macOS Sequoia and Apple Intelligence — AI Inside the OS, and Apple as the Catching-Up Side

On 16 September 2024, Apple released macOS 15 "Sequoia" alongside iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. At the centre of the release was a brand for a new bundle of features — Apple Intelligence.

Apple Intelligence covered summarisation, rewriting, image generation (Image Playground, Genmoji), a strengthened Siri, and prioritised notifications, running on a hybrid of an on-device foundation model (around three billion parameters) and Apple-operated servers called Private Cloud Compute. Integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT was bundled. The release marked the moment the centre of OS work moved from "add features" to "embed AI in every context of the OS".

It was also the release in which Apple, publicly, became the catching-up side of the AI race.

M1 and Above Only — About 30% of Mac Users Left Behind

Apple Intelligence's hardware requirements were strict.

• Mac: M1 or newer (Apple Silicon). Every Intel Mac excluded.
• iPhone: iPhone 15 Pro / Pro Max, or any iPhone 16.
• iPad: M1-class iPad Pro, iPad Air (M2), and selected iPad mini.

Intel Macs had been retiring slowly since the M1 announcement in November 2020, but as of 2024 they still represented an estimated ~30% of the Mac install base. An Intel Mac Pro bought at high price four years earlier, or a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro — these could install Sequoia itself but would never run Apple Intelligence.

On iPhone the cut was sharper still. The plain iPhone 15 (everything except Pro and Pro Max) — the newest non-Pro iPhone at the time — was excluded. An ordinary user who had bought an iPhone 15 the year before could not experience the new Siri at all.

The same pattern Microsoft enacted with Copilot+ PCs and the Windows 11 TPM 2.0 debate repeated inside Apple's ecosystem: AI-feature generational gaps were frozen as hardware-generational gaps.

Not Launched in the EU — Collision with the DMA

The other large friction point was the EU market.

In June 2024, immediately after the WWDC announcement, Apple issued a statement: because the Digital Markets Act's interoperability obligations could compromise user privacy and security, Apple Intelligence would not launch in the EU during 2024. iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay Screen Sharing were also delayed.

Across 2024–2025, Apple drew criticism from both directions — that it was "withholding features in the EU using the DMA as a shield", and that it was using the DMA as cover for political enclosure. In the end Apple Intelligence rolled out in macOS 15.4 / iOS 18.4 in April 2025, including EU languages — more than six months late.

DMA, Apple Intelligence, third-party AirDrop interoperability, NFC opening — Apple's friction with the EU kept burning until Apple's own September 2025 statement that the DMA "is causing delays to new features for EU users".

Siri 2.0 and the ChatGPT Tie-In — The Promise Slipped

The most-watched part of the WWDC 2024 keynote was the next-generation Siri — personal context, on-screen awareness, in-app actions, the assistant able to reach across apps.

In March 2025, Apple officially admitted a delay: the quality bar had not been met. Personalised Siri, on-screen awareness and in-app actions were pushed to 2026.

Further slippages followed. As of June 2025 the plan was spring 2026 (iOS 26.4). As of February 2026 there was further slippage — some features reportedly into iOS 27 (autumn 2026) or later.

In the interim, class-action lawsuits were filed by consumers who said they had bought iPhone 16 specifically for the new Siri. The gap between marketing and shipping reality opened to more than a year — a case that will be cited.

The ChatGPT integration shipped on schedule inside 2024, but this was Apple borrowing OpenAI's AI, not its own — a posture that could be read as "we are behind on our own model, so we borrowed".

iPhone Mirroring and Deeper Continuity

A quieter but well-received feature was iPhone Mirroring — operating the iPhone's screen, notifications and apps directly from the Mac. As an extension of Continuity — Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch behaving like a single device — it actually helped users every day inside Sequoia.

It, too, was delayed in the EU under the DMA issue.

What Was Recorded

The macOS Sequoia / Apple Intelligence generation is likely to be remembered as the first Apple OS release in which Apple was the catching-up side.

Google had been shipping Bard / Gemini and Tensor-chip Pixel AI features since 2023. Microsoft had integrated Copilot into Windows and Office in 2023. Samsung had launched Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 in January 2024. Against that timeline, Apple's AI arrived in September 2024, and its centrepiece — Siri 2.0 — slipped to 2026.

That said, the substance of Apple's strategy — on-device plus Private Cloud Compute, an architecture that tries to guarantee privacy at the design level — was real. Apple was losing on speed but trying to win on design quality. The verdict will probably not be in until Siri 2.0 actually ships.

And the EU friction, the cut-off of older Macs, the Siri delays and lawsuits — this generation also taught Apple that, in the AI era, an OS release is no longer just a technology announcement.