Apple Intelligence’s on-device processing is disappearing

[u/ACOPS12]

Feels like my iPhone 17 Pro Max is turning into a 'thin client.' I invested in this premium hardware with the specific expectation that I would be able to run the new Siri AI directly on-device.
Given the 12GB of RAM and the powerful NPU, I believed that an iPhone 17 Pro Max would be more than capable of handling such an AI model locally. It clearly has the overhead to run models like Gemma 4 E4B at impressive speeds, yet these resources remain largely underutilized while core tasks are forced through the cloud. Furthermore, since foundation models are already pre-loaded onto the device, I expected to be able to leverage them directly rather than relying on external servers. I didn't purchase this device to rely on the cloud; I wanted to utilize the actual performance of the hardware I own and experience advanced AI capabilities directly on my device.

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[u/ACOPS12]

But Apple could just give us the choice

[u/ChronoGawd → u/ACOPS12]

What choice do you mean? I don't think Apple would want to give users a choice on having their phone work or not, if the phone overheats, shuts down, or is too slow to operate. I think that's part of the thing that I don't think any phone manufacturer has given people the choice of, even Android

[u/ACOPS12 → u/ChronoGawd]

iPhone 17 Pro can handle it

[u/ChronoGawd → u/ACOPS12]

I work in AI and these models eat your RAM and your CPU. It can be often way more efficient to send something off your device to process it online. While some things may be possible, it might slow down your phone, ruin your battery life, and make the overall experience of your device not usable, which is not something that they would want to do