The closest thing was probably Siri being exclusive to the iPhone 4S.
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Who else find this years update is so underwhelming?
- Thread starter Aoligei
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To be fair, I can see why though, they want to do as much 'on device' as possible, so the devices specified have the M1+ processors and the RAM to handle that best. Apple clearly do not want to fragment function of this, or risk a degraded experience by the lower devices pushing more to the cloud (amount of data being send, speed of connection, plus waiting time for the user on the device for the response).
Does it suck, and could they have possibly compromised more? Yes. It's their choice tho, we have to just crack on, voice any complaints and see if anything changes.
When it launches in the Fall, it's going to be labelled as Beta, be limited to US English in the settings, etc. so you won't see any changes then, but much later on, if any changes to enable older devices. I would expect the full line up of the new iPhones announced in the Fall will support Apple Intelligence, though, and only the 15 range to have it only on the Pro devices.
Edit to add: Ming-Chi Kuo (Apple Analyst, who is regularly quoted in articles) has said 16Gb RAM is needed for the on device LLM, apparently.
Every year this post is among the first to pop up...
What were you expecting that makes iOS18 so "underwhelming?" iPhones aren't ever going to be able to make pizzas hot and fresh out of the charge port.
If I remember correctly, M1’s Neural processor is equivalent to A14/15? So this is probably intentional?
"Who else find this years update is so underwhelming?"
There's always one. 🤷♂️
This was about the most impactful, profound update announcement ever.
There's always one. 🤷♂️
This was about the most impactful, profound update announcement ever.
I think we learned who Tim Cook’s successor might be. Today was indeed the Craig show.
Hmm from what he'd said, I'd assumed the 15 Pro's had them, but seemingly not from when I've checked. I should have checked, rather than just taking his word for it, but he's usually spot on with what he comes out with.
Ahh that makes more sense. I need to find where I read what he said, maybe I misread, and it's 8GB upwards, which makes sense, as the non-Pro 15's have 6GB RAM
I guess should reserve judgment until getting the highlights in a video or watching the key note but
Seems like it’s mostly icons freed to go anywhere , dark theme and wallpaper color matching , and chatGPT coinciding with Siri on iPhone 15+?
I’m sure other bells and whistles but am I missing anything big ?
Seems like it’s mostly icons freed to go anywhere , dark theme and wallpaper color matching , and chatGPT coinciding with Siri on iPhone 15+?
I’m sure other bells and whistles but am I missing anything big ?
It falls a little flat though. Apple knew they were planning this last year while developing the iPhone 15 lineup. They could have bumped the RAM in anticipation to ensure a broader compatibility.
In my view Apple skipped that path though for a simple reason. Sales. They are hoping that it will generate enough buzz to drive upgrades. The Pro lineup was spared mainly due to them needing something for developers to code apps against between now and September.
It is a shame to see Apple doing tactics like this so often. I would have saw it as less cringy if they would have ensured broad iPhone 15 compatibility. Especially considering Apple has been ahead of the industry including “AI” co-processors for almost a decade now.
Every year touting how much faster they are without showing any serious use of that power until now.
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You've got to have a line of separation between what's a non-pro device and a pro device - both pricing and hardware, and RAM easily falls into that.
Also, saying Apple should have put more RAM in, for something that was still being developed, is daft. When the iPhone 15 range was being designed and prototyped/finalised, would have been very early last year. We have no way to know for sure, but I doubt they would have had Apple Intelligence working enough to fully realise how much RAM, along with the processing chip power needed, to run Apple Intelligence in a way they were happy with. Seeing as it will be labelled as 'beta' when iOS 18 launches in the fall, that further adds more to my point.
Don't get me wrong, Apple, and other companies, will have limited things in certain versions of their devices, but that's to different audiences, with different budgets, etc. That's why you get Pro/Ultra/'a' models, etc. All companies have sale tactics, some are dicks, some just get portrayed as dicks for people that wanna gripe.
I wouldn't be surprised if the full iOS 16 lineup has enough RAM though.
They write themselves. This year it was written before the event was even over. Next year it'll be written before the event even starts.
Apple set hardware expectations for this before delivering devices last year. Otherwise, they would have risked coming into WWDC to announce a feature that couldn’t run on any iPhone until September. If you think Apple could have skipped announcing AI at this years WWDC then I’d that’s daft.
As I said, the Pro was setup for this since it would be the device of choice for developers.
Limiting on “regular” iPhones definitely helps Apple drive upgrades. But moves like this can also limit developers getting fully onboard with new features where the audience is smaller. It is also questionable how much it will drive upgrades due to how poorly consumers rate Siri.
I think this time they simply didn't have the foresight when designing the iPhone 15. Apple has been able to get away with having less RAM for over a decade but suddenly this AI tech doesn't allow for that. Apple usually tries to keep the main features of a new iOS update on all the phones they're still selling at the very least, let alone the current model.
I'm guessing they've learned from this and next year even the "lowly" SE will get an A18 chip and 8GB of RAM.
Tell me you are either not reading and understanding what I am saying, or you're purposefully doing so to complain, without telling me you're doing either of those things....
haha.I find this one of the most compelling updates in many years with so many areas of improvements and new features.
The big mistake was using the iPhone 14 processor in the iPhone 15 (first time they ever did that). They goofed and probably hadn't committed to this extensive plan of onboard AI LLM/LAM processing. While I'm sure they *could if they wanted* bring a subset of the AI features to older phones and the iPhone 15, the problem is AI features by their nature are nebulous, often used by voice request (as opposed to seeing or not seeing an app, or feature in an app), and it might be confusing how to show or tell a user what a specific model of device can or cannot do. Now Apple makes it simpler because they are dividing devices into able to do AI, unable to do AI with no confusing middle group. It really stinks that the iPhone 15 being sold today (which for example I bought my son just 2 months ago) is cut out of these new features.