If you haven’t noticed, Apple Intelligence is here. But it would be hard not to notice: Apple is marketing its new collection of AI features everywhere possible, from TV commercials to its website to every product announcement made in the last two months. (Every video ad Apple released last week – iMac, Mac mini and MacBook Pro – featured an original, expanded Apple Intelligence segment.)
But to say that Apple has bet everything on Apple Intelligence would not be enough TRUE. Yes, the big three are covered: iPhone, iPad and Mac. But Apple makes many more devices than these three! This year, naturally, the company is going to focus on getting as many AI features up and running as possible across the Big Three. But soon, probably next year, Apple will have to roll out a strategy across the rest of its product line.
How will he handle this?
Apple TV
The current Apple TV is powered by the A15 bionic chip and 3 or 4 GB of RAM. This won’t be enough at all, but it’s not unreasonable to imagine that a future Apple TV could be upgraded to use either the A17 Pro chip found in the iPad mini or the A18 chip found in iPhones 16 and 16 Plus. And while getting RAM up to 8GB will be expensive, Apple seems to have finally accepted that in the age of Apple Intelligence, all of our devices will need more memory.
So it seems quite easy for Apple to create an Apple Intelligence compatible Apple TV box. The question is… what does that mean?
Obviously, an improved Siri will be a winner on Apple TV. Siri in iOS 18 is still a work in progress, with better understanding of verbal commands but not much better in terms of results. Still, Apple says these improvements will come by the middle of next year. Every Apple TV comes with a remote with a Siri button; it would be rewarding to be able to navigate more easily with a faster, more responsive, and smarter Siri.
One of the new features coming to Siri will be the ability to see what’s on the screen and act accordingly, which could be a great way to let you ask questions like “What movies is this in?” Did the guy in the hat play? » and actually get a good answer. And, of course, if Siri’s upcoming ability to control individual apps were to be applied to the Apple TV, it might be easier to command apps to open and play the correct episode of the show than you look.
Apple TV also comes with a version of the Photos app, which hasn’t really been updated in the last year. But if you took advantage of some of the search and video generation powers of the Photos app on the Big Three, you could generate video slideshows from your photo libraries right from your couch by speaking into the remote. Or, at the very least, see instant results for photo search queries.
Jared Newman/Foundry
I’m not a big fan of notifications on Apple TV, but I use them occasionally. I think it would be nice to use Apple Intelligence to be aware of alerts happening on your other devices and use the new Reduce Interruptions focus mode to decide if it’s worth showing them to you while you watch TV.
Finally, Apple TV hardware is also a hub at the center of Apple’s smart home strategy. I could see an optimized Apple TV using Apple Intelligence to be a better coordinator of the devices in your home. Maybe we could generate complete home automation via voice command? It’s worth thinking about.
Apple Watch
It’s harder to imagine that the Apple Watch will soon have the power to run the full version of Apple Intelligence. It simply requires too much processor power and memory, and the small Apple Watch and its tiny battery won’t be able to do that for a while.
But it’s good. We should want the Apple Watch and watchOS to become better clients for Apple Intelligence running on the iPhone connected to the watch. Last year, Apple upgraded the Apple Watch to process Siri commands on the device, which was a huge boost. The next step is to update watchOS to determine if a request could be better handled by Apple Intelligence, then forward those requests to a properly intelligent device, whether that’s the iPhone or even a server Apple.
What is the use case for Apple Intelligence on Apple Watch? Really, I think it’s all based on Siri, namely the ability to get better answers on your wrist. But I’m also interested in the idea that as our iPhones get smarter, the Apple Watch could harness the power of individual iPhone apps without having to run those apps itself. Imagine asking your Apple Watch to retrieve some information from an iPhone app, or even orchestrate two apps together, to bring you a result. If you could leave your phone in your pocket – or even leave it at home – and still have it work, that would be really cool.
HomePods and beyond
Like the Apple TV, I imagine Apple is building a new generation of HomePods properly equipped for Apple Intelligence, as well as additional HomePod-like products, like a HomePod with a screen. Again, these are Siri-driven products, so letting Siri be a lot smarter and giving it the power to summarize information found on the web would make things a lot better. A device that knows it is just a speaker and has no screen, and would be able to respond with an answer that requires summary and interpretation (including images!), would be a big improvement over today’s pretty stupid HomePods.
Apple Intelligence should also be able to create good Apple Music playlists on the fly, right? Not just on HomePod, but everywhere. It should be smart enough that I can use my voice to rearrange playlists, remove items from the queue, etc.
And as with those other devices, HomePods need to become better managers of my entire device ecosystem. If I receive an important alert on an iPhone, my devices should be able to understand that the iPhone is not with me and that I am listening to something in the kitchen, and let me know that the important alert has arrived. I know, I know, all the data processed on my devices is part of the appeal of Apple Intelligence, but once the processing is done, I would like my devices to communicate with each other and do what it takes to transmit to me important information, anywhere. I am.
Apple Intelligence could lead Apple to revamp its HomePod line.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
AirPods and the future
Finally AirPods! They’re tiny, I know, and unlikely to be anything other than recipients of Siri conversations from other devices. And yet… some reports suggest that Apple could integrate cameras into future AirPods models. One possibility is that AirPods could become the eyes of an iPhone that’s otherwise tucked away in your pocket, providing images to Apple Intelligence for a version of the new Visual Intelligence feature premiered with iOS 18.2. Better yet, if Apple made a pair of glasses with cameras and built-in AirPods in the style of Meta’s Ray-Ban specs, your iPhone could also use them as eyes and ears when in your pocket.
The future of Apple Intelligence is largely unwritten. There’s a lot more going on for Apple with the Big Three product lines alone. But he can’t leave his small devices and accessories behind. These will be important tools for feeding data into Apple Intelligence and extending the intelligence of Apple platforms to the rest of our lives. Hopefully we’ll get our first taste of that future next year after Apple builds a stronger foundation with all of its upcoming iOS 18 and macOS 15 releases.
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