In a little over a week, Apple will introduce iOS 18 and other new versions of the operating system. with a focus on delivering AI capabilities to its customers at the system level.
Apple is expected to leverage a combination of on-device and cloud-based AI capabilities. But to use these new features, customers may need the latest and greatest version. Mark Gurman writes that many future AI systems on devices will require the latest high-end models – the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
This will mean that to use each new feature in iOS 18, customers will need to own the latest high-quality ‘Pro’ iPhone with A17 Pro chip. (Note that the cheaper iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus released last fall feature the older A16 chip.)
The minimum requirements for the A17 are likely partly the result of marketing segmentation of the product, with Apple increasing its appeal higher-end models, partly due to technical requirements. The A17 features significantly faster CPU and GPU cores, as well as a new 16-core Neural Engine capable of 35 trillion operations per second. The amount of on-chip RAM has also increased from 6GB to 8GB.
By the time iOS 18 ships (likely in September), the iPhone 15 Pro series will be a year old and Apple will have has unveiled the 2024 iPhone 16 lineup, which will undoubtedly support all the features of iOS 18 and perhaps even have additional exclusive AI capabilities.
The expected system requirements for Mac and iPad seem to be a little more comprehensive, and Gourmet suggests that the cutoff may be the M1 chip. This applies to 2020 Apple Silicon Macs and 2021 iPad Pros or later.
With M1 disabled, all iPad and Mac models will have at least 8GB of RAM, which may be the main limiting factor. If Neural Engine power was the bottleneck, then only the new M3 or M4 chip has a neural engine as powerful as the one found in the iPhone 15 Pro.
