Earlier this week, Apple pushed out the very first beta of macOS 15.1 beta, which finally brought Apple Intelligence which Apple introduced at WWDC 2024. Although Apple Intelligence won’t be out to the public as a beta until later this fall, the developer will be able to sign up for the new technology to get their first hands-on. However, as developers installed the macOS beta, those running on the beta on external drives were quick to realize that they wouldn’t be able to install the language models required for Apple Intelligence.
This was reported by 9to5Mac, which also discovered an alert message in the corresponding beta version of Xcode that declares that the Code Prediction feature “is not available when booting from an external disk,” which indicates that the restriction also applies to the rest of the features that Apple Intelligence has to offer.
It’s yet to be determined whether it’s just a temporary limitation that will be lifted or a privacy-related one, but one thing’s for sure is that Apple is deeply committed to protecting its users’ privacy, so it’s logical to have those Apple Intelligence features run on the device via the Secure Enclave and Neutral Engine that Apple Silicon has. Therefore, if you still want to try out Apple Intelligence, you’ll need to either create a new partition of your internal drive to install the beta or run the beta on a secondary (compatible) Mac. To recap Apple Intelligence requires any of these devices:
- iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max (A17 Pro)
- iPad Air (M1 or later)
- iPad Pro (M1 or later)
- MacBook Air (M1 or later)
- MacBook Pro (M1 or later)
- iMac (M1 or later)
- Mac mini (M1 or later)
- Mac Studio (M1 Max or later)
- Mac Pro (M2 Ultra)
Apple Intelligence will be available to all users as a beta sometime later in the fall.
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