With its introduction in 2024, Apple Intelligence seeks to push the boundaries of what smartphones are capable of by using its machine learning app power to directly boost your productivity and creativity. So, Apple claims.
This new technology requires a lot of battery and processing power, not to mention systems that are up to the task, so only Apple’s latest iPhone 16, iOS 18, and macOS Sequoia get the benefit of its assistance. The question is: is this new app worth the money you’ll have to pay to get a device capable of running it?
In this article, we’ll examine why there’s no real need to rush.
What Intelligence Promises
Apple’s Intelligence app promises to enhance the user experience in many different ways. This is primarily through integration. Currently, the app’s focus is built around:
- Making staying on top of communication easier.
- Improving the functions and overall intelligence of Siri.
- Assistance in and out of various apps.
- Generative tools for easy sharing.
- Enhanced privacy through machine intelligence processing.
These are pretty respectable features in themselves, but critics have been quick to point out that this “revolutionary” app isn’t quite as impressive as the tech company makes it out to be. Apple does tend to have a reputation for overselling its products and technology.
The Useful and Popular Aspects of Apple Intelligence
Let’s look at the aspects of Apple Intelligence that are so far resonating the most with Apple users. Such areas include:
- Message summary – Intelligence is able to summarize updates and messages that appear on the Lock Screen, providing users with important information. The summaries, like AI itself, aren’t perfect in catching every subtle detail, but they cut a lot of clutter.
- Focus Mode – When in Focus Mode, Intelligence parses messages and notifications, delivering the ones that might be the most urgent.
- Email and call summary – Intelligence shortens lengthy emails to their essentials and, if you record a call, can break that down into a written summary too.
- Camera control – More of a joint iPhone innovation with Intelligence, this feature finally allows Apple users to clean up their photos with help from AI.
- Genmoji – The ability to create custom reactions and emojis for different occasions has been a hit with many users, allowing for fantastic customization in replies.
The Less Popular Aspects
Intelligence is following on the tail of an AI industry boom. Many of its features are already being done, and in many cases done better, by other chatbots and machine learning apps. Some examples include:
- Image generation – Intelligence’s current image generation is nowhere near as impressive as Dall-E or ChatGPT’s 4o image generation. The app still struggles with accuracy and prompting.
- Unnatural writing – While summary assistance is useful, Intelligence’s text generation capabilities have been criticized as a little too stiff for some purposes.
- Reliance on ChatGPT – Many users report Siri referring too much to ChatGPT, rendering an onboard AI app pretty redundant when the GPT app would do just as well.
- Current lack of features – Seeing as Intelligence is still under a year old, there’s not much to offer for all the bluster.
In addition, some users report dips in performance and battery life thanks to Intelligence’s demanding processes. Then, there are also the privacy concerns. There hasn’t been much tangible proof that the app can better protect the data of users.
So, Is Apple Intelligence Worth It?
Ah, the million-dollar question. Quite simply, if Intelligence is all you’re buying the latest iPhone or Mac for, then sadly, no. The app is still in its infancy and lacks the features and power to make itself truly invaluable. As indicated by Genmoji and its summarizing capabilities, there are some things to love, but not enough to hunt down.
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