Apple was smart to leave Apple Intelligence off the iPad

Macworld

In an ideal world, at least as far as Apple is concerned, we’d all be using Apple Intelligence all the time. Cupertino came late to the AI party and urgently needs to catch up on both training data and mindshare. AI is in that mad reckless gold-rush phase right now and the big tech companies are all desperate to stake their claims before it’s too late and ChatGPT becomes a verb synonymous with AI searching.

AI is such a priority for Apple that it’s affecting everything else it does. When it launched the iPhone 16e last month, the waiting world was shocked by the price tag: a resolutely mid-market $599, while the iPhone SE it replaced cost $429. (You can argue that it actually replaced the iPhone 14, but either way, the SE is gone and the range now starts at that higher point.) The 16e costs as much as it does because of the high-end processor Apple was determined to include so it can run Apple Intelligence. In other words, Apple abandoned the massive budget phone market for at least a year purely so it could get more people on its AI platform.

Last week it was the cheapest iPad’s turn to be phased out, and I was worried that it would get the same AI-first treatment as the iPhone 16e. After all, Apple can’t have people using iPads that aren’t powerful enough to run Apple Intelligence, can it? Better shove in a ludicrously overpowered A18 chip and crank up the price. (Yes, I will admit that I was getting mad in advance about something that hadn’t even happened yet.)

In the end, that didn’t happen. Rather than making the ruinously expensive leap from the A14 to an A18, the new iPad hopped more cautiously from an A14 to the A16 from 2022. Surprisingly—no, shockingly—the 11th-gen iPad does not support Apple Intelligence, and equally surprisingly it still costs a very reasonable $349.

This might not be what we expected, but I think it’s absolutely the right decision. Tablets aren’t like smartphones. They’re bought for different purposes, with far less emphasis on specs and features and far more on looks, physical dimensions, battery life, and above all, price. in fact, when this iPad launched in 2022, it was poorly received due to its $449 price tag. After a $100 price cut last year, it became the consensus pick for basically anyone needing a new tablet.

Beyond the small niche market for the high-end iPad Pro, the vast majority of iPads are going to be used for convenient, portable, instant-booting access to light computing tasks like email and surfing the web. If Apple pushed up the iPad range by $100 again and started marketing it on the basis of high processing speeds and AI, it might as well wave a white flag and hand the biggest market to… er… Samsung? I guess?

I’m sure it’s a source of frustration for Apple that a bunch of customers are going to buy A16 iPads and miss out on Apple Intelligence (though presumably quite a lot of them can use it on their iPhones or Macs). As iPad buyers tend to upgrade quite rarely, it might be four or five years before this generation of iPads gets replaced. But it’s worth bearing in mind that Apple Intelligence isn’t actually that great just yet and might not be for a while.

I’ve been using it a lot while reviewing the iPhone 16e and at this stage, it’s more of a proof of concept than a useful set of tools. Every single feature I tested did at least one cool thing (such as identifying a Bichon) and at least one stupid thing (such as removing a car from a photo and leaving behind its shadow), and the interfaces are some of the least intuitive I’ve ever used from Apple.

If it’s not obvious that Apple Intelligence was rushed out the door before being properly polished, consider the news that dropped on Friday: Apple has officially delayed the anticipated next-gen Siri that was already delayed to iOS 18.5. Now it looks like it will launch with iOS 19, possibly even in 2026. So, it’s probably not the end of the world that this year’s budget iPad buyers don’t get a flawed AI system shoved in their faces. And it’s certainly preferable to a price hike.

Apple is trying, understandably and sensibly, to think about the future: skating to where the puck is going to be and all that. People won’t buy iPhones forever, so a big priority is working out what comes next and making sure Apple is part of whatever that is. But you have to strike a balance between the future and the present, and it’s better to sell tablets that don’t run Apple Intelligence than a tablet no one wants to buy.




Foundry

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

Have your say

We got too many emails to print following last week’s discussion of the iPhone 16e not supporting MagSafe. So I’ll confine myself to summarizing a useful point made by multiple readers: that MagSafe may be a source of concern for those with a pacemaker or related medical device.

Back in 2021 the American Heart Association said the technology posed a “clinically identifiable” risk to cardiac devices, and Apple itself was moved to issue a warning. The degree of risk is disputed, and Apple now says most consumer electronics, from laptops to wearables, contain components which could interfere with medical devices. But with the stakes so high, it’s probably best to play it safe.

Thanks to those who raised this important point.

There’s something in the air

Like the week of Mac announcements at the end of October 2024, last week was dedicated to air-themed reveals. No actual event, just a series of press releases and new products appearing quietly on the website.

In fact the air theme ended up looking a little tenuous. We got a new MacBook Air in a charming new color, and a rather less impressive new iPad Air. But the powerful new Mac Studio and the odd A16 iPad (which doesn’t support Apple Intelligence, curiously) conspicuously do not have the word air in their names. Very poor, Apple. Very poor.

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Apple begins legal battle to resist ‘egregious’ iCloud backdoor demand.

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The iPhone 16e DOES work with MagSafe chargers… kind of.

Podcast of the week

Apple released new versions of the MacBook Air, iPad Air, Mac Studio and iPad this week, and on the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast, we talk about what’s new, what’s not new, and what’s totally confusing!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Reviews corner

Sync review: No-nonsense file sync across your devices.

Alogic Ark Pro 27600mAh Power Bank review: Cable-carrying convenience.

EcoFlow Rapid Magnetic Power Bank review: Rapid by name, rapid by nature.

The rumor mill

Report: Folding iPhone will be ultra-thin, crease-free, and cost over $2,000.

Apple’s next-gen Siri might be delayed until 2027.

The M4 MacBook Air and Severance finale top Apple’s list of March releases.

Software updates, bugs, and problems

iPhone 16e criticized for ‘terrible design’ of USB-C port.

Forget Siri, iOS 18.4 brings the iPhone emoji update everyone wants.

iOS 18.4 beta 2 is out, supporting iPhone 16e and adding Visual Intelligence options.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.