From Taiwan comes a very different reading on the future of Apple, Macs and iPhones than that of Ming-Chi Kuo at the end of January, who is one of the most esteemed among analysts: in the long-term and short-term future of Cupertino there is a good “dose” of machine learning and artificial intelligence, including generative and even on-device.
In fact, according to Economic Daily News, the next SoCs and chips for iPhone and Mac will have a Neural Engine (unit dedicated to artificial intelligence operations) with performance and an additional number of cores defined as “significant”. So both the A18 Pro of the iPhone 16 and the M4 chip of the next Macs should put on the plate capabilities in terms of on-device generative artificial intelligence – operations not processed by servers but by the device itself – capable of properly supporting the innovations planned by Apple for iOS 18 and macOS 15.
According to information from late January by authoritative Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, the next update to the iPhone operating system will potentially be the largest in the history of the smartphone with the apple on the back. “Apple’s developer conference in June (WWDC 24) should be pretty exciting,” Gurman said, anticipating the news in terms of machine learning and AI.
To make a long story short (to learn more there is the dedicated article), thanks to AI on device, Siri would become “smarter”, the same Messages that would be able to autonomously propose answers and complete sentences, Apple Music could generate playlists independently, the set of productivity apps (Keynote, Pages and Numbers) would lighten the work of those who use them.
This and more could be thanks to the capabilities of the new Neural Engine that Apple will give to the A18 Pro SoC of the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. The other iPhones, starting with the 16 “base” that the A17 Pro of the iPhone 15 Pro renamed to the A18 and previous generations should have, may be forced to give up the functions that require the hardware to put the most effort in terms of processing capacity.
The Neural Engine debuted in iPhones in 2017:
- 2-core on iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X
- 8-core on iPhone XS, XR and 11 series
-16-core on iPhone 12 and later generations
so the iPhone 15 Pro also has a 16-core Neural Engine, but Apple has stated that compared to the iPhone 14 Pro, the one of the most recent is up to twice as fast. Basically, no action has been taken on the number of cores, but probably on the frequencies. On the Mac side it’s the same: 16 cores for all Apple Silicon chips, with only the Ultra having a 32-core Neural Engine, the same – who knows – that could debut in the A18 Pro of the iPhone 16.