Apple Likely Won't Charge for Apple Intelligence Features Until At Least 2027

[lazyrighteye]

While I would like to see AI remain a bundled differentiator for all Apple OS users, eventually, they will most certainly charge for using it (or charge for a higher tier of it). First, it needs to prove an indisposabel part of our everyday, then they'll come collecting.

 

[iMac The Knife]

As soon as any company charges me for their AI, I'm out.

 

[Supermallet]

"Not charging until 2027 at the earliest" is basically saying they will never charge for it because the AI bubble will have burst long before then. Maybe they lock it behind an icloud subscription as an added value bonus, maybe.

 

[amartinez1660]

Sometimes I think about all the services we pay monthly for that our previous generations didn’t have to account for in a monthly budget.

It can bloat so badly that there’s sizeable retirement money in there!

Had realized exactly that after a full year of having felt somewhat a hit financially. During the tax returns the amount of savings were perceptibly lower than previous years.

Adding little by little the likes of Adobe subscriptions, Netflix, Amazon Prime, family Apple One, Disney+, Office, Dropbox (dumb me got hooked and struggling to pass it over office’s OneDrive), bloated charities, etc etc etc adds up to A LOT. They tended to creep in over the years for me.

I got rid of most of it… Affinity suite, FCP, no Prime (sideffect: buying less stuff too), no Netflix, etc.

Like really, no joke, there’s legit retirement money there.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Couldn't be much worse than a glorified accountant running a tech company.

I don't hire the surgeon general to run a construction company.

OMG, yes it could be far far worse.

I was personally predicting Apple to collapse within 5 or 10 years after Steve Jobs's passing. To my surprise, Cook has not only kept Apple alive, but managed to oversee the brilliant Apple Silicon Macs. I won't give him too much credit for them, as the M1 chip is basically a beefed up iPhone chip, and was an idea conceived in Steve's time, so it's not like Cook invented the idea. Cook nearly ruined the Mac with the entire Butterfly generation (which I skipped, waiting patiently, with held breath, for a decent machine to emerge). Thankfully, after loosing a lot of corporate and creative customers, Cook was wise enough to bring in some of these customers and find out what they really wanted. The new Pro machines were born, first with the last of the Intel generation chips, and then with the M1.

It could have been far far worse.

 

[steve09090]

OMG, yes it could be far far worse.

I was personally predicting Apple to collapse within 5 or 10 years after Steve Jobs's passing. To my surprise, Cook has not only kept Apple alive, but managed to oversee the brilliant Apple Silicon Macs. I won't give him too much credit for them, as the M1 chip is basically a beefed up iPhone chip, and was an idea conceived in Steve's time, so it's not like Cook invented the idea. Cook nearly ruined the Mac with the entire Butterfly generation (which I skipped, waiting patiently, with held breath, for a decent machine to emerge). Thankfully, after loosing a lot of corporate and creative customers, Cook was wise enough to bring in some of these customers and find out what they really wanted. The new Pro machines were born, first with the last of the Intel generation chips, and then with the M1.

It could have been far far worse.

Cook didn’t think up the butterfly keyboard either. Nor did he invent the Apple Watch or many other things. Like a CEO, should, he has people within the company doing those things. So yeah, Apple didn’t die within 5-10 years but became one of the biggest companies on the planet, which certainly did not happen under Steve Jobs. People can only control the controllables, and Cook has done pretty well with that. Perfect? No, but then neither was AntennaGate/Sapphire Glass Jobs.

 

[FireFish]

It will likely be years before Apple Intelligence has a compelling enough feature set that people will pay for, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said in this week's Power On newsletter. Apple Intelligence is still so new that Gurman expects it will "take three years" for Apple to create a product that's worth charging for, and even that "may be the best-case scenario."

Gurman suggested last month that Apple's long-term plan is to develop something like Apple Intelligence+, with add-on features that users would pay a monthly fee to access. Apple already has a tiered subscription setup for iCloud, so Apple Intelligence could work similar to that.

iCloud provides 5GB of free storage to all users, but for a fee, iCloud+ subscription plans include more storage and also access to features like iCloud Private Relay. In the future, basic Apple Intelligence access could continue to be free, with more advanced features requiring a subscription. OpenAI and other companies charge for AI queries and image generation after a set free limit due to the computing power and costs associated with AI.

As of right now, the first Apple Intelligence features are only partially available in the iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 betas. Apple has added Writing Tools, some basic Siri improvements, smart replies in Messages and Mail, and a few other features like a Memory Maker option in Photos, but Image Playground, Genmoji, and the bulk of the Siri upgrades won't be coming until later in 2024 and 2025.

In addition to fully rolling out the first Apple Intelligence features that were announced at WWDC 2024, Apple still needs to work to expand the functionality to more countries, including China and the European Union. The features that Apple showed off in June likely won't all be available until 2025, and there's no word yet on when it might expand to more countries (including other languages), so it's not hard to see how it could take until 2027 or beyond to have a robust product.

As another reference point, Apple introduced Emergency SOS via satellite alongside the iPhone 14 in 2022, a feature that the company plans to eventually charge a fee to use, but it will be at least 2025 before the first iPhone owners have to pay for it. Apple's fee for Emergency SOS has not yet been announced.

When Apple does start charging for Apple Intelligence, it could be baked into existing iCloud+ plans or included as part of Apple One, Apple's subscription bundle. Counterpoint Research analyst Neil Shah recently speculated that Apple could charge between $10 and $20 for Apple Intelligence, with the fee rolled into an Apple One plan. The basic Apple One plan is priced at $19.95 per month right now, and it includes 50GB iCloud+ storage, Apple TV+, Apple Music, and Apple Arcade.

Article Link: Apple Likely Won't Charge for Apple Intelligence Features Until At Least 2027

This is a grade A bullsh*t. I just spent $1700 on a new iPhone 15 Pro Max upgrading from my iPhone 13 Pro Max purely on the promise by Apple that Apple Intelligence would be released shortly and won’t be available on the iPhone 13.
so I bit the bullet, and I upgraded, even though there was nothing wrong with my 13

If they’re not coming out with any serious noticeable improvements to intelligence any anytime soon, I want my freaking money back.
I’m running iOS 18.1 and have Apple Intelligence turned on

So far, all I’ve seen is an even buggier Siri that is less capable than it was before
The iOS 18 facelift is kind of cool, but I had all of that on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. And as far as the better camera, let’s be honest, I’m not photographing magazine covers here.

 

[steve09090]

This is a grade A bullsh*t. I just spent $1700 on a new iPhone 15 Pro Max upgrading from my iPhone 13 Pro Max purely on the promise by Apple that Apple Intelligence would be released shortly and won’t be available on the iPhone 13.
so I bit the bullet, and I upgraded, even though there was nothing wrong with my 13

If they’re not coming out with any serious noticeable improvements to intelligence any anytime soon, I want my freaking money back.
I’m running iOS 18.1 and have Apple Intelligence turned on

So far, all I’ve seen is an even buggier Siri that is less capable than it was before
The iOS 18 facelift is kind of cool, but I had all of that on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. And as far as the better camera, let’s be honest, I’m not photographing magazine covers here.

Ah well. Never buy for what is promised, but for what is actually available. Everybody Knows that. Or in Googles view. Never buy expecting Google not to cancel what they have OR what they have promised.

 

[Biro]

This is a grade A bullsh*t. I just spent $1700 on a new iPhone 15 Pro Max upgrading from my iPhone 13 Pro Max purely on the promise by Apple that Apple Intelligence would be released shortly and won’t be available on the iPhone 13.
so I bit the bullet, and I upgraded, even though there was nothing wrong with my 13

If they’re not coming out with any serious noticeable improvements to intelligence any anytime soon, I want my freaking money back.
I’m running iOS 18.1 and have Apple Intelligence turned on

So far, all I’ve seen is an even buggier Siri that is less capable than it was before
The iOS 18 facelift is kind of cool, but I had all of that on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. And as far as the better camera, let’s be honest, I’m not photographing magazine covers here.

And this is why my iPhone 15 Plus, with its 6GB of RAM, will continue to serve me well for a few more years.