that anything that is too complex to run on device, or outside of Apple's on device model's expertise it can try and use Apple's Private Cloud Compute.
If it thinks it's something ChatGPT can do better, it will ask the user if you want to use ChatGPT - and it will ask each individual time. It's not a 'say yes once and it will use ChatGPT whenever', it asks you every single time to confirm if you want to use ChatGPT - which is nice to know, if you never want to use ChatGPT, you just say no. Also, OpenAI is not allowed to ever store any of the requests and your IP address will be obscured, so OpenAI cannot connect multiple requests to profile you.
At least with Apple Intelligence, we know that will come. Plus, could be worse, you could be in Poland, which I believe still do not have Siri working in Polish.....
Like has been said, Apple Pay Cash & Apple Card are not even Apple's fault as to why not available here - it's down to UK Bank issues.
Or maybe the iphone 16 pro will have 24GB ram, why not?
Process diagram for anyone interested. It only reaches off device once it has determined none of the on-device models are suitable.
I’m pretty sure I screenshot this from the platform state of the union, should be able to see that online if anyone’s interested.
I've not had the time to watch that yet, it's on my to-do list. Anyone wanting to watch - https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/102/