Apple will unveil iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 today at its Worldwide Developers Conference, and these will be imbibed with “Apple Intelligence”, the company’s own suite of AI features. These have been leaked last week, including their gimmicky name, and today the same source of that initial leak is back with a word of caution.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the AI features will be in beta. Not just when the first iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 betas come out – which should apparently happen as soon as tomorrow – but Apple Intelligence will still be in beta even in the fall when the finalized iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 will be released to the public.
If this pans out and the company does brand Apple Intelligence as beta, it tells us something about how polished to expect the features to be. But it also makes sense – the entire field of AI this and AI that, when you cut out the marketing embellishments, is practically in beta across the board.
If you’ve been looking forward to running the first beta of the upcoming operating systems on your iPhone or iPad starting tomorrow, maybe you should think again. Gurman says the first releases are going to be especially buggy, so much so that some people with knowledge of the builds are even surprised Apple would release these in such a state. So it looks like it may be a bumpy ride, at least at the beginning.
Of course, as the weeks go by, Apple is expected to iron out all the kinks and squash all the bugs so that in the fall iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 will be truly ready for primetime.
