The iPhone 16 will launch without headline AI features, risking disappointed buyers

The iPhone 16 will launch without some of the headline Apple Intelligence features – which are arguably the biggest reason for most to upgrade to the new models.

While Apple is taking an understandably cautious approach here, the company runs the risk of disappointing or confusing its customers …

Apple Intelligence is rolling out very slowly

Yesterday’s big news was of course the launch of the first iOS 18.1 developer beta, which provides access to the first set of Apple Intelligence features:

• Writing tools
• Some Siri improvements, including maintaining context between queries
• Mail features, including summaries and smart replies
• Natural language searches in Photos, and more
• Summaries of transcriptions

But even for developers, Apple is taking it slow. Some of the features we expected to be included in the 18.1 beta weren’t, among them the AI image generation tool Image Playground.

Notably, we’re not expecting a public beta of iOS 18.1 – only developers get to play with AI for now. Apple is likely to take this route because, even in the official iOS releases, the company is labelling all of the AI features as “beta,” just as did with the original Siri launch. Launching a beta of a beta is just too messy for public consumption.

With plenty of uncertainty

Officially, all Apple has said is that Apple Intelligence will launch in “the fall.” Given that the season starts on September 22 and ends on December 20, that doesn’t narrow things down too much!

There’s also considerable uncertainty as to what will and won’t be included at launch. The really big changes will come with the full-on new Siri, with ChatGPT as fallback. Bloomberg has said this won’t even launch as a developer beta until 2025, but the WSJ yesterday contradicted that, claiming that some of these features will arrive by the end of this year.

Before the New Year’s Eve ball drops, Siri will get ChatGPT integration and the ability to tap in to your personal context. (Example: “When should I leave to get mom from the airport?”) 

However, Joanna Stern went on to say that “Siri’s ability to perform actions within third-party apps is coming next year.”

The iPhone 16 will lack most AI features at launch

Apple Intelligence is going to be the biggest reason to upgrade to a new iPhone in a long time. Of existing models, only the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will let you use all the upcoming AI features – everyone else is going to need to buy a new phone.

Apple’s challenge is going to be how to communicate this – and encourage those upgrades – without creating a mess of confusion and disappointment. If you buy your shiny new phone expecting Siri to finally be smart, and it’s not, then that risks putting a large dent in Apple’s brand image.

We don’t even know whether the iPhone 16 will launch with any Apple Intelligence features. If it ships with iOS 18.0, and iOS 18.1 is needed for even the limited selection of AI features developers got yesterday, then it may remain disappointingly unintelligent on day one.

That much is manageable. Apple could either preinstall iOS 18.1 in phones before they ship, or use the Presto system launched earlier this year to update them in-store before they go on sale. Absolute worst-case, it makes the update available a week or so afterwards, so buyers don’t have long to wait for at least some new AI smarts.

There is precedent for this

There is precedent for Apple selling shiny new iPhones without all of the headline features.

Apple sold the iPhone 7 Plus largely on Portrait mode – which for the first time offered artificial blurring of backgrounds to simulate the shallow depth of field you can get on a DSLR. The phone went on sale on September 15, 2016, but Portrait mode wasn’t available until the iOS 10.1 release more than a month later on October 24.

It was the same story in 2022, the iPhone 14 going on sale on September 16, but the headline feature of Emergency SOS via Satellite didn’t go live in the US until November 15, even later in other countries, and is still unavailable in most.

But this is a bigger deal

Even so, this is a bigger deal. iPhone owners have been waiting a very long time for Siri to become a truly intelligent assistant, and for many Apple Intelligence is going to be synonymous with a smarter Siri.

If they’re told they’re getting Apple Intelligence on day one, or not long afterwards, but Siri remains almost as dumb, that could be a very bad look for the company.

Apple is going to have to be very, very careful about how it communicates what iPhone owners will be getting, and when they will get it.