The dust has settled, Apple gave us colourful icons, a somehow impressive calculator and Apple Intelligence - and as expected, zero hardware. But let’s put on our detective hats, and see what this means for Apple’s upcoming product line up.
First up, don’t expect much excitement in terms of Apple announcing anything between now and the iPhone 16 event, though of course once the adventurous masses running the beta software in US English get their hands on their first taste of Apple Intelligence, there will be plenty to talk about, so make sure you drop a sub if you haven’t already. It seems the biggest outrage after the Apple event was that AI is limited to just the A17 Pro and M1 or higher chips which means even Apple’s current iPhone 15 non-pro is left out of the fun. And, it’s limited to the iPhone, Mac and iPad, so no Apple Watch, no HomePods, no Apple TV etc, and maybe most surprisingly, even the M2 equipped Vision Pro unless I missed something huge? I don’t think I did.
So what’s with these draconian restrictions? Well, Apple’s head of AI and Machine Learning John Giannandrea clarified to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber that it’s a combination of bandwidth in the device and the size of the neural engine, and on older devices it would be so slow that it would not be useful, expanding that if it was a way to sell newer iPhones, they would also have restricted it to only the latest iPads and Mac chips too. Fair enough I guess!
But what is this going to show us about what’s coming? Well, I don’t think we’ll see much being released that can’t support Apple Intelligence in some way. Let’s start with iPhone.
We’ve already heard rumours that both the iPhone models in 2024, Pro and regular in both sizes will get the Action button that debuted with the iPhone 15 pro last year, and also both sizes will get what’s been slated as the “capture button”, which may also have capacitive functions where you can slide your finger across it as a control and multiple pressure levels, like a camera shutter button. We’ve also heard that the base iPhones won’t be getting last year’s pro chip this time but a brand new chip, partially because the A17 Pro was built on the first generation 3 nanometer process or N3 at TSMC which has been problematic in terms of yield. We’ve already seen the iPad move from M3 to M4 to avoid this process, moving to N3E which is apparently much easier to produce, but not compatible with designs from the previous process. So, new A18 chip most likely for the base iPhone, which WILL be able to support Apple Intelligence. Great stuff. The iPhone 16 Pro, will of course get a slightly beefier version which could be the A18 Pro, or, and here’s one of my more outlandish ideas, reset the numbering with some new branding in the chip department. The AI1? The M4 Lite? I’m not sure, but if Apple wanted to reset the numbers, it feels like a good time. People have been asking for an M chip in an iPhone for a while, for no good reason, so who knows, maybe Apple will pander by changing the name.
On to the iPads, and well the one’s that have already had their update this year will of course get all the Apple Intelligence goodness with the M2 powered Air and the anorexic iPad Pro sporting the M4 chip. All good here, but the best iPad, the mini was actually the furthest out from its last update, in fact it’s been over 1000 days, last updated in September of 2021. So in September, to celebrate 3 years of jelly scrolling, iPad mini will almost certainly be getting the same chip as one of the iPhones - so an A18 or whatever they call the pro version. What I really DON’T expect, despite everyone hoping so is an iPad mini Pro, with 120hz display and an M chip inside, though M4 is probably power efficient enough that the battery in the current device could handle it - I just don’t see it happening, though getting the pro iPhone chip is a decent possibility. Fingers crossed it would also get the relocated FaceTime camera too, which would also mean switching to the Apple Pencil Pro and likely getting the same storage bump as iPad Air up from 64gb to 128gb.
And if the iPad mini does get the iPhone Pro chip, the 11th gen base iPad could get the base iPhone chip too, plus pencil pro compatibility, and I’d forgive it keeping the 64gb of storage to keep that price in the mid 300s. But that would give Apple’s full iPad line up access to Apple Intelligence from day one, and those base iPads would fly off the shelves.
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