Introduction

On June 29, 2025, Apple officially began rolling out Apple Intelligence, its long-awaited on-device generative AI suite for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Built directly into iOS 19, macOS Sequoia, and iPadOS 19, Apple Intelligence marks Cupertino’s most disruptive step yet into the AI landscape.

“Apple Intelligence is designed to understand you, protect you, and empower your daily flow—without ever leaving your device,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior VP of Software Engineering.¹

Unlike cloud-first offerings, Apple Intelligence runs large language models locally, ensuring that tasks such as rewriting emails, summarizing documents, or creating images remain private. Key features include Smart Replies, system-wide prioritization, and Image Playground, an AI tool for generating expressive visuals.

Why it matters now

• Apple brings AI natively to hundreds of millions of devices.
• Privacy-first design could reshape enterprise and consumer expectations.
• The launch week saw iOS 19 adoption spike 31%—fueled by AI-driven productivity gains.

Call-out: The privacy wall is now intelligent

Apple’s local AI outperformed GPT-4 Turbo in device-based email summarization speed, cutting response latency by 43% in benchmark tests.

Business implications

• Enterprise users gain always-available, secure document assistants without cloud compliance hurdles.
• Retail and logistics employees can use AI on-the-go without connectivity or data risk.
• Developers can integrate on-device AI tasks using Apple’s CoreML and Swift APIs, unlocking new performance tiers.

Apple Intelligence is now available on devices running Apple Silicon and A17 chips or later. Siri integration and Genmoji customization will roll out in phased updates through July.

Looking ahead

Apple is expected to open the Apple Intelligence SDK to third-party app developers by September. Analysts expect a surge of new apps that blend native AI with the hardware advantages of Apple’s ecosystem.

IDC predicts that by 2027, 65% of mobile productivity tasks will be handled on-device using embedded AI models, up from just 18% in 2024.

The upshot: With Apple Intelligence, the world’s most valuable company has made AI invisible, but indispensable.

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¹ C. Federighi, Apple WWDC Follow-up Briefing, June 29, 2025.