Apple announced the upcoming iOS 27 update at yayo Worldwide Developers Conference On Monday. When the company announced that the the next version of iOS will be compatible with devices reaching back to the iPhone 11, the movement feels awkward for people with older devices, due to one wrinkle.
WWDC focused on the integration of AI into Apple’s digital assistant Siri. The company spent about 25 minutes on platform development and privacy combined, and nearly double that on Siri and Apple Intelligence. And while Apple said the digital assistant can help you in many areas on your iPhone, it didn’t expand on which iPhones could use the AI features.
Apple Intelligence still only works with iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max and all new iPhones. And according to Apple, some of the AI features in iOS 27 are only available on iPhones with 12GB of integrated memory, such as iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max and iPhone Air. So if you have an iPhone 11 — or a iPhone 14 Pro as I did — and I was happy to hear that your device can run iOS 27, many of the features announced from WWDC I won’t come to your phone.
And that’s the problem. Of course, keeping up with older devices is a good thing because not everyone can upgrade to the latest iPhone every year or two, and supporting older phones can help protect those devices from exploitation. But at the same time, Apple’s extreme focus on AI features feels like it’s leaving those older phone owners in the past.
After WWDC, I downloaded the file iOS 27 developer beta on my old iPhone 14 Pro and I was almost instantly disappointed. Because my device does not support Apple Intelligence, nothing meaningful has changed on my device. I got a new Liquid Glass slider, but after that, I didn’t know what else to do with the update.
I think a few app icons, like maps, look a little different at squint, but the update didn’t bring anything to my iPhone 14 Pro to enjoy. If someone had secretly updated my device without my knowledge, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Even if Apple releases iOS 27 this fall, if I don’t want to use the new Siri AI features on mine. iPhone 16 Pro because I don’t find it useful or have ethical concerns about the use of AI, what is there to be happy about? A smooth network transition? Other aspects of child safety? These are welcome improvements, but they’re not the big new features I expect from a major iOS upgrade.
“We believe the best apps aren’t built on great success, they’re built on the sweat of detail,” said Apple’s Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, at the start of the presentation. That’s fine, but it seems like the company didn’t sweat much about the details of who can use the features that the presentation spent so much time talking about.
With Apple’s focus on AI at WWDC, the company seems to be ignoring people who don’t have access to these features or don’t want to use them. We’ve seen Google do this exact thing for a few years now Google I/O presentation. The shows focus on AI yet fail to present anything useful, and everything else is put on the back burner.
If Apple wants to bring more convenience to more people with iPhones, introduces the clipboard to iOS for all your copy and paste needs, bring split screen capabilities to iPhone, or just fix some persistent bugs. Those things don’t need AI and can be distributed to many people.
The more a company focuses on AI, the less it interacts with older devices. While iOS 26 it was a separation because of it Liquid Glass design, at least bring something important to everyone.
For more Apple news, here all announced by the company at WWDC and what you should know about it iOS 27.
