But Apple Intelligence has its good points. “I find the best thing about Apple intelligence is that since I haven’t enabled it, my phone optimized for onboard AI has incredible battery life,” responded another Bluesky user. [Bluesky]
Y'know, if Apple had simply removed the AI altogether and went with that as a marketing point, people would probably buy more iPhones.
At the bare minimum, AI wouldn't be actively driving people away from buying them.
I am one of those people that would love a better battery, and also that is going to buy a pixel as my next phone instead of an iPhone. If they hadn’t forced AI garbage into the phone, I wouldn’t be planning the change. I know the new pixels also have AI garbage, but they have the advantage of allowing me to wipe the OS completely to install something less maliciously intrusive.
I run GrapheneOS on my Pixel and I am pretty happy with it. Also, check out OpenBubbles (fork of an app called BlueBubbles) if you have a Mac that you can extract the hardware ID from. I use it to get my iPhone friends to stop complaining (it's an American thing I think) and it's good enough the vast majority of the time.
Apple doesn't roll it out to EU out of spite for EU regulators slowly regulating their toy into a smartphone. They view it as punishment, imagine that?