If you haven’t heard of Apple Intelligence, where have you been hiding? The next big thing for the iPhone (and iPad, and Mac) is coming and will change the way you use your device. When it comes to the iPhone, it works on all new releases, i.e. the iPhone 16 series, plus iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Here’s when it’s coming: Monday, October 28.
So says Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter, which claims the very last Monday in October is the date to put in our calendars.
Well, that’s about three more weeks. That will disappoint some who might have hoped that the promise of an October debut for the first of Apple’s critically acclaimed AI features could come earlier this month.
But eyebrows were raised when a beta version expected in recent days failed to appear. Still, the thought at the time was that we would see the new software in mid-October.
What has changed? Gurman says: “I can provide some more details about when in the month the device should arrive: Monday, October 28. That means new iPhone buyers will have to wait a few more weeks to receive the most hyped part of their devices. I am told that Apple is taking its time with the rollout to ensure that major bugs are eliminated and that Apple can support all new traffic on its AI cloud servers.”
When the time comes, it won’t be the whole fuss. Features like help with writing improvement, notification summaries, email chains, and more will be first, but only for US English users. This means that your device settings must have US English as the language and Siri must also be set to US English. Apple has dropped the restriction that insisted your region be set to US too, not least because it was interfering with unit measurement settings.
Other English versions, such as New Zealand, Australia and (hurray) British English, are coming in December. Then come more features, like integration with ChatGPT and a way to create custom emoji (Apple calls this Genmoji). New Siri upgrades will follow in the spring.
The countdown has begun.