Gurman: iPhone 16 will arrive on time, unaffected by Apple Intelligence delay

Apple will launch iPhone 16 in September without AI, revealed Mark Gurman in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. The analyst confirmed that the phones are scheduled to arrive in September, despite the fact that they will ship without the flagship feature the company is betting so much on – Apple Intelligence. Cupertino's AI technology is reportedly coming one month later with a software update.

Gurman also shared some personal experiences with the new service that is already available on iOS 18.1 beta, saying it has a long way to go to match the hype. Currently, Apple Intelligence is just smarter and prettier Siri and not the revolution Apple wants you to believe.

The messages app will have brief suggested replies, which are reportedly just slightly upgraded versions of the reply suggestions that have existed for a long time; Mail has something similar, but the suggestions are longer.

The Reduce Interruptions Focus mode is essentially a Do Not Disturb Mode that intelligently decides what notifications to let through, like urgent text messages and emails. When Reader Mode is activated, the Safari browser gets a one-paragraph summary of a web page and articles.

Writing Tools make text sound more professional or friendlier and also provide proofreading. Apple Intelligence can record a call and transcribe it automatically, and the whole transcription will be available once the call is over.

Gurman calls these features "niceties, not necessities" and adds that they might not be so appealing to an iPhone 14 Pro user to migrate to an iPhone 16. Nevertheless, the analyst added that users are likely to get caught up in the excitement and marketing slogans, which will be Apple's main driver of iPhone 16 sales.

Expectations are that all four iPhone 16 devices to get Apple Intelligence, along with the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. The Apple AI is a response to similar products such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT by OpenAI and Microsoft's Copilot; the company needs to do more to become the leader it desires to be.

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