iPhone 16 Design Leaks, New M4 MacBook Pro, Apple’s Open-Source AI

Updated June 22 with details on Apple Intelligence availability in the EU.

A look back at this week’s Apple news and headlines, including the latest iPhone 16 leaks, iPhone AI throttling, new MacBook Pro for Christmas, open source AI from Apple, when Siri will get Apple Intelligence, an AI supercycle from iPhones, and what happened to Apple’s i?

Apple Loop is here to remind you of some of the many discussions surrounding Apple over the past seven days. You can also read my weekly Android news roundup here on Forbes.

Clues on the iPhone 16 case

A series of iPhone 16 cases on display this week have been spotted this week. They may not show the internals of the next-gen iPhones, but it gives us more potential information about the camera and its use alongside Apple’s Spatial Computing plans:

“The photos once again point to a subtly revamped design for the iPhone 16, with two camera lenses aligned vertically. One theory suggests this arrangement is intended to support spatial video recording capabilities for the mixed reality headset Apple Vision Pro, even on base models, for optimal spatial capture, the lenses must be aligned horizontally, mimicking the position of human eyes.

(TechNetbooks).

Limitations of iPhone AI

Apple has confirmed that among current iPhones, only the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max will support Apple Intelligence AI. This is due to a mix of memory, CPU and bandwidth on the card, as Apple’s John Giannandrea explained in a recent “Talk Show” podcast:

“So these models, when you run them at runtime, it’s called inference, and inference of large language models is incredibly computationally expensive. And so it’s a combination of bandwidth in the device, it’s the size of the Apple neural engine, it’s the punch of the device to make these models fast enough to be useful. You could, in theory, run these models on a very old device. , but it would be so slow that it wouldn’t be useful.

(Forbes).

MacBook Pro M4 before Christmas

Apple made the surprising decision to release the latest M4 silicon in the iPad Pro, rather than any Mac. At some point, the macOS family will see the arrival of the M4, and it will probably be the MacBook Pro that will be first in line:

“The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro is expected to receive an M4 chip, while the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models will be updated with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. The Mac mini will receive M4 and M4 Pro. The MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro models won’t be updated with the M4 chips until 2025, and it’s not yet clear when the iMac might get an update with the refreshed chip technology.

(MacRumors).

Apple’s Open Source AI Efforts

Although Apple has not yet released any of its Apple Intelligence AI software to the public, some of its AI efforts are available. Hugging Face is an open source online service that shares machine learning models and datasets. Apple has uploaded 20 additional models to the service, adding to the models uploaded earlier this year:

“Apple has taken a giant step forward in its efforts to empower developers with cutting-edge AI capabilities on devices. The tech giant recently released 20 new Core ML models and 4 datasets on Hugging Face, a platform leading community for sharing AI models and codes.

(Adventure Beat).

AI will be late to the iPhone party

As for the public arrival of Apple Intelligence? This is going to take longer than expected. While iOS 18 will ship with the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro in September, with a later version for older iPhones, Apple Intelligence may not arrive until early 2025:

“Siri in iOS 18 will still have a few “new bells and whistles” in September, including a new interface that turns on a light around the edge of the screen… (but) we’ll have to wait until next year to see the most improvements significant changes from Apple to Siri An iOS 18 update in 2025 should bring the following improvements to Apple’s virtual assistant:

(MacRumors).

June 22 Update: Details on Apple Intelligence availability in the EU.

Apple Intelligence may not ship to the EU

Speaking to the Financial Times over the weekend, an Apple spokesperson explained why Apple Intelligence would not be fully disclosed in the EU. It comes down to how DMA interacts with iOS and iPadOS. There is no clear indication as to whether Apple Intelligence satisfies regulators or whether it would lead to further investigation. Importantly, this will not be determined before a release. Given the risk of a significant fine, Apple has refused to take this risk for the moment:

“Due to regulatory uncertainties caused by the Digital Markets Act,” Apple said on Friday, “we do not believe we will be able to roll out three of these features – iPhone mirroring, data sharing enhancements. SharePlay screen and Apple Intelligence – to our EU users this year.

(Financial Times).

An AI dreams of a supercycle

With the launch of AI for iPhone (whenever it arrives), Apple is expected to sell many AI-enabled iPhones. With very little backwards compatibility, will this trigger a “super-cycle” in iPhone sales? Wedbush analysts think it will:

“…as Apple’s AI strategy is rolled out, it will catalyze a long-awaited super cycle in Cupertino with 270 million iPhones out of the 1.5 billion iPhones in the golden installed base that will only put not upgrade their smartphones in more than 4 years, according to our estimates:

(9to5Mac).

And finally…

Once upon a time, everything started with an “i”. Now, product names all start with “Apple.” What’s going on with that? Naturally, there’s a new Reddit thread this week about the Apple brand, which contains many theories as to why, including this one:

“Using Apple in the name is a marketing ploy to ensure brand recognition. Acura in the 90s found out the hard way when they started naming their cars like Legend and Integra and no one knew who had them Renaming their cars to RDX, MDX, etc. has forced people to reinsert “Acura” into the conversation, Apple does that too, I think.

(Medium via Reddit).

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