In just over a week, Apple is set to announce iOS 18 and its other new operating system versions, with a strong emphasis on incorporating AI features at a system-wide level. Apple is planning to leverage both on-device and cloud processing for these AI capabilities. However, users might need the latest high-end devices to fully utilize these new features. According to Mark Gurman, many of the upcoming AI functionalities will only be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models.
This means that to take advantage of all the features in iOS 18, users will need to have the latest Pro iPhones with the A17 Pro chip. The more affordable iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, which were launched last fall, are powered by the older A16 chip and may not support all new features.
The necessity for the A17 chip is likely due to both marketing strategies and technical requirements. The A17 chip offers much faster CPU and GPU cores and includes a new 16-core Neural Engine capable of 35 trillion operations per second. The RAM integrated into the chip has also increased from 6 GB to 8 GB.
When iOS 18 is released to the public, probably in September, the iPhone 15 Pro series will be a year old, and Apple will likely have introduced the 2024 iPhone 16 lineup, which will support all iOS 18 features and possibly include exclusive AI enhancements.
For Macs and iPads, the system requirements are expected to be more lenient, with Gurman suggesting that the cutoff may be the M1 chip. This would encompass Apple Silicon Macs from 2020 and iPad Pro models from 2021 or later. With the M1 chip as the baseline, all eligible iPad and Mac models would have at least 8 GB of RAM, which could be a significant factor. If Neural Engine performance is the limiting factor, only the newer M3 or M4 chips have Neural Engines as powerful as the one in the iPhone 15 Pro.
