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That’s an easy reason why. A rather large portion of the population either don’t care about AI or are wary about AI. As an artist, I’m very anti AI due to so much of it trained on theft of intellectual property. And with so many people growing up on movies or stories where AI ends up turning evil, can you blame them for being wary? Even the people who were vaguely interested are starting to get worn out because it feels like AI is constantly being shoved down everyone’s throats by so many companies
Well, the good news is that Apple Intelligence is designed to not replace human generated art or realistic photo art. It’s all pop, fun, with GenMoji for richer Messenging and Clean Up that doesn’t generate new, photorealistic elements that weren’t there, just helps remove unwanted stuff.
 
Well...its not even finished. And iPhone 16 Pro was basically a carbon copy of the 15 Pro...which already supports Apple Intelligence
That’s patently false—not a “carbon copy” in any way: added camera control, better chip, more RAM, 2 48MP cameras, faster charging, better screen, longer battery life, 4 studio mics that allow crazy audio editing in post, Action Button, camera Undertones & Moods, and lots more. Most year to year model changes are pretty incremental, but this year the changes are bigger than most.
 
I’ve upgraded through 9 iPhone generations, and these last 2 years have not remotely made me want to upgrade from my 256/iPhone 13 PM. My main upgrade point is the camera usually…
 
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That’s an easy reason why. A rather large portion of the population either don’t care about AI or are wary about AI. As an artist, I’m very anti AI due to so much of it trained on theft of intellectual property. And with so many people growing up on movies or stories where AI ends up turning evil, can you blame them for being wary? Even the people who were vaguely interested are starting to get worn out because it feels like AI is constantly being shoved down everyone’s throats by so many companies
Oh, the irony. The fact you can be an artist is precisely because we progressed. Try to think about how useful an artist would be before progress made if possible to matter.

You’re anti-AI because your little niche might be under pressure if you don’t do better work. Got it. Let’s slow progress so you can keep a job.

Progress is inevitable anyway.
 
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I can run AI on SE2 so 3rd party app can compete with that. I can use online AI. Thats competition already.
Anyone can ask AI what are top x most asked questions, one of them is - help me edit text. Thats it.
EDIT: replaced GPT with AI so that I am not promoting something, lol
 
I use ChatGPT and Claude for various things ranging from random questions about history to working on complex codes for analytics. I honestly can’t even tell you what apple intelligence is supposed to do or how it works. I think if apple was a bit more clear on its use, maybe more people would warm up to it, but at this point, I simply find it useless and really another black eye for Apple after the recent Vision Pro debacle. Apple can’t seem to break away from this trend of creating silly, useless nonsense (emojis and Playground?) instead of true groundbreaking tech. I honestly think Apple is too afraid to take risks anymore. The love sitting on the “we’re the first trillion dollar company!” Titles instead of just taking a chance. No risk, no reward. And it’s showing.
 
That’s patently false—not a “carbon copy” in any way: added camera control, better chip, more RAM, 2 48MP cameras, faster charging, better screen, longer battery life, 4 studio mics that allow crazy audio editing in post, Action Button, camera Undertones & Moods, and lots more. Most year to year model changes are pretty incremental, but this year the changes are bigger than most.
Some of the things you mentioned were already on the 15 Pro, like RAM and the Action Button.
 
That’s an easy reason why. A rather large portion of the population either don’t care about AI or are wary about AI. As an artist, I’m very anti AI due to so much of it trained on theft of intellectual property. And with so many people growing up on movies or stories where AI ends up turning evil, can you blame them for being wary? Even the people who were vaguely interested are starting to get worn out because it feels like AI is constantly being shoved down everyone’s throats by so many companies
I did upgrade, but not because of AI - simply because I upgrade every couple or three generations. Having tried the AI features, of which I am very wary, they just don’t solve any problems I have. I don’t need an AI to rewrite my text and the AI is no better than me. I don’t need cartoon images. I don’t need messages summarised and the current implementation is awful anyway. I do need a much better Siri but these updates so far have not delivered that. Big flop, for me. I think this is a factor for many. The AI doesn’t make a compelling reason to upgrade.
 
English is my second language and I wished my iPhone 13 mini had AI to help me write grammatically more accurate text.
 
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I am constantly teaching my colleagues tips and tricks. It's not that they're unaware of the many AI tools - they just don't think of the many different use cases.

Tips/tricks/different uses cases such as??….genuinely interested!

these last 2 years have not remotely made me want to upgrade from my 256/iPhone 13 PM. My main upgrade point is the camera usually…

Then what are you waiting for!!! Spatial video AND pictures now…exciting stuff especially when Apple vision becomes more affordable…

The love sitting on the “we’re the first trillion dollar company!” Titles instead of just taking a chance. No risk, no reward. And it’s showing.


Ehhh…a 3k dollar headset ….putting out a phone with huge software upgrades touted but not delivered day 1…These aren’t moves by a company resting on its laurels imo
 
It’s because it is extremely poor. ChatGPT and other tools are years ahead. Apple really missed the train on this, they wasted too mic time and resources working on the useless and worthless Vision Pro while other companies did what matters.
 
Apple intelligence isn’t very good yet. It isn’t changing how we work and interact.
It has a clunky interface for improving text without a lot of control and an easy way to have a ‘chat’ to iterate.
The integration with ChatGPT is clunky as well and it’s just easier to open the app and benefit from it’s features there.

Siri is still as dumb as a 90’s NPC.

The other AI features are gimmicks and/or small features.

In contrast, my Pro subscription with ChatGPT (which I ramp up and down between Plus) is changing how I work on a daily basis.

No doubt this will all improve. But that’s going to be iOS 19 at the very least.
 
I have a ChatGPT subscription which I use daily. The o1 model is awesome. Apple Intelligence barely keeps up when I use it on my Mac. It can only dream of becoming as intelligent as ChatGPT.
Same here. And o3 is about to be released to the public and will widen the gap further as apparently introduced significant improvements. Apple really is being pathetic…
 
AI integration will take time to ramp up as AI itself ramps up. I wouldn’t have bought the iPhone 16 for AI but the 16 is a solid upgrade for phones a few years old.
And that’s why all Apple marketing efforts were put up at the introduction of the iPhone 16. It was the AI device to get… hello Apple Intelligence 😂

I think it’s common knowledge that Apple Intelligence is a complete flop by now. So yes… it won’t be the driver to get an iPhone 16. 😊
 
What everyone here seems to be missing is that it’s all about the kids. My daughter is 11, gen Alpha, and uses Apple Intelligence way more than I ever have. She uses it to help her write stories, to create an imaginary friend that she writes back and forth to like a pen pal using the built-in ChatGPT, she uses it to generate all kinds of weird animal creatures in various styles and outfits and to help illustrate her stories, she makes GenMojis all the time with her friends in Messages, and more. The kids love the AI and the companies know this.

So far I’m unsure how I feel about it all. I don’t want to be an luddite about tech since it won’t be long before I’m just an old man that hates everything new. Personally I’ve found a lot of benefit to using AI in my work to speed up certain tasks and to check what I’m doing. I think more of the damage being done is by algorithms on social media. I’m also not a fan of what Meta is doing with integrating AI into their social network. As someone who used to be more of a designer and went to school for that, I also have some gripes about how AI trains on other user’s work. Apple says they paid for the training data, but how did the company they paid get the data? A lot of companies are modifying user agreements to “steal” this data.

You can stop reading here unless you think I’m a bad parent based on this comment. Wanted to add that we don’t let our kids use the iPad all day. They have strict time limits for games (30 minutes) and other apps such as AI, messaging, and creativity (30 minutes) for a total of an hour per day. After they do their chores after school. My daughter does more than AI, she has been taking music lessons IRL, learning French in Duolingo, makes music in Garage Band, loves making stop motion in this app and then edits the video and audio together in iMovie, and has a digital camera that she uses to take photos and edit them on her iPad and sets them to music in Garage Band. My son, who is younger, also draws a ton on his iPad and plays math games.
 
Apple intelligence isn’t very good yet. It isn’t changing how we work and interact.
It has a clunky interface for improving text without a lot of control and an easy way to have a ‘chat’ to iterate.
The integration with ChatGPT is clunky as well and it’s just easier to open the app and benefit from it’s features there.

Siri is still as dumb as a 90’s NPC.

The other AI features are gimmicks and/or small features.

In contrast, my Pro subscription with ChatGPT (which I ramp up and down between Plus) is changing how I work on a daily basis.

No doubt this will all improve. But that’s going to be iOS 19 at the very least.
And in the meantime google has a good working assistant already and is capable of doing the same things now that Apple promises (lots of promises) to do sometime in late 2026. I wonder what google is able to do by then.
 
AI is largely a gimmick to a lot of people or they don't fully understand its current use cases, IMO. I think another part of the issue here is that carriers are no longer providing a "free" upgrade program. Most are charging an additional fee for the privilege of upgrading every 12 months. A large portion of their steady growth over the years after the 5s I believe it was can likely be attributed to the upgrade programs. It was a lower barrier to entry, easier to upgrade (for "free") and, in a lot of people's minds, got rid of the 2 year contract for them. I stopped upgrading every year after AT&T started charging an additional $5 a month for the 24 month term with the option to upgrade at 12 months. Now, I'm locked in for 3 years with no early upgrade as of upgrading to the 14 Pro. I skipped the 13 because I upgraded at a weird time for the 12 so I just waited for the 14, but I believe it started with the 13. I am also waiting for them to release another purple Pro, so I wasn't about to pay off my 14 for the 15 or 16 lol
 
AI is largely a gimmick to a lot of people or they don't fully understand its current use cases, IMO. I think another part of the issue here is that carriers are no longer providing a "free" upgrade program. Most are charging an additional fee for the privilege of upgrading every 12 months. A large portion of their steady growth over the years after the 5s I believe it was can likely be attributed to the upgrade programs. It was a lower barrier to entry, easier to upgrade (for "free") and, in a lot of people's minds, got rid of the 2 year contract for them. I stopped upgrading every year after AT&T started charging an additional $5 a month for the 24 month term with the option to upgrade at 12 months. Now, I'm locked in for 3 years with no early upgrade as of upgrading to the 14 Pro. I skipped the 13 because I upgraded at a weird time for the 12 so I just waited for the 14, but I believe it started with the 13. I am also waiting for them to release another purple Pro, so I wasn't about to pay off my 14 for the 15 or 16 lol
You mean Apple Intelligence is a gimmick. There are other great examples where AI is amazing, very useful and the force behind good personal assistants. You only don’t see this coming from Apple.
 
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You mean Apple Intelligence is a gimmick. There are other great examples where AI is amazing, very useful and the force behind good personal assistants. You only don’t see this coming from Apple.
No, I meant the average person (layman) thinks AI in general is a gimmick or, like I said, don't fully understand the use cases. I haven't used Apple Intelligence personally, nor do I have an interest in it in its current state, but I do use chatGPT and other forms of AI. AI is a tool and can be incredibly powerful if used appropriately. If people don't know how to use that tool properly, then there is no reason for them to really get excited for any version of AI. In Apple's case specifically, they have released a half baked system that doesn't even have all of the promised features yet. The market is also becoming incredibly saturated with apps and services with an AI label, so that doesn't help either.

Edit: that also wasn't the main point of my comment. I think a larger reason for the lack of upgrades is what I said in the rest of the comment.
 
With the current set of Apple Intelligence features, there is nothing great to consider switching to an iPhone or even upgrading to one with it. But over time, these small but useful features should add up and improve the overall experience of owning a device with Apple Intelligence.
 
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