The full rollout of Apple Intelligence upgrades is expected to continue through early 2025.
Apple plans to roll out Apple Intelligence features to eligible iPhones as soon as possible, with up to three updates expected by the end of the year. Some key components, including major changes to Siri, may have to wait until early 2025.
Apple has continued to highlight upcoming Apple Intelligence features as key elements of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15 Sequoia, but the new technology is set to arrive in tidbits over the course of late 2024 or early 2025. One of the biggest parts of the new updates is a completely revamped and more personalized Siri, but its biggest upgrade will be one of the last new features to arrive.
Bloomberg iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.3 are reportedly set to be released in December, following the release of iOS 18.1 in mid-October. The first big update to iOS 18 should coincide with the second Apple event, which will likely feature new and updated Macs.
When iOS 18.1 is released, only the first round of Apple Intelligence features will be available. Highlights are likely to include a writing tool that includes summarizing and categorizing emails and messages, summarizing and redacting, a Clean Up feature that removes distracting objects from photos, and recording and transcribing phone calls.
iOS 18.2 is likely to be released in early December, and will include several key features that users can dig into, including lock screen notification prioritization, Image Playground, and Genmoji. This release will also likely be the first to include Siri and ChatGPT integration, and will expand Apple Intelligence to enable localized English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
Apple plans iOS 18.3 to be a relatively minor update that fixes bugs in features introduced in iOS 18.2, which the company is working to release by the end of 2024. Some of the new Siri features, such as Personal Context and tighter app integration, may or may not be added.
Global expansion will begin in early 2025.
After the release of iOS 18.3, there will be a gap of several months before iOS 18.4 is released, which is expected to include all the upgraded Siri features and start adding languages other than English. Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish are some of the languages that will work natively with Apple Intelligence in the 18.4 update, which is expected to be released around March 2025.
Apple Intelligence features are expected to launch with iOS 18.1, but will likely take several months to be finalized.
The various updates in iOS 18 will still offer some benefits to users of iPhone models with a narrower range of Apple Intelligence features, such as greater customization of controls. However, Apple is actively trying to get older iPhone owners to upgrade.
Having already discontinued the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, Apple will focus on the iPhone 16 lineup through 2024 and 2025, and will reiterate that all the major new features in iOS 18 are part of Apple Intelligence.
Apple may be taking a big risk by decentralizing the Apple Intelligence function, especially when it comes to delays in local languages and the resulting impact on international sales. The company seems to be betting that by releasing new features more slowly, rather than in a big release with a lot of new features all at once, it will engage users and keep them in “discovery” mode for much longer.
Instead of trying to integrate everything at once, it could benefit users if they could integrate Apple Intelligence features into their own use cases over time. The biggest downside is that Google’s Android platform already has some similar AI features and won’t stand still to introduce new ones of its own, which could turn into a serious competitive advantage for future products.
