M1 gone: Uproar over Apple Intelligence compatibility table at Apple
Apple apparently made erroneous edits to its AI homepage on Wednesday. Everything is back to normal now.
Apple Intelligence Compatibility List: Suddenly only M2?
(Image: Apple / Bearbeitung: heise medien)
Unpleasant surprise on Wednesday: A look at Apple's official US English website for Apple Intelligence briefly showed an unwelcome change. Previously, it stated for all Macs that an Apple Silicon machine with an M1 chip (the first processor designed by Apple for macOS) was sufficient for the AI system, but suddenly "M2 or later" could be read. It remained unclear what prompted Apple to make this change – and there was no statement.
New macOS versions that could have cemented this change in terms of software were also not available, macOS 26.1 & Co. have been available since the beginning of the month. In parallel, the information was only found here – an instruction on how to install Apple Intelligence, which was updated on November 10, contained the known M1 compatibility. So what happened?
Here and there on the list
As it now turns out, it seems to have been a simple mistake – at least a silent correction followed overnight. Because the list, created as a large image, has now been changed back. Now, as usual, it starts with the M1 standard chip for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini, with the M1 Max for Mac Studio (which was only available as M1 Max or M1 Ultra), and from the M2 Ultra for Mac Pro (there was no M1 Ultra here). Previously, all machines only contained the aforementioned M2 note, and an M2 Max would have been mandatory for the Mac Studio.
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The commotion shows how sensitively customers react to such (here not implemented) Apple decisions. Apple was comparatively generous with Apple Intelligence on the Mac. While no Intel-based computer supports the AI system, the first M1 Mac was released in 2020, five years ago. On the iPhone, Apple was significantly stingier. Here, it must be at least an iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max from 2023. On the iPad, only devices from the Air and Pro lines from M1 onwards are supported; the exception is the newer A17 Pro in the latest iPad mini.
AI system still not competitive
Apart from compatibility, Apple Intelligence is still considered inferior to competing systems such as Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, ChatGPT, or Google Gemini. It was recently reported that Apple would give the next Siri a secret Gemini heart for a lot of money because its own models cannot keep up.
Nevertheless, the AI functions in the operating system are quite useful because they can be used quickly and easily in many places – for example, for editing texts, for quickly creating images, and more. The AI Genmojis also prove to be popular.
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