The only sure thing about Apple intelligence, as they say, it's just the beginning. Next year keynote will announce a more intelligent (or less stupid) version and that will not be free anymore.
Apple is not improving the iPhone anymore, just small changes. So they need to switch to a new revenue model where you have to pay every month to use their phone.
If you listen well, when they announce that it's free in the keynote, there is an inconfortable feel in the voice. Just first release will be free... get ready to open your wallet.
Were you paid to come here and spout conspiracy theories because you "feel" it? Oh ffs.
A rather lame, half-baked, underwhelming attempt at AI.
A $3000B company with thousands and thousands of developers and a history of spectacular innovations can’t come up with its own AI?
Where do you get that Apple didn’t come up with its own AI? Yes, you can send requests to ChatGPT but most of the AI features are on-device or Apple’s servers. All of that is Apple designed.
It's too bad that they didn't delve further into the Private Cloud Computer and show some actual hardware and how it's different from other "Compute" solutions. What makes it secure? Saying that Swift makes it more secure is not really saying much. I'm guessing that they weren't quite ready to share more, but it was a missed opportunity.
I’m a self employed builder so these ”AI” (a bullshit term if ever I heard one) improvements should be very handy. Improved Siri and the ability to easily generate images on the fly that show clients what product options will look like in situ - yes please. Hopefully there’s a trickle down of some AI features to my iPhone 14 Pro, otherwise my daughter might be fighting over a very nice 2 year old hand me down iPhone!
Based on Apple's track record, I doubt if they will backport any of these AI features to older devices. It's not like they don't know how well they would run on these older machines.
And a year from now, Apple will announce new features some of which will only run on the iPhone 17 generation. If you have owned any Apple hardware devices more than a year, you should know this.
Reading between the lines, anyway, I think these features will only be available to beta test on iPhone 15 Pro, but in final implementation, may be available on earlier models, but without the possibility of on-device AI processing, because the hardware can't do it. True enough, some new features are only available on the latest model because of hardware requirements, but a surprising amount of new OS features are added to older models as well. This is part of the premium cost of Apple gear. The initial purchase price includes the costs of several years of upgrades to your existing device.
There are a few things that would be useful, an improved Siri for example. But there has never in my recollection been a WWDC keynote where I said “Oh F*** no” quite as many times. Many of their headline abilities I will just want to disable as soon as I can and as completely as I can. I AM an artist. I AM a writer. I have no use for AI generating my images and text.
Remember that you are not required to upgrade the operating system on any of your existing Apple devices. You are free to stick with iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma (or earlier).
Here's what I wrote in a separate thread: "Remember that almost everything Apple's devices can be disabled. Location Services, Notifications, Siri, iCloud services, Face ID, Touch ID, Apple Pay, microphone access, photo library access, camera access, music library access, Bluetooth, Wifi, whatever. You can basically run your iPhone like an iPod circa 2008 if you want."
If you have used Apple devices for more than a month and watched the keynote presentation with a modicum of attention, you will have noticed that these are ALL optional actions. If you just want to write an e-mail and hit send, you are still free to do so. You are free to type out your grocery list on Notes, draw stick figure people, make spelling errors, etc.
I am using an iP11, it is due for an upgrade. When that happens I will have no choice but to go to 18. Believe me I will be disabling as much of the AI S*** as I can as fast as I can.
You'll probably disable less than you think. No, if you're a professional writer, you don't want AI gunking up your mojo. That said, there are a lot of features on your iPhone that you use just like any other end-user, and you'll probably find the convenience of a pocket assistant useful. Even with the written word, not everything is a creative writing project. There are no doubt any number of mundane business communications that if you employed a personal assistant, with a few instructions for what you want, you'd hand that stuff off to them to write. Now you'll be able to do the same with the PA in your pocket.
I disagree.
Apple will not backport beta-tested iPhone 15 Pro features to older devices. If a feature is meant to be available on a particular device, the functionality will be available to test during the iOS beta period on those devices. That's what the beta is for: for people (developers mostly) to test. Remember that there are far more iPhone 13 out in the world than the number of iPhone 13 devices in Apple's various campuses around the world.
It's not like Apple will say "This feature ran great on the iPhone 15 Pro. Let's release it to a bunch of older devices and cross our fingers." Some other companies might do that but not Apple. They aren't that pathetically inept.
Nobody said they wouldn't beta test on older devices before releasing the feature on them. Maybe you're right and they'll never make it available on older models.
Still, it seems unlikely that Apple is going to want to introduce a new AI-powered Siri and have none of it available on the large number of existing HomePod devices out there. HomePods are all about Siri. You really think they'll leave all those users with 'dumb-Siri' in their homes? Maybe they'll say, tough luck, none of this will work on those devices, but that's probably not their preference, if they can avoid it.
So maybe they want to test AI features in the wild first on new devices that can mostly carry out the computational work on-device without simultaneously testing on older devices that would rely solely off-device and on their servers. testing newer devices first will promote their intent to maximize privacy by running AI on user devices as much as possible, while also initially limiting the load on Apple's AI cloud servers. Once the kinks are worked out in that implementation, they could then ramp up server capacity and test the features on older models (and HomePods) that will depend entirely on server capacity and bandwidth. Using a staged process would assure that first-round testing on new devices isn't negatively affected by conflicts over server resource demand with those older devices.
Presumably initial testing is going to provide real-world data on just exactly how much overflow there will be from on-device AI over to cloud servers. That information will significantly affect estimates for server capacity and bandwidth. They'll also be looking for user experience with real-world speed and performance differences between fully on-device functions and those that require some overflow to cloud computing. Better not to have those older AI-cloud-dependent devices affecting that performance until Apple has seen how well the first-round testing goes, and how much or how little demand server demand will come from newer devices.
So no, I don't think they're "pathetically inept" and would just dump an untested feature set on an unsuspecting public. I also don't agree that not being pathetically inept necessarily leads to your conclusion that older devices will never see any of these features.
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Are there any opportunities for developers with the HomePod? It was a developers conference, after all.
It's too bad that they didn't delve further into the Private Cloud Computer and show some actual hardware and how it's different from other "Compute" solutions. What makes it secure? Saying that Swift makes it more secure is not really saying much. I'm guessing that they weren't quite ready to share more, but it was a missed opportunity.
Still, it seems unlikely that Apple is going to want to introduce a new AI-powered Siri and have none of it available on the large number of existing HomePod devices out there. HomePods are all about Siri. You really think they'll leave all those users with 'dumb-Siri' in their homes? Maybe they'll say, tough luck, none of this will work on those devices, but that's probably not their preference, if they can avoid it.
So maybe they want to test AI features in the wild first on new devices that can mostly carry out the computational work on-device without simultaneously testing on older devices that would rely solely off-device and on their servers. testing newer devices first will promote their intent to maximize privacy by running AI on user devices as much as possible, while also initially limiting the load on Apple's AI cloud servers. Once the kinks are worked out in that implementation, they could then ramp up server capacity and test the features on older models (and HomePods) that will depend entirely on server capacity and bandwidth. Using a staged process would assure that first-round testing on new devices isn't negatively affected by conflicts over server resource demand with those older devices.
Presumably initial testing is going to provide real-world data on just exactly how much overflow there will be from on-device AI over to cloud servers. That information will significantly affect estimates for server capacity and bandwidth. They'll also be looking for user experience with real-world speed and performance differences between fully on-device functions and those that require some overflow to cloud computing. Better not to have those older AI-cloud-dependent devices affecting that performance until Apple has seen how well the first-round testing goes, and how much or how little demand server demand will come from newer devices.
So no, I don't think they're "pathetically inept" and would just dump an untested feature set on an unsuspecting public. I also don't agree that not being pathetically inept necessarily leads to your conclusion that older devices will never see any of these features.