I’ve lived with Apple Intelligence for a while now, and my verdict from real world usage is that it’s a storage hog with a “feature set” that most of us stopped using after a few hours. What was promised as a “hyper-intelligent” era for the iPhone has turned into a system-taxing disappointment that struggles to outperform a 2010-era chatbot.
If you’re still letting that 11 GB model chew through your battery and storage, it’s time to ask what you’re actually getting in return.
The Feature Graveyard
Remember the WWDC keynotes? We were promised a reimagined experience. Instead, we got a spattering of “features” that have quickly faded into obscurity:
- Writing Tools: Essentially a glorified “Professional” filter for your emails. If you can write a coherent sentence, you’ve already out-competed this 11 GB file.
- Genmoji & Image Playground: Fun for exactly one afternoon. In a world of high-fidelity AI art, Apple’s “sanitised clip-art” generator feels like a toy from 2022.
- Notification Summaries: Often more confusing than the original messages. It turns a nuanced group chat into a dry, often inaccurate, bulleted list.
- Clean Up: Useful? Sure. But worth a permanent 10% hit to your daily battery life? Hardly.
The Siri “Glow-up” That Never Was
The biggest betrayal was Siri. We were promised a “Personal Context” assistant that could navigate our apps and understand our lives. Instead, Siri remains the same frustrating “I can’t do that yet” interface, now just with a prettier glowing border.
Even in 2026, the promised “Action Support” (where Siri was meant to perform tasks across apps) is still buggy or “Coming Soon” in most Australian locales. Apple’s failure to deliver on their own hardware has led to the ultimate irony: The Google Flip-Flop.
The Privacy Irony: Outsourcing the Brain
After years of mocking competitors for their cloud-first, data-harvesting models, Apple has officially blinked. By integrating Google Gemini to handle the heavy lifting that their on-device models can’t touch, Apple has created a privacy paradox.
- The Data Handover: While Apple claims “Private Cloud Compute” shields your data, the moment you hand a query over to a Google-powered model, you are interacting with the world’s largest advertising company.
- Closed Source Trust: We are told the “handshake” between Apple and Google is private, but without open-source transparency, we’re just taking the word of two trillion-dollar giants who have a vested interest in your data.
My Verdict: Turn it Off
Apple Intelligence isn’t just “lacklustre”—it’s a liability. You are surrendering 11 GB of your hardware and significantly reducing your battery health for a suite of features that offer almost zero daily utility.
Apple’s rush to keep up with the “AI” bubble has led them to ship a half-baked product to satisfy shareholders, and you shouldn’t have to pay the performance price for their lack of innovation.
Reclaim your storage. Save your battery. Turn it off.
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