Apple’s most powerful on-device AI model will only be available to limited devices

Today, Apple announced the next iteration of its software platforms iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS Tahoe 27, watchOS 27, tvOS 27, and visionOS 27 to developers. These updates include improvements to Liquid Glass, a new Siri AI, new Screen Time options, and more, announced at today’s WWDC event. The highlight of today’s event is the new AI features, including new Photo Editing options, a more natural Siri, Agentic Password updating, improved Image Playground, Personal Context, and more. The updates will also introduce a new Siri App. Most of these features are expected to be available on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 17, along with iPads and Macs with Apple Silicon, all of which come with 8GB of RAM, as that was the previous requirement to run Apple Intelligence. While that’s still the case, the most powerful on-device model is reserved for a device with at least 12GB of RAM. It includes:

• iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air
• iPad with M4 and later with at least 12GB of RAM
• Mac with M3 and later with at least 12GB of RAM

The list does not include older M1 or M2 Macs with configurations more than 16GB, which is odd. However, this could be due to the fact that the M3 chip has a 60% faster Neural Engine compared to the M1, which plays a major role in AI. Devices that do not have the powerful on-device model will most likely be able to use Private Cloud Compute to receive the same benefits, although the specifics are not confirmed yet. Max Weinbach, analyst at Creative Strat, posted more details on the new on-device model:

AFM Core Advanced on-device model running on A19 Pro is a sparse model. It’s 20B parameters. It’s fully Apple designed. It is an MoE but when it processes the prompt, it only loads the parameters needed and locks them in. If it’s 20B parameters total, but on a specific…

— Max Weinbach (@mweinbach) June 8, 2026

Strangely, even the latest iPhone 17 does not have this more powerful model on-device, since it has 8GB of RAM. A similar situation occured in 2024 when Apple announced Apple Intelligence, where the base iPhone 15 model was ineligible as it had only 6GB of RAM compared to the Pro with a newer A17 Pro chip and 8GB of RAM. Users who are registered as a developer on www.developer.apple.com can opt in to receive beta updates by going into Settings>General>Software Update>Beta Updates and selecting Developer Beta. The new Siri AI is behind a waitlist now, here’s how to register yourself.

Do note that these versions are not stable and are meant for testing purposes. They are not recommended to be downloaded on a primary device due to the nature of beta software. What’s your favorite feature? Let us know down in the comments or write to us on @appleosophy! Be sure to download the Appleosophy App from the App Store or visit our website to stay updated with the latest Apple news!