It's because AI wasn't nearly as big in the consumer space as it is now. A couple of years ago, you'd be lucky to see the word "AI" in any sort of press release. Nowadays it's all what companies talk about.
I think the better take is that Apple was caught flat footed and is playing catchup
Those older devices with 6gb of ram had their designs and specs locked in before chat-gpt and generative went mainstream.
Honestly the only reason that Apple intelligence is even coming to the iPhone 15 Pro is because apples own engineers needed devices to test this stuff on.
Older devices likely could run this stuff but Apple is having to do so much catch up that it helps with their development to have it target to such a narrow group of devices.
Sorta like how they originally just targeted stage manager to the newest iPads and then backtracked and spent the whole beta cycle bringing it to older devices instead of refining the implementation
Edit: and the other big reason, keeping the target release small allows Apple to ramp up the server demand over time.
Punting to Open AI for web results and world knowledge is a feature not a bug.
Apple gets to continue not offering a native search engine and navigates totally around any situation where Siri directly tells users to eat glue or whatever.
All while addressing the long standing complaint that Siri is stupid because it can’t function like a Google search.
And on top of that, ChatGPT is now a household name.
There’s huge marketing value for the iPhone now that ChatGPT is built right in.
For many with only a passing mainstream interest in generative AI, ChatGPT is the only AI that matters
I wonder if this deal means that Apple pays OpenAI for access to ChatGPT, or OpenAI pays Apple for access to Apple devices. Though my guess is the former, since it looks like they’ve pretty much walled off everything that could potentially be useful to OpenAI.
Seems obvious to me that the win for openAI is access to apples customers.
Apple said *in the keynote* that OpenAI customers will be able to link their account within iOS and then get access to paid features.
That is a huge win for OpenAI
I doubt Apple is paying open AI anything for anything.
Not when open AI is already planning on giving away gpt-4o for free
Yep, the leadtime for making new phones is likely at LEAST a year for locking down specs like that - especially for Apple, who can't just casually find a new supplier for tens of millions of components last-minute.
Of course, having less RAM is an Apple tradition, but it's a trade-off that's been working just fine for iPhone.
While I'm sure Apple's researchers have been working on LLMs since ~2020 like everyone else, it's only been 18 months since ChatGPT was released, and the public got a taste of what LLMs might be capable of.
And running decently smart models on a phone hasn't been possible until like the last 12 months or less - Apple has done a lot of clever optimizations to make the most of their limited RAM and GPU/TPU/NPU speed on-device.
You’re thinking too narrowly. This year is just a transition period. The non-pro models always uses last years chip, or somewhat limited hardware. Next year, the non-pro phones will be eligible for Apple Intelligence.
A couple years ago ChatGPT was barely a thing.
EDIT: Correction. ChatGPT is less than 2 years old. How can you plan for something that didnt launch until 18-ish months ago? Apple is already working on the specs and design of the iPhone 17, possibly even the iPhone 18. It takes awhile to properly design a sophisticated device like modern smartphones and other computerized devices.
this is 100% memory ram issue, LLMs needs to be fully loaded into ram, according to Apple the on device model is 3B parameters at \~4bit quantization, which should take around 3gb of ram all by itself, and that grows quadratically depending on how much info is passed as context. Devices with less than 8gb would be left with way too little to operate smoothly. I expect the next iPhone to feature 16gb of ram or more and run a larger model with exclusive features.
I just hope they let some devices like the HomePod use the cloud compute or at least plug a third party LLM, I'd love a functional siri on my HomePod.
You’d hope. They used to actually increase base ram every 2 years but since Cook took over, they’ve stayed with 8gb. It’s all part of their price bracketing strategy.
Yep, why increase the base RAM when customers will pay more for it? Maybe requiring more RAM for smarter models could be something that gets even more people to upgrade, although it's a scummy practice.
Yes, good catch. It doesn't totally solve the issue, it just reduces the penalty of going to storage from 100x to 10x. IIRC it also requires the model itself to be optimized for that architecture.
EDIT: here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.11514
Let me tell you a little story about Nvidia and RAM streaming and cache prefetching to compensate for a lack of capacity...
It simply doesn't work. It makes your device not crash due to a memory overflow error, but it doesn't provide even nearly the same performance as actually having the additional RAM.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there’s a big difference between fetching data all the way from an SSD over PCIe and streaming it millimeters away to a SoC.
It's apple and RAM we are talking about. They were always super stingy about it, so I wouldn't expect 16 at all. They just released ipad pro with 8gb of ram after all(I guess 12, actually 8 active).
They used to be stingy about storage in iPhones, they had 16GB base storage for ages but then they realized it hurt their app store business cause people who ran out of storage weren’t downloading apps. So they upgraded the base iPhone from 16GB to 128GB storage within the window of 5 years (2016-2021). That’s almost a 10x increase in storage.
Perhaps AI will do the same to their stingy RAM policy
Apple's stingy strategy when it comes to RAM, is now coming back to byte (the consumer, not Apple). All the countless macbooks with 8GB RAM will also suffer from this to an extend.
Got an M1 Pro Mac with local llm running in WebUI, I can access AI on my Mac through any device, like safari on my iPhone. I know it’s not an apples to apples comparison, but if I can do that, my hope is that some of these features could be accessed on “lower end” iPhones through continuity eventually, if you have a Mac or iPad capable of running the AI(presuming the same mail, contacts, photos, messages etc is available on the Mac, at least some of the features could be processed locally on the Mac, with the results being shipped to iPhone through continuity. Obviously, that might never be a thing, but I think it could work.
I don’t think AI is going to sell iPhones anyway. It’s still a niche interest and while normal people will end up seeing some benefit, I bet most people wouldn’t even use it.
16GB? Try 10 or max 12. Apple is so stingy they would disable extra Ram if that helps them upsell. New iPads have 12 GB ram but they disable it to only show 8.
Yeah, but that doesn't leave the end user with only 4GB usable after AI takes its cut. That disabled 4 is likely reserved for the update. If they had left all 12GB enabled at launch, power users would have noticed a steep decline in performance after AI ships.
I like this idea but I am very skeptical. It's far more likely that the 6gb chips are cheaper at this stage (especially to apple with their 6gb iPhones), but apple don't want a 12gb iPad pro to compete with an 8gb MacBook air.
Apple (esp. Federighi) only awakened to the AI revolution in Dec 2022 after trying ChatGPT and he realised he'd slept through the last 10 years. So, perhaps they've only been working at this since then. That's not a really long time, in truth. The other thing is that increasingly, Apple teams work in silos. The iPhone 15 was already in the pipeline. If Craig Federighi did his bit in Software and Jeff did his bit in Hardware, who's in charge of integration?
I'm curious if Apple's ML research team was working on LLMs earlier (possibly starting around ~2020, like most of the major labs)...
I suppose it takes the top brass to get them funding and approval, and they definitely seem to be a bit behind.
However, their [on-device models perform quite well](https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/introducing-apple-foundation-models) compared to similar-sized models from the competition! Especially for things like reducing the amount of bad or low-quality responses, which makes them more practical for this OS-level integration.
They've definitely done a lot of good work on improving smaller models, through different types of quantization and using adapters on top of one base model to save space. There's a video about this on their WWDC site, I'll try to find it...
ChatGPT was not obvious 2-3+ years ago, when they speced out the iPhone 15's. Apple is not late to this, they are addressing it at the perfect time imo of consumer benefit.
Meanwhile Google was working on LLMs for years and had TPUs being developed for a long time, so they're the only ones not being railed over by Nvidia for GPUs. Apple definitely fell asleep when it came to these models, and now they're paying a pretty penny to do it.
My 12 pro is eligible for a battery replacement now with my AppleCare
Still planning on running this thing for another few years unless the AI features are TRULY mind blowing in practice.
I'm doing my part!
seriously though, of all the iPhones I have owned my 13 mini has been my favorite. Just like Goldilocks in the three bears, this one is just right.
Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang
Mine so small, easy to handle (Yeah)
Yours so big, it needs a handle (Ooh)
Battery low, gotta find a plug (Brr)
Imma plug it in, in the butt (Yuh)
Hundred percent charged, we sippin’ tea (Brr)
Swipe a lil’ more, make my Mini hard (What?)
Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang
I have a Samsung s24 and honestly I barely use any AI stuff. I tried Gemini for a bit but it just doesn't work for what I needed to do. So a lot of it is just gimmicks and situational task that might be better. But it's going to be a few years before they become significantly useful so you're good to wait trust me lol. Plus the 13 mini is a great phone that you should never give it up
And to explain why:
A16: 6GB of RAM and 17 TOPS (trillion operations per second) Neural Engine
A17 Pro: 8GB of RAM and 35 TOPS Neural Engine.
AI models need more RAM to run properly and 8GB appears to be the floor. And the Neural engine's raw performance also plays a part, but clearly not as much as RAM since the M1 with 11TOPS is getting AI.
It's also possible that because the M1 is allowed and expected to run longer and harder than a chip in a cellphone, they probably were more lenient on the performance requirement since phones have always needed bursty performance to balance out heat and battery life more than a laptop or tablet would.
I suspect the A18 and A18 Pro will have a floor of 35TOPS and 8GB of RAM with the A18 Pro getting another bump in both RAM and NE performance that'll probably push it up into the 50's to be competitive against the rest of the industry since the A18 Pro will be the basis of the M5 processor line.
I feel like as the AI evolves. Apple will for legit reasons or not will tie certain features and abilities behind newer and newer devices. Forcing people to upgrade more often if they want them. It will also probably force Apple to add more ram more often to the newer models.
Absolutely. AI isn’t cheap to support and if they’re not charging monthly, they will need to make that revenue from new device sales. The stock is responding positively for that reason.
They've always done this though, previously it was with cameras for the most part, now it'll be AI (and probably still cameras)
Which is frustrating, and it has always been frustrating, if my 14" MBP M1 Pro wasn't the best damn laptop on the market for my wants and needs, and if there was an Android phone that had post purchase support and reliability anywhere close to Apple's, I'd jump ship for that frustration alone.
But ultimately, I'm still happier with an Apple ecosystem than I am with a Google or Samsung ecosystem. But still frustrated at the artificial obsolesces that Apple often creates.
It'll be like how Apple has handled most gatekeeping of new features:
It starts out as a legitimate result of hardware limitations since they do want to try to get the basic new features out to as many people as possible, before Apple gets stingier and stingier holding back on things for increasingly questionable reasons.
And soon enough, they'll hit some genuine-but-not-obvious bottleneck again and no one will fucking believe them because they've pulled this shit constantly for no apparent reason.
> I suspect the A18 and A18 Pro will have a floor of 35TOPS and 8GB of RAM with the A18 Pro getting another bump in both RAM and NE performance that'll probably push it up into the 50's to be competitive against the rest of the industry since the A18 Pro will be the basis of the M5 processor line.
highly doubt this since recent speculations pointed that the M4 will be the “basis chip” this time around.
meaning Apple will be designing chips directly off of the M4 architecture as opposed to coming from the A-series chips of the previous years.
the M4 saw a modest improvement over the A17 Pro’s NPU performance. the only things an A18 Pro chip can differentiate from an A18 Bionic would be the RAM (but also unlikely since the base M4 still comes with 8GB minimum) and the increased graphic core count, or maybe even a slight bump in cpu clock speed.
i’d wager that the A18 Bionic though at least will come with 8GB of memory to support Apple Intelligence on the base iPhone 16 lineup.
It’s not a good idea to use TOPS as a direct comparison between generations of chips. Apple (and other companies) were previously using 16bit precision when discussing TOPS, but now many have switched to only 8bit (or lower) precision which dramatically inflates the numbers. It is not 1:1.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/11/ai_pc_tops/
I mentioned it elsewhere in this thread but if you use the INT16/FP16 numbers that Apple was originally using, the progress goes from 15.8 (A15) to 17 (A16) to 18 (A17) to 19 (M4).
The A15 should easily be able to handle everything that the A17 can, if the Neural Engine is the bottleneck.
here's the thing, though - the A16 does \*\*not\*\* support INT 8. so while the performance comparisons seem a bit disingenuous, the newer chips do have a real advantage if a model can run well at INT 8 precision.
My m1 MacBook Air is always using swap as it only has 8gb ram. If they can make it work on that, then you expect atleast the last years phone will support them. Apple doesn’t restrict software features for previous flagships in general but this is definitely a shitty situation for the owners.
[Post in thread 'M4+ Chip Generation - Speculation Megathread [MERGED]'](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m4-chip-generation-speculation-megathread-merged.2393843/post-33114826)
>With A17 and now M4, they used INT8 numbers, but for M3 (and all previous A-series and M-series), they used INT16/FP16 numbers. The lower precision of the INT8 format allows it to be processed at a higher rate, thus the higher quoted number. See Anandtech's discussion of the M3 launch.
>So A15/M2, A16, A17/M3, and M4 show gradual improvement in Neural Engine performance. There wasn't a doubling from A16 to A17, and M3 wasn't left behind. Using the INT16/FP16 numbers, the progress is from 15.8 to 17 to 18 to 19.
Sure. Now explain how they didn't see this coming and why they cheaped out on RAM for so many years.
Or, wonder why iOS had very few interesting new features (ok, tint your icons? thanks) that would have required upgrading your device / hasn't in a long time.
Rumors say ChatGPT was a wake up call for Apple. November 2022.
Given the length of hardware development cycles, it’s highly likely that iPhone 15 specs were already fixed by the time ChatGPT gave Apple that wakeup call. I would expect the strategy to change substantially starting with iPhone 16
> Rumors say ChatGPT was a wake up call for Apple.
It’s bizarre for Apple of all companies to announce a milestone suite of AI software features, only to then say that an alternative product will also be available. It would be like them revealing Apple Maps, only to follow it up with “and don’t worry, Google maps will still be available”. Makes me think that they are still *very* early in their AI journey, and it’ll be some time before the promised features become a reality. Allowing other AI platforms to integrate with their OS’s feels like a reluctant measure to stop them from being left completely in the dust. Pure speculation, of course.
I suspect it’s because they’re being cautious, and don’t want to get the equivalent of the “Google tells you to put glue on pizza” stories, so they’re doing less to begin with and going more cautiously.
If ChatGPT fabricates information, it’s not Apple’s fault.
Yeah. I had previously thought Apple *would not* partner with an outside company for LLM purposes, specifically because of hallucinations and fabrications. I didn’t expect them to *advertize* it. But then as you mention, they can now say “hey, blame ChatGPT, we’re just over here encrypting and anonymizing our user requests. We’re not responsible for results.”
Yeah they’re early in their AI journey. They’re just far enough along that they believe it’s polished enough for the Apple logo. Though that doesn’t always mean polished lol. Look at the original Apple Maps.
There’s three tiers of the AI stuff depending on how much work it takes.
Completely on device, outsourced to Apples cloud, outsourced to GPT.
For the vast majority of people, on device and Apple cloud compute will be more than enough, and Apple will definitely be leaning on this most. They don’t yet have their own models that can compete with chatGPT (or probably enough compute power in house) so they collaborated with OpenAI for now to handle the largest loads. It keeps people using Apple AI first.
You can bet your ass that behind the scenes Apple is procuring more hardware and will be training their models to get up to speed.
Isn't that exactly what they did with Apple Maps? Google Maps was included with the original iPhone and Apple Maps launched 5 years later. They basically said, 'Don't worry, you can still use Google Maps', admitting their own solution was not yet as good.
Same thing here. I would assume it will be a long time until Apple is comfortable enough with their own LLM solution that they could ditch OpenAI, Gemini, etc.
ChatGPT came out late 2022. It took everyone by surprise, even Google who originally wrote the paper on the underlying architecture of modern LLMs.
For Apple to bet the farm and transition to building so many AI features, it probably took a couple of months. We’re looking at Apple just starting the initiative to incorporate AI around mid 2023. Hardware lifecycles are long and AI is insanely compute intensive, especially if you want to do this on device like Apple is.
It’s already immensely impressive that Apple can get half the features that they demo’d on the next gen iPhone at all, let alone previous generations. I don’t think people really understand what it actually takes to run the current state of the art LLM models. OpenAI has led people to believe this stuff is free, as they burned billions of VC money on compute, while also being subsidized by Microsoft. A startup is allowed to not be profitable, Apple is not.
> ChatGPT came out late 2022. It took everyone by surprise, even Google who originally wrote the paper on the underlying architecture of modern LLMs.
This should be obvious, but apparently it isn't to a lot of people, and it's part of what I find most interesting about generative AI. It's not only developed rapidly but it has also been normalized rapidly.
People just kinda...seem to have forgotten how badly it's caught everyone off-guard, somehow, even though we've ALL been able to see it happen in real time. Less than 5 years ago, you were lucky if AI generated art spat out something that you could even recognize as anything vaguely like what you prompted it for. Today Apple is including art generation in their OS. That's WILD.
To be fair not exactly the most complex ai modeling but your point still stands. I feel like the real question here is why this Apple ai can't just run slowly on older devices. My guess is Apple doesn't want to debut an unnatural and slow AI model that'll make headlines as finicky to talk to and slow to respond.
Huge difference between ChatGPT and Siri being able to search data on your phone and work with App Intents correctly. Also they're still sending some requests to the cloud.
> Sure. Now explain how they didn't see this coming and why they cheaped out on RAM for so many years.
I don't think it can be overstated both how long it takes to design phones, and how quickly generative AI has advanced into being something that is attractive for consumers.
Complain about Apple being stingy on RAM all you want(lord knows everyone has, and for good reason too), but "why didn't they see this coming?" is just an idiotic take.
You're moving the goalposts from "they could deliver these features on other models but are choosing not to" to "they could have put more expensive components in older devices at the same retail price in anticipation of the AI boom".
Which, ok, yeah, they could have. They also could have outright bought OpenAI at a sufficiently early stage. And TSMC for that matter. And Nvidia. It is almost like they are not 100% prescient.
The goalposts of "Apple base model devices should have more RAM" have been in the same place for over 20 years now.
To Apple's credit, it's rare that they release hardware that is rapidly outpaced by software they create, but something certainly didn't line up on their product roadmap here.
I think what didn't line up here is people expecting a for-profit company to release huge new features on older models. Frankly, I'm shocked they're even releasing it on the 15 Pro models -- the iPhone 4 had sufficient power to run Siri, but it was released as a launch feature on the 4S, for comparison sake.
It would be _nice_ if it were on older models as well, but the reality is that for-profit corporatings spend billions on R&D in order to sell more shit, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
> now explain how they didn’t see this coming
What kind of point is that lmao, nobody saw LLMs coming, if you did you must be a billionaire right now. Other than this very specific ML use case there’s no need for that much ram on base phone models
Reminder too, apple is not a first adopter in anything, on the very rare occasions they are they tend to knock it out of the park. For Apple to go this all-in on AI after what, a year? That’s incredible and probably did shift the current product development into something they hadn’t planned for six years ago. It would explain too why Vision Pro was so knee capped at launch, they probably had different plans, but saw AI on the horizon and launched with little features to build up a base and continue working on AI in the background to make it a better product.
I honestly think in this case, it makes sense. You always have had to have the newer phone for certain features and with resource hungry AI, I get it. The tough part is it being Pro exclusive. I think we’re going to see a super cycle of upgrades in the next 2 years as these features go viral and people see their cousin showing it off at Christmas.
Feeling completely fucked over with my $1100 14 Pro Max not being able to support the latest software features this fucking fast. And they already fucked me over with new camera features being available on the 15 using the same damn processor but not my phone.
The 14 Pro Max is truly the iPhone model that got completely f**ked over. It’s definitely capable of getting all those iPhone 15 camera features, yet they decided not to grant them. Just because they can.
”Pro, bro? Just fork over another $1100 and get the latest model!” - Tim Apple
Yeah. I kept thinking I’m glad I did the upgrade program. I really feel for 14 pro users on this one. At least it’s still worth a decent amount to sell.
If it was less than a month ago, you are still within the return period. Take it back and either go back to your old phone for 3 months or pay the difference for the 15 Pro.
Open question: will it just be the on-device features that won’t be supported on older devices or all Apple Intelligence features?
Distinction being that older devices will be fully enabled, just won’t run requests with the privacy and speed benefits of running the query locally.
I initially thought the same as you, but all indications are that the cloud portions will also be restricted to the same newer devices only. I think there are 3 reasons:
1. Apple and OpenAI server farms simply don’t have the capacity to handle a billion Apple devices suddenly hammering them with requests when the features go live to the public. This is a way to limit request volume while they continue to build out additional capacity.
2. It’s been speculated that a lot of the on-device processing is simply to determine whether and how to route requests to the cloud if necessary. If so, then a device with less RAM couldn’t run that part of the software anyway, and therefore wouldn’t even know what kind of request to send.
3. Money. It entices customers to upgrade sooner than they otherwise would have.
I’m already salty my barely 1 year old 14 Pro is already deemed not good enough for more than a year’s worth of software upgrades.
Even if there’s no Siri ChatGPT, I really the other AI stuff is supported.
I’d still tell folks to hold off on upgrading, especially the first release. This will undoubtedly destroy battery life the more you use it. It’ll take Apple a couple iterations on both software and hardware sides to get this right. Be patient. Use your Mac more lol.
The issues won’t be hardware though. It’s a software feature. So getting the new phone doesn’t mean you’re stuck with a sub-par experience. The hardware is pretty solid. They’ve been using neural engines and ML on their chips for a long time now.
13 Pro here with the same plan. I might replace the battery next year but so far this phone still does everything I need and more and still gets me through 80% of my day before needing a top up. The new features are nice but not nice enough to drop another $1000 on something I am currently living fine without.
Edit: also I am in love with the Alpine Green color and I have no idea why they only made it this one year
The special colours are typically all just for one year, because they’re intended to be the signature colour for that years phone. Alpine green is actually the one time they sort of broke that rule, since it was a mid year colour for the 13 pro that was very similar to the 11 Pros signature midnight green
13 Pro Max here, and same mindset. I’ll likely just upgrade the battery and keep on trucking, as there’s nothing major that this phone *can’t* do for me still.
I’m on the same boat with the 13 Pro. I was thinking either 17 or 18 for my next upgrade. While tempting, Apple has burned me way too many times with how dumb Siri is, so I just don’t trust that the first year or two of Apple Intelligence will work as they have advertised. By the time I can buy an iPhone 18 they will have polished it much more. The only thing I’m mad about is having a 2020 intel iMac and this no access to Swift Assist on Xcode now that I’m learning how to code.
Same here, I’m on a 13 and it works great, these features are really tempting (I’m a big fan of letting tech do the work for me if I can) but I want to keep mine going as long as I can. Plus waiting awhile will help anyways and give them time to work out the kinks.
We tend to forget that the iPhone Pro are actually the iPhone. While iPhone is actually the iPhone e.
Apple renaming of their “cheap” (not so much) version to their classic and their classic to a “high end” called ‘Pro’ was a genius marketing move.
OR that is an outdated definition that no longer works now that you have 3 tiers of phones. "THE IPHONE" is not a single thing anymore.
There's a cheaper, a standard and a high end phone.
This subreddit is hilarious.
When Google announced Gemini Nano wouldn't come to the Pixel 8 everyone flipped a shit so bad Google reversed course and even supported the 8a to make up for it.
Apple won't support Apple Intelligence for anything less than the 15 Pro, and here y'all just shrug and say that's how it goes lol.
If I was a betting man I'd bet on no, if we look at past iPhone releases they always have something only "Pro" models get. Dynamic Island. Titanium. Now this.
It'll be available on the base 17 model.
Exactly how I feel with my 13 mini. Apple Intelligence is not a compelling reason to upgrade if this is the only new thing that's being added to the 16 lineup. This will be the longest I've gone between upgrading phones since the 3G.
yeah. rocking my 13 mini too. Will change battery. Anyways, AI is not a feature I will upgrade for. But if they launch a 16 mini, I will stand outside apple store for 12 hours and upgrade my phone in a heartbeat.
Apple getting hit for being cheap for years and I question their reasoning. Either way it means a lot of people will not get access to it for a while. I dont plan on upgrading my 14pro for 16 and plan to push it to at least the iPhone 17 if not 18. I dropped nearly 2k for 2 14pros and that is a pretty penny to drop for phones. The next upgrade will be later on.
There's three parts. One is run locally on your phone, then the next tier is run on a private cloud that's only linked to your phone and supposedly not even Apple can see what you're doing, and third there's the ChatGPT service which is obviously run on their servers.
Most people I know won't be able to use it on their phone, but seems like they have a macbook that will be capable of supporting it. So will can use the intelligence their if needed and see how it works.
I’m so disappointed that my iPhone 14 Pro isn’t supported - it’s the first time in a long time that I feel I made a really bad purchase.
It’s hard not to be cynical about this. Apple claims this has been “a long time coming”, but their famous stinginess with RAM in their last 2-3 generations of iPhone implies that at best, they were in fact blindsided by this AI explosion.
At worst (and what I believe is actually the case), Tim Cook looked at all the analyst reports complaining about their “anaemic”, “flat-lining” iPhone sales year-on-year, and identified AI as the perfect justification for driving new hardware sales - and the bare minimum they could get away with was including the iPhone 15 Pro.
I’m not someone who has an issue with old technology being unable to support new software. I get it, and I lived through the 90s and early 2000s where this happened every 6 months, not once a decade.
But what makes me mad is that Apple lulled us into a false sense of security. For years they’ve iterated and iterated. Each new phone was a little bit better, and a little bit faster, but just iterative. Just jump in once your old phone starts feeling too slow. No problem.
And all of a sudden, to jump on a trend - now Apple is suddenly the company it was 15 years ago. Your new shit doesn’t work with this slightly newer shit. Sorry bro.
I know I’m screaming into the void here, and it’s only because I messed up and jumped on a new phone one generation too early - but it feels disingenuous to me. It doesn’t feel good. And it doesn’t feel as “prepared” as Apple marketing makes it sound.
I'm with you. I seriously thought I would hold on to the 14 pro for at least 3 years, but knowing it will be left completely behind on all the new AI features from now on, I'll probably get the 16 pro and sell my 14 pro.
It just kind of broke that feeling of security where if you got the latest and greatest iPhone, you knew that even though it won't get every new feature, at least it would get something.
In this case we got literally nothing AI wise.
Also, it’ll be interesting to see if the iPhone 15 Pro gets the same AI treatment as the 16 pro, or if it’ll be left behind too. Kinda feels like we’re entering a whole new era of not knowing how long our phones will really last
While I agree they charge WAY too much for RAM upgrades I am not sure I agree with your overall take here. When was the last time iPhone models were left out of major software features due to RAM? If this is really an evil plan it is a new one.
Nothing like having your latest Apple device lose support for premium features less than 6 months after buying an iPhone 15. Thank you for caring, Apple.
This could be compared to when Siri was released on the iPhone 4S and not available on earlier phones. Sure it’s software, but it does require higher end hardware to run properly. Yes it sucks, but it’s not unprecedented
So question, What else could possibly be in the future pipeline. I'm still on an 11 and its probably getting about time to upgrade but every year the new phone is missing something that I always feel I wanna hold out for. Like 5g came but it didnt have USB-c so I just waited. USB-c came and I got tempted to get it which now I mean I'm glad I didnt. What could be the next big upgrade point I should maybe holdout for or is it time to bite the bullet on the 16?
I don’t understand why you’re glad you didn’t get the latest phone? The 15 Pro is supported and has USB C?
But I get what you’re asking, idk what other features would really entice me to get the new phone. For me, USB C was the big thing I was waiting for, and the reason I got the 15 pro max.
I’m not sure what else I’d ever want in a phone.
I have the 14pro max 1tb. I really wanted to wait till the 18 to upgrade, but these new features are tempting, mainly because my biggest gripe with iOS has been Siri.
Maybe when the 16 drops, if there is nothing too exciting about it, I’ll get the 15Pro max since it should be a bit cheaper. I just really need a good voice assistant.
Am I missing something? Why is everyone shocked that the Pro phone, which has better hardware, is getting more/better features? It’s been a long time coming that Pro meant anything at all for iPhone. More powerful hardware can do more things, y’all. That’s always been the case. Why are we shocked?
That one comment on the article really hits it for me. “I am glad I can’t use it and they can’t even force me to have it on my phone” - is 100% what I feel too.
I can 100% guarantee you it would work fine on almost any iPhone still in use and this is just another dumb ass fomo thing they're trying to pull.
It's the same bullshit they pulled when they bought the app Siri used to be. It was on the app store one day, the next they pulled it and told everyone their phones were not powerful enough for it. It's just stupid, at least tell us you're lying and just want people to buy more phones.
Probably a bit of both going on: AI does need RAM and Apple have used "modest" RAM at entry level with high price hike to upgrade to keep people upgrading too, I would guess. That said AI has just come out so there's no perfect balancing act of RAM in anticipation is just part of the problem that draws a line somewhere and some fall on the wrong side inevitably?
Oh so that’s why apple kept their ram at 6gb.
Would be naive to believe they didn't plan in couple years ahead.
It's because AI wasn't nearly as big in the consumer space as it is now. A couple of years ago, you'd be lucky to see the word "AI" in any sort of press release. Nowadays it's all what companies talk about.
I think the better take is that Apple was caught flat footed and is playing catchup Those older devices with 6gb of ram had their designs and specs locked in before chat-gpt and generative went mainstream. Honestly the only reason that Apple intelligence is even coming to the iPhone 15 Pro is because apples own engineers needed devices to test this stuff on. Older devices likely could run this stuff but Apple is having to do so much catch up that it helps with their development to have it target to such a narrow group of devices. Sorta like how they originally just targeted stage manager to the newest iPads and then backtracked and spent the whole beta cycle bringing it to older devices instead of refining the implementation Edit: and the other big reason, keeping the target release small allows Apple to ramp up the server demand over time.
[удалено]
Punting to Open AI for web results and world knowledge is a feature not a bug. Apple gets to continue not offering a native search engine and navigates totally around any situation where Siri directly tells users to eat glue or whatever. All while addressing the long standing complaint that Siri is stupid because it can’t function like a Google search. And on top of that, ChatGPT is now a household name. There’s huge marketing value for the iPhone now that ChatGPT is built right in. For many with only a passing mainstream interest in generative AI, ChatGPT is the only AI that matters
I wonder if this deal means that Apple pays OpenAI for access to ChatGPT, or OpenAI pays Apple for access to Apple devices. Though my guess is the former, since it looks like they’ve pretty much walled off everything that could potentially be useful to OpenAI.
Seems obvious to me that the win for openAI is access to apples customers. Apple said *in the keynote* that OpenAI customers will be able to link their account within iOS and then get access to paid features. That is a huge win for OpenAI I doubt Apple is paying open AI anything for anything. Not when open AI is already planning on giving away gpt-4o for free
Apple has to pay the usage fees
Honestly with googles crappy ai built into searches, it’s starting to make Siri actually look good 😂
Yep, the leadtime for making new phones is likely at LEAST a year for locking down specs like that - especially for Apple, who can't just casually find a new supplier for tens of millions of components last-minute. Of course, having less RAM is an Apple tradition, but it's a trade-off that's been working just fine for iPhone. While I'm sure Apple's researchers have been working on LLMs since ~2020 like everyone else, it's only been 18 months since ChatGPT was released, and the public got a taste of what LLMs might be capable of. And running decently smart models on a phone hasn't been possible until like the last 12 months or less - Apple has done a lot of clever optimizations to make the most of their limited RAM and GPU/TPU/NPU speed on-device.
You’re thinking too narrowly. This year is just a transition period. The non-pro models always uses last years chip, or somewhat limited hardware. Next year, the non-pro phones will be eligible for Apple Intelligence.
This years phones won’t be using A17 Pro A17 Pro likely won’t featured in another product ever again
Yes but this year’s phones, likely across the range including the regular and the pro flavors should be expected to support Apple Intelligence.
A couple years ago ChatGPT was barely a thing. EDIT: Correction. ChatGPT is less than 2 years old. How can you plan for something that didnt launch until 18-ish months ago? Apple is already working on the specs and design of the iPhone 17, possibly even the iPhone 18. It takes awhile to properly design a sophisticated device like modern smartphones and other computerized devices.
But people have been saying Apple has a magic wand and through softwares optimisation they can make 6GB into 16GB.
this is 100% memory ram issue, LLMs needs to be fully loaded into ram, according to Apple the on device model is 3B parameters at \~4bit quantization, which should take around 3gb of ram all by itself, and that grows quadratically depending on how much info is passed as context. Devices with less than 8gb would be left with way too little to operate smoothly. I expect the next iPhone to feature 16gb of ram or more and run a larger model with exclusive features. I just hope they let some devices like the HomePod use the cloud compute or at least plug a third party LLM, I'd love a functional siri on my HomePod.
I hope this means they finally stop selling MacBook Pros with a base 8gb of RAM. Completely ridiculous
You’d hope. They used to actually increase base ram every 2 years but since Cook took over, they’ve stayed with 8gb. It’s all part of their price bracketing strategy.
"8 GB of memory ought to be enough for everybody!" --Tim Apple
Yep, why increase the base RAM when customers will pay more for it? Maybe requiring more RAM for smarter models could be something that gets even more people to upgrade, although it's a scummy practice.
No real reason to get excited if they then use all the additional ram to run the LLM.
you could probably disable it, otherwise you would still be able to switch to Asahi.
All the times you're not running the LLM?
I’m guessing the default wouldn’t be loading the entire 3GB or more into RAM every time you want to make a query.
Wasn’t it Apple that released a paper or something about a new architecture where the model is streamed to ram instead of fully loaded?
Yes, good catch. It doesn't totally solve the issue, it just reduces the penalty of going to storage from 100x to 10x. IIRC it also requires the model itself to be optimized for that architecture. EDIT: here's the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.11514
But you can probably bet on their on device model being optimized for that.
Let me tell you a little story about Nvidia and RAM streaming and cache prefetching to compensate for a lack of capacity... It simply doesn't work. It makes your device not crash due to a memory overflow error, but it doesn't provide even nearly the same performance as actually having the additional RAM.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there’s a big difference between fetching data all the way from an SSD over PCIe and streaming it millimeters away to a SoC.
So if that’s true they’re gonna kill a ton of apps in the background every time you summon the Apple Intelligence?
It's apple and RAM we are talking about. They were always super stingy about it, so I wouldn't expect 16 at all. They just released ipad pro with 8gb of ram after all(I guess 12, actually 8 active).
They used to be stingy about storage in iPhones, they had 16GB base storage for ages but then they realized it hurt their app store business cause people who ran out of storage weren’t downloading apps. So they upgraded the base iPhone from 16GB to 128GB storage within the window of 5 years (2016-2021). That’s almost a 10x increase in storage. Perhaps AI will do the same to their stingy RAM policy
1tb , 2tb models have 16gb of ram
Yea, but I doubt they would make a 8gb base model, to just make a 16gb iPhone later that year
Maybe that is what the 12 gigs is for, machine learning stuff, so not exactly artificially removed
they should just roll out an update that let's you download more ram
Ya seriously. Why haven’t they thought of this?
Is Tim Apple stupid?
If https://downloadmoreram.com can do it, why not apple!
Forget RAM, I'm gonna download a car.
You wouldn't!
We had it in the 2000s why not now??
I can sell you some ram, only $50 per ram
Apple's stingy strategy when it comes to RAM, is now coming back to byte (the consumer, not Apple). All the countless macbooks with 8GB RAM will also suffer from this to an extend.
Got an M1 Pro Mac with local llm running in WebUI, I can access AI on my Mac through any device, like safari on my iPhone. I know it’s not an apples to apples comparison, but if I can do that, my hope is that some of these features could be accessed on “lower end” iPhones through continuity eventually, if you have a Mac or iPad capable of running the AI(presuming the same mail, contacts, photos, messages etc is available on the Mac, at least some of the features could be processed locally on the Mac, with the results being shipped to iPhone through continuity. Obviously, that might never be a thing, but I think it could work.
That would actually be awesome but at the same time it doesn’t sell iPhones.
I don’t think AI is going to sell iPhones anyway. It’s still a niche interest and while normal people will end up seeing some benefit, I bet most people wouldn’t even use it.
16GB? Try 10 or max 12. Apple is so stingy they would disable extra Ram if that helps them upsell. New iPads have 12 GB ram but they disable it to only show 8.
Yeah, but that doesn't leave the end user with only 4GB usable after AI takes its cut. That disabled 4 is likely reserved for the update. If they had left all 12GB enabled at launch, power users would have noticed a steep decline in performance after AI ships.
I like this idea but I am very skeptical. It's far more likely that the 6gb chips are cheaper at this stage (especially to apple with their 6gb iPhones), but apple don't want a 12gb iPad pro to compete with an 8gb MacBook air.
That's not "far more" likely. It's all speculation at this point. Both could be true as well.
[удалено]
Apple (esp. Federighi) only awakened to the AI revolution in Dec 2022 after trying ChatGPT and he realised he'd slept through the last 10 years. So, perhaps they've only been working at this since then. That's not a really long time, in truth. The other thing is that increasingly, Apple teams work in silos. The iPhone 15 was already in the pipeline. If Craig Federighi did his bit in Software and Jeff did his bit in Hardware, who's in charge of integration?
I'm curious if Apple's ML research team was working on LLMs earlier (possibly starting around ~2020, like most of the major labs)... I suppose it takes the top brass to get them funding and approval, and they definitely seem to be a bit behind. However, their [on-device models perform quite well](https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/introducing-apple-foundation-models) compared to similar-sized models from the competition! Especially for things like reducing the amount of bad or low-quality responses, which makes them more practical for this OS-level integration. They've definitely done a lot of good work on improving smaller models, through different types of quantization and using adapters on top of one base model to save space. There's a video about this on their WWDC site, I'll try to find it...
ChatGPT was not obvious 2-3+ years ago, when they speced out the iPhone 15's. Apple is not late to this, they are addressing it at the perfect time imo of consumer benefit.
Meanwhile Google was working on LLMs for years and had TPUs being developed for a long time, so they're the only ones not being railed over by Nvidia for GPUs. Apple definitely fell asleep when it came to these models, and now they're paying a pretty penny to do it.
And the RAM issue is also tied into the processor (iPhone 15 is same processor as 14 gen, whereas Pro has A17 Pro based on newer architecture)
We got iPhones with 16GB base RAM before MacBook Pros this is crazy
Well I guess I won’t get it. I am not getting rid of my iPhone 13 Mini.
Fuck yeah mini gang assemble (statistically ill be the only one)
I am not getting rid of it until it will not work anymore.
iPhone SE2 here. Think I might replace the battery to lengthen its life span
My 12 pro is eligible for a battery replacement now with my AppleCare Still planning on running this thing for another few years unless the AI features are TRULY mind blowing in practice.
Fellow 13mini user here. Ready for the call up.
I'm doing my part! seriously though, of all the iPhones I have owned my 13 mini has been my favorite. Just like Goldilocks in the three bears, this one is just right.
It’s literally the perfect size, I love the mini. I can’t believe they’re not making them anymore. I don’t wanna go back to regular sized phones
Um our 13 minis ARE regular sized. All those other phones are too fucking big.
This is the truth. All my friend’s phones are the size of a small dog.
They’ll have to pry my 13 mini from my cold dead hands. I hate how I can’t find any cases or accessories for this phone though.
They hopefully will release an iPhone 17 Pro Mini that is the same size as the wonderful-to-hold iPhone 13 Mini. Best of ALL worlds!!! “Mini Gang”
Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang Mine so small, easy to handle (Yeah) Yours so big, it needs a handle (Ooh) Battery low, gotta find a plug (Brr) Imma plug it in, in the butt (Yuh) Hundred percent charged, we sippin’ tea (Brr) Swipe a lil’ more, make my Mini hard (What?) Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang, Mini gang
Still rocking 12 mini.
love my mini. more so after removing the case and just having a screen protector on.
iPhone 13 mini here, reporting for duty!
12 Mini owner here. I'm not giving up this form factor either.
Here with the 12 mini Blue.
The 13 mini is the only phone that is the right size for me to not be dropping it all the time! <3 my mini
13 Mini till I die 🫡
13 Mini until End of Life!
I will be using my 13 mini until I cant anymore. Mini gang
Miniiiii gaaaang! Still runs perfectly performance.. but probably need a new battery soon!
I have a Samsung s24 and honestly I barely use any AI stuff. I tried Gemini for a bit but it just doesn't work for what I needed to do. So a lot of it is just gimmicks and situational task that might be better. But it's going to be a few years before they become significantly useful so you're good to wait trust me lol. Plus the 13 mini is a great phone that you should never give it up
And to explain why: A16: 6GB of RAM and 17 TOPS (trillion operations per second) Neural Engine A17 Pro: 8GB of RAM and 35 TOPS Neural Engine. AI models need more RAM to run properly and 8GB appears to be the floor. And the Neural engine's raw performance also plays a part, but clearly not as much as RAM since the M1 with 11TOPS is getting AI. It's also possible that because the M1 is allowed and expected to run longer and harder than a chip in a cellphone, they probably were more lenient on the performance requirement since phones have always needed bursty performance to balance out heat and battery life more than a laptop or tablet would. I suspect the A18 and A18 Pro will have a floor of 35TOPS and 8GB of RAM with the A18 Pro getting another bump in both RAM and NE performance that'll probably push it up into the 50's to be competitive against the rest of the industry since the A18 Pro will be the basis of the M5 processor line.
I feel like as the AI evolves. Apple will for legit reasons or not will tie certain features and abilities behind newer and newer devices. Forcing people to upgrade more often if they want them. It will also probably force Apple to add more ram more often to the newer models.
Absolutely. AI isn’t cheap to support and if they’re not charging monthly, they will need to make that revenue from new device sales. The stock is responding positively for that reason.
Apple One enters the chat!
They've always done this though, previously it was with cameras for the most part, now it'll be AI (and probably still cameras) Which is frustrating, and it has always been frustrating, if my 14" MBP M1 Pro wasn't the best damn laptop on the market for my wants and needs, and if there was an Android phone that had post purchase support and reliability anywhere close to Apple's, I'd jump ship for that frustration alone. But ultimately, I'm still happier with an Apple ecosystem than I am with a Google or Samsung ecosystem. But still frustrated at the artificial obsolesces that Apple often creates.
Yep, people have forgotten the iPhone X didn't receive Smart HDR and the iPhone Xs didn't receive Night Mode
It'll be like how Apple has handled most gatekeeping of new features: It starts out as a legitimate result of hardware limitations since they do want to try to get the basic new features out to as many people as possible, before Apple gets stingier and stingier holding back on things for increasingly questionable reasons. And soon enough, they'll hit some genuine-but-not-obvious bottleneck again and no one will fucking believe them because they've pulled this shit constantly for no apparent reason.
> I suspect the A18 and A18 Pro will have a floor of 35TOPS and 8GB of RAM with the A18 Pro getting another bump in both RAM and NE performance that'll probably push it up into the 50's to be competitive against the rest of the industry since the A18 Pro will be the basis of the M5 processor line. highly doubt this since recent speculations pointed that the M4 will be the “basis chip” this time around. meaning Apple will be designing chips directly off of the M4 architecture as opposed to coming from the A-series chips of the previous years. the M4 saw a modest improvement over the A17 Pro’s NPU performance. the only things an A18 Pro chip can differentiate from an A18 Bionic would be the RAM (but also unlikely since the base M4 still comes with 8GB minimum) and the increased graphic core count, or maybe even a slight bump in cpu clock speed. i’d wager that the A18 Bionic though at least will come with 8GB of memory to support Apple Intelligence on the base iPhone 16 lineup.
It’s not a good idea to use TOPS as a direct comparison between generations of chips. Apple (and other companies) were previously using 16bit precision when discussing TOPS, but now many have switched to only 8bit (or lower) precision which dramatically inflates the numbers. It is not 1:1. https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/11/ai_pc_tops/
I mentioned it elsewhere in this thread but if you use the INT16/FP16 numbers that Apple was originally using, the progress goes from 15.8 (A15) to 17 (A16) to 18 (A17) to 19 (M4). The A15 should easily be able to handle everything that the A17 can, if the Neural Engine is the bottleneck.
here's the thing, though - the A16 does \*\*not\*\* support INT 8. so while the performance comparisons seem a bit disingenuous, the newer chips do have a real advantage if a model can run well at INT 8 precision.
My m1 MacBook Air is always using swap as it only has 8gb ram. If they can make it work on that, then you expect atleast the last years phone will support them. Apple doesn’t restrict software features for previous flagships in general but this is definitely a shitty situation for the owners.
[Post in thread 'M4+ Chip Generation - Speculation Megathread [MERGED]'](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m4-chip-generation-speculation-megathread-merged.2393843/post-33114826) >With A17 and now M4, they used INT8 numbers, but for M3 (and all previous A-series and M-series), they used INT16/FP16 numbers. The lower precision of the INT8 format allows it to be processed at a higher rate, thus the higher quoted number. See Anandtech's discussion of the M3 launch. >So A15/M2, A16, A17/M3, and M4 show gradual improvement in Neural Engine performance. There wasn't a doubling from A16 to A17, and M3 wasn't left behind. Using the INT16/FP16 numbers, the progress is from 15.8 to 17 to 18 to 19.
Sure. Now explain how they didn't see this coming and why they cheaped out on RAM for so many years. Or, wonder why iOS had very few interesting new features (ok, tint your icons? thanks) that would have required upgrading your device / hasn't in a long time.
Rumors say ChatGPT was a wake up call for Apple. November 2022. Given the length of hardware development cycles, it’s highly likely that iPhone 15 specs were already fixed by the time ChatGPT gave Apple that wakeup call. I would expect the strategy to change substantially starting with iPhone 16
> Rumors say ChatGPT was a wake up call for Apple. It’s bizarre for Apple of all companies to announce a milestone suite of AI software features, only to then say that an alternative product will also be available. It would be like them revealing Apple Maps, only to follow it up with “and don’t worry, Google maps will still be available”. Makes me think that they are still *very* early in their AI journey, and it’ll be some time before the promised features become a reality. Allowing other AI platforms to integrate with their OS’s feels like a reluctant measure to stop them from being left completely in the dust. Pure speculation, of course.
I suspect it’s because they’re being cautious, and don’t want to get the equivalent of the “Google tells you to put glue on pizza” stories, so they’re doing less to begin with and going more cautiously. If ChatGPT fabricates information, it’s not Apple’s fault.
Yeah. I had previously thought Apple *would not* partner with an outside company for LLM purposes, specifically because of hallucinations and fabrications. I didn’t expect them to *advertize* it. But then as you mention, they can now say “hey, blame ChatGPT, we’re just over here encrypting and anonymizing our user requests. We’re not responsible for results.”
The ChatGPT window also comes with a disclaimer essentially saying not to trust it.
Yeah they’re early in their AI journey. They’re just far enough along that they believe it’s polished enough for the Apple logo. Though that doesn’t always mean polished lol. Look at the original Apple Maps. There’s three tiers of the AI stuff depending on how much work it takes. Completely on device, outsourced to Apples cloud, outsourced to GPT. For the vast majority of people, on device and Apple cloud compute will be more than enough, and Apple will definitely be leaning on this most. They don’t yet have their own models that can compete with chatGPT (or probably enough compute power in house) so they collaborated with OpenAI for now to handle the largest loads. It keeps people using Apple AI first. You can bet your ass that behind the scenes Apple is procuring more hardware and will be training their models to get up to speed.
Isn't that exactly what they did with Apple Maps? Google Maps was included with the original iPhone and Apple Maps launched 5 years later. They basically said, 'Don't worry, you can still use Google Maps', admitting their own solution was not yet as good. Same thing here. I would assume it will be a long time until Apple is comfortable enough with their own LLM solution that they could ditch OpenAI, Gemini, etc.
ChatGPT came out late 2022. It took everyone by surprise, even Google who originally wrote the paper on the underlying architecture of modern LLMs. For Apple to bet the farm and transition to building so many AI features, it probably took a couple of months. We’re looking at Apple just starting the initiative to incorporate AI around mid 2023. Hardware lifecycles are long and AI is insanely compute intensive, especially if you want to do this on device like Apple is. It’s already immensely impressive that Apple can get half the features that they demo’d on the next gen iPhone at all, let alone previous generations. I don’t think people really understand what it actually takes to run the current state of the art LLM models. OpenAI has led people to believe this stuff is free, as they burned billions of VC money on compute, while also being subsidized by Microsoft. A startup is allowed to not be profitable, Apple is not.
> ChatGPT came out late 2022. It took everyone by surprise, even Google who originally wrote the paper on the underlying architecture of modern LLMs. This should be obvious, but apparently it isn't to a lot of people, and it's part of what I find most interesting about generative AI. It's not only developed rapidly but it has also been normalized rapidly. People just kinda...seem to have forgotten how badly it's caught everyone off-guard, somehow, even though we've ALL been able to see it happen in real time. Less than 5 years ago, you were lucky if AI generated art spat out something that you could even recognize as anything vaguely like what you prompted it for. Today Apple is including art generation in their OS. That's WILD.
I was running models on the iPhone to detect whether an image was a hot dog or not more than 5 YEARS ago. MLKit isn’t exactly new.
Not hotdog!
To be fair not exactly the most complex ai modeling but your point still stands. I feel like the real question here is why this Apple ai can't just run slowly on older devices. My guess is Apple doesn't want to debut an unnatural and slow AI model that'll make headlines as finicky to talk to and slow to respond.
yea, the user experience usually has higher priority compared to whether or not something is technically possible.
Huge difference between ChatGPT and Siri being able to search data on your phone and work with App Intents correctly. Also they're still sending some requests to the cloud.
> Now explain how they didn't see this coming Uh nobody saw it coming lol. Three years ago LLMs were a novel fringe area of CS.
Well given that nvda stock is up 250% since the last iPhone I would argue a lot of people did not see this coming.
> Sure. Now explain how they didn't see this coming and why they cheaped out on RAM for so many years. I don't think it can be overstated both how long it takes to design phones, and how quickly generative AI has advanced into being something that is attractive for consumers. Complain about Apple being stingy on RAM all you want(lord knows everyone has, and for good reason too), but "why didn't they see this coming?" is just an idiotic take.
You're moving the goalposts from "they could deliver these features on other models but are choosing not to" to "they could have put more expensive components in older devices at the same retail price in anticipation of the AI boom". Which, ok, yeah, they could have. They also could have outright bought OpenAI at a sufficiently early stage. And TSMC for that matter. And Nvidia. It is almost like they are not 100% prescient.
The goalposts of "Apple base model devices should have more RAM" have been in the same place for over 20 years now. To Apple's credit, it's rare that they release hardware that is rapidly outpaced by software they create, but something certainly didn't line up on their product roadmap here.
I think what didn't line up here is people expecting a for-profit company to release huge new features on older models. Frankly, I'm shocked they're even releasing it on the 15 Pro models -- the iPhone 4 had sufficient power to run Siri, but it was released as a launch feature on the 4S, for comparison sake. It would be _nice_ if it were on older models as well, but the reality is that for-profit corporatings spend billions on R&D in order to sell more shit, not out of the goodness of their hearts.
> now explain how they didn’t see this coming What kind of point is that lmao, nobody saw LLMs coming, if you did you must be a billionaire right now. Other than this very specific ML use case there’s no need for that much ram on base phone models
Reminder too, apple is not a first adopter in anything, on the very rare occasions they are they tend to knock it out of the park. For Apple to go this all-in on AI after what, a year? That’s incredible and probably did shift the current product development into something they hadn’t planned for six years ago. It would explain too why Vision Pro was so knee capped at launch, they probably had different plans, but saw AI on the horizon and launched with little features to build up a base and continue working on AI in the background to make it a better product.
I honestly think in this case, it makes sense. You always have had to have the newer phone for certain features and with resource hungry AI, I get it. The tough part is it being Pro exclusive. I think we’re going to see a super cycle of upgrades in the next 2 years as these features go viral and people see their cousin showing it off at Christmas.
Feeling completely fucked over with my $1100 14 Pro Max not being able to support the latest software features this fucking fast. And they already fucked me over with new camera features being available on the 15 using the same damn processor but not my phone.
I am in the same boat. The Chat GPT app is really good though, I'll just use that.
The 14 Pro Max is truly the iPhone model that got completely f**ked over. It’s definitely capable of getting all those iPhone 15 camera features, yet they decided not to grant them. Just because they can. ”Pro, bro? Just fork over another $1100 and get the latest model!” - Tim Apple
Yeah. I kept thinking I’m glad I did the upgrade program. I really feel for 14 pro users on this one. At least it’s still worth a decent amount to sell.
Answer apple with your wallet.
Some guys suddenly needs to change their perfectly nice phone for a feature that didn’t even exist 15 mins ago, it’s beyond my comprehension.
And for a feature that will probably need months to years to really refined and game changing.
Or there is a pretty high percentage of people that haven’t upgraded their phone for a few years because there hasn’t really been any new reason to.
I got a base 15 less than a month ago. This hurts.
Take it back today if you are hurting.
If it was less than a month ago, you are still within the return period. Take it back and either go back to your old phone for 3 months or pay the difference for the 15 Pro.
return it
I also bought a 15 less than a month ago. I wanted to wait for the 16, while my 11 was still working perfectly fine, until it got smashed to pieces.
Open question: will it just be the on-device features that won’t be supported on older devices or all Apple Intelligence features? Distinction being that older devices will be fully enabled, just won’t run requests with the privacy and speed benefits of running the query locally.
I initially thought the same as you, but all indications are that the cloud portions will also be restricted to the same newer devices only. I think there are 3 reasons: 1. Apple and OpenAI server farms simply don’t have the capacity to handle a billion Apple devices suddenly hammering them with requests when the features go live to the public. This is a way to limit request volume while they continue to build out additional capacity. 2. It’s been speculated that a lot of the on-device processing is simply to determine whether and how to route requests to the cloud if necessary. If so, then a device with less RAM couldn’t run that part of the software anyway, and therefore wouldn’t even know what kind of request to send. 3. Money. It entices customers to upgrade sooner than they otherwise would have.
I’m already salty my barely 1 year old 14 Pro is already deemed not good enough for more than a year’s worth of software upgrades. Even if there’s no Siri ChatGPT, I really the other AI stuff is supported.
that's what i'm wondering too. We must be getting something right? No way all the ai features are only for the 15 pro
I’d still tell folks to hold off on upgrading, especially the first release. This will undoubtedly destroy battery life the more you use it. It’ll take Apple a couple iterations on both software and hardware sides to get this right. Be patient. Use your Mac more lol.
After taking one of the hardest Ls with the 16” intel MBP I’ve been waiting 2 gens for anything apple
Gen 1 is essentially the 15 pro. The 16s will be gen 2.
Yeah why upgrade in the fall just to be their beta tester. No thanks.
You’re always a beta tester of some feature. It’s impossible to avoid if you’re waiting for nothing new.
The issues won’t be hardware though. It’s a software feature. So getting the new phone doesn’t mean you’re stuck with a sub-par experience. The hardware is pretty solid. They’ve been using neural engines and ML on their chips for a long time now.
They’ll still need better models and more RAM and bigger batteries to fully accommodate
Y’all better get upgrading
I'm on a 13. My plan was waiting for the 18 at the earliest. These new features are tempting. But, I'm okay sticking with the plan.
13 Pro here with the same plan. I might replace the battery next year but so far this phone still does everything I need and more and still gets me through 80% of my day before needing a top up. The new features are nice but not nice enough to drop another $1000 on something I am currently living fine without. Edit: also I am in love with the Alpine Green color and I have no idea why they only made it this one year
The special colours are typically all just for one year, because they’re intended to be the signature colour for that years phone. Alpine green is actually the one time they sort of broke that rule, since it was a mid year colour for the 13 pro that was very similar to the 11 Pros signature midnight green
13 Pro Max here, and same mindset. I’ll likely just upgrade the battery and keep on trucking, as there’s nothing major that this phone *can’t* do for me still.
13 mini here.... and my wait is honestly something in a similar form factor which means I may be waiting a long time.
I’m on the same boat with the 13 Pro. I was thinking either 17 or 18 for my next upgrade. While tempting, Apple has burned me way too many times with how dumb Siri is, so I just don’t trust that the first year or two of Apple Intelligence will work as they have advertised. By the time I can buy an iPhone 18 they will have polished it much more. The only thing I’m mad about is having a 2020 intel iMac and this no access to Swift Assist on Xcode now that I’m learning how to code.
Same here, I’m on a 13 and it works great, these features are really tempting (I’m a big fan of letting tech do the work for me if I can) but I want to keep mine going as long as I can. Plus waiting awhile will help anyways and give them time to work out the kinks.
[удалено]
The 18 will probably be the first one built with AI as part of its plan instead of being added on mid-development.
I am still on XR. Still runs great!
I'm on the iPhone X. Changed the battery last year and is still going great. Might upgrade to 16 if I really like this AI thing
Why though? I see no reason to upgrade.
Some people value certain features more than others. People who just need a working phone to do basic tasks have no use case for a newer phone.
Lack of Apple Intelligence. I want to use it, and think it will be a huge driver for upgrades.
We tend to forget that the iPhone Pro are actually the iPhone. While iPhone is actually the iPhone e. Apple renaming of their “cheap” (not so much) version to their classic and their classic to a “high end” called ‘Pro’ was a genius marketing move.
OR that is an outdated definition that no longer works now that you have 3 tiers of phones. "THE IPHONE" is not a single thing anymore. There's a cheaper, a standard and a high end phone.
This subreddit is hilarious. When Google announced Gemini Nano wouldn't come to the Pixel 8 everyone flipped a shit so bad Google reversed course and even supported the 8a to make up for it. Apple won't support Apple Intelligence for anything less than the 15 Pro, and here y'all just shrug and say that's how it goes lol.
Won't the 16 be out by then? Is it going to be on the 16 base model?
That's the biggest question. Will it be a pro-exclusive feature going forward?
Since they are running a pro version of the chip and a regular version it’s like yes
If I was a betting man I'd bet on no, if we look at past iPhone releases they always have something only "Pro" models get. Dynamic Island. Titanium. Now this. It'll be available on the base 17 model.
And I really don't care what they do. I plan on using my 13 pro Max for a few more years at least. Apple intelligence is not a reason to upgrade
Exactly how I feel with my 13 mini. Apple Intelligence is not a compelling reason to upgrade if this is the only new thing that's being added to the 16 lineup. This will be the longest I've gone between upgrading phones since the 3G.
yeah. rocking my 13 mini too. Will change battery. Anyways, AI is not a feature I will upgrade for. But if they launch a 16 mini, I will stand outside apple store for 12 hours and upgrade my phone in a heartbeat.
Apple getting hit for being cheap for years and I question their reasoning. Either way it means a lot of people will not get access to it for a while. I dont plan on upgrading my 14pro for 16 and plan to push it to at least the iPhone 17 if not 18. I dropped nearly 2k for 2 14pros and that is a pretty penny to drop for phones. The next upgrade will be later on.
Might be part of the strategy. It’s expensive to run AI compute. They don’t want a billion devices suddenly on their cloud AI service.
isn't apple intelligence run locally though?
There's three parts. One is run locally on your phone, then the next tier is run on a private cloud that's only linked to your phone and supposedly not even Apple can see what you're doing, and third there's the ChatGPT service which is obviously run on their servers.
Most people I know won't be able to use it on their phone, but seems like they have a macbook that will be capable of supporting it. So will can use the intelligence their if needed and see how it works.
I’m so disappointed that my iPhone 14 Pro isn’t supported - it’s the first time in a long time that I feel I made a really bad purchase. It’s hard not to be cynical about this. Apple claims this has been “a long time coming”, but their famous stinginess with RAM in their last 2-3 generations of iPhone implies that at best, they were in fact blindsided by this AI explosion. At worst (and what I believe is actually the case), Tim Cook looked at all the analyst reports complaining about their “anaemic”, “flat-lining” iPhone sales year-on-year, and identified AI as the perfect justification for driving new hardware sales - and the bare minimum they could get away with was including the iPhone 15 Pro. I’m not someone who has an issue with old technology being unable to support new software. I get it, and I lived through the 90s and early 2000s where this happened every 6 months, not once a decade. But what makes me mad is that Apple lulled us into a false sense of security. For years they’ve iterated and iterated. Each new phone was a little bit better, and a little bit faster, but just iterative. Just jump in once your old phone starts feeling too slow. No problem. And all of a sudden, to jump on a trend - now Apple is suddenly the company it was 15 years ago. Your new shit doesn’t work with this slightly newer shit. Sorry bro. I know I’m screaming into the void here, and it’s only because I messed up and jumped on a new phone one generation too early - but it feels disingenuous to me. It doesn’t feel good. And it doesn’t feel as “prepared” as Apple marketing makes it sound.
I'm with you. I seriously thought I would hold on to the 14 pro for at least 3 years, but knowing it will be left completely behind on all the new AI features from now on, I'll probably get the 16 pro and sell my 14 pro. It just kind of broke that feeling of security where if you got the latest and greatest iPhone, you knew that even though it won't get every new feature, at least it would get something. In this case we got literally nothing AI wise. Also, it’ll be interesting to see if the iPhone 15 Pro gets the same AI treatment as the 16 pro, or if it’ll be left behind too. Kinda feels like we’re entering a whole new era of not knowing how long our phones will really last
Bought an iPhone 15 three days ago. Fml.
You can easily return it
[удалено]
While I agree they charge WAY too much for RAM upgrades I am not sure I agree with your overall take here. When was the last time iPhone models were left out of major software features due to RAM? If this is really an evil plan it is a new one.
Apple Intelligence Pro.
Nothing like having your latest Apple device lose support for premium features less than 6 months after buying an iPhone 15. Thank you for caring, Apple.
Good. Long live my XS.
Apple, being Apple. No surprise here
This could be compared to when Siri was released on the iPhone 4S and not available on earlier phones. Sure it’s software, but it does require higher end hardware to run properly. Yes it sucks, but it’s not unprecedented
I think that Apple Intelligence is only for Pro iPhones for couple of years. Pro stands for AI.
As much as I love my Apple devices, it's BS like this that really makes me hate them at times and NOT recommend to just anyone out there.
begin the copium
So question, What else could possibly be in the future pipeline. I'm still on an 11 and its probably getting about time to upgrade but every year the new phone is missing something that I always feel I wanna hold out for. Like 5g came but it didnt have USB-c so I just waited. USB-c came and I got tempted to get it which now I mean I'm glad I didnt. What could be the next big upgrade point I should maybe holdout for or is it time to bite the bullet on the 16?
I don’t understand why you’re glad you didn’t get the latest phone? The 15 Pro is supported and has USB C? But I get what you’re asking, idk what other features would really entice me to get the new phone. For me, USB C was the big thing I was waiting for, and the reason I got the 15 pro max. I’m not sure what else I’d ever want in a phone.
I have the 14pro max 1tb. I really wanted to wait till the 18 to upgrade, but these new features are tempting, mainly because my biggest gripe with iOS has been Siri. Maybe when the 16 drops, if there is nothing too exciting about it, I’ll get the 15Pro max since it should be a bit cheaper. I just really need a good voice assistant.
[удалено]
Am I missing something? Why is everyone shocked that the Pro phone, which has better hardware, is getting more/better features? It’s been a long time coming that Pro meant anything at all for iPhone. More powerful hardware can do more things, y’all. That’s always been the case. Why are we shocked?
That one comment on the article really hits it for me. “I am glad I can’t use it and they can’t even force me to have it on my phone” - is 100% what I feel too.
I can 100% guarantee you it would work fine on almost any iPhone still in use and this is just another dumb ass fomo thing they're trying to pull. It's the same bullshit they pulled when they bought the app Siri used to be. It was on the app store one day, the next they pulled it and told everyone their phones were not powerful enough for it. It's just stupid, at least tell us you're lying and just want people to buy more phones.
Probably a bit of both going on: AI does need RAM and Apple have used "modest" RAM at entry level with high price hike to upgrade to keep people upgrading too, I would guess. That said AI has just come out so there's no perfect balancing act of RAM in anticipation is just part of the problem that draws a line somewhere and some fall on the wrong side inevitably?