Apple Intelligence officially launched, new iMac equipped with M4 chip

According to the financial news app Zhitong Finance, Apple (AAPL.US) officially released iOS 18.1 on Monday, introducing the first batch of Apple Intelligence features to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. The initial Apple Intelligence features include: 1) system-wide writing tools to optimize user text input for improved writing quality; 2) photo cleanup: automatically identify and organize album files to optimize storage space; 3) notification summaries: intelligently generate app notification summaries to help users access key information; 4) enhanced Siri features: providing more accurate information. In addition, the new Apple Intelligence features will be launched in December, with other features to follow in the coming months. It is widely expected that the new batch of Apple Intelligence features to be released in December will be more exciting, including integrating ChatGPT into Siri services and launching image generation tools that can better compete with Google and other competitors. This release marks an important milestone for Apple, as the company is leveraging the launch of Apple Intelligence features to market the iPhone 16 series products introduced last month. This is also Apple's response to Wall Street's questions about its artificial intelligence strategy. Unlike other major competitors who invest billions of dollars in developing cloud-based artificial intelligence systems powered by NVIDIA chips, Apple's Apple Intelligence features will run on hardware-side chips, meaning that running Apple Intelligence features on Apple hardware such as iPhone, iPad, and iMac will require hardware upgrades. Some investors believe that Apple Intelligence will drive a significant upgrade cycle, consolidating Apple's leadership position in cutting-edge artificial intelligence for daily use. Bank of America securities analyst Wamsi Mohan stated, "Given the staggered release timing of Apple Intelligence features, we expect iPhone demand to rebound after the initial release of Apple Intelligence in late October." Meanwhile, Apple also released a new iMac with the M4 chip on Monday, starting at the same price of $1299 as the previous model, and will be available on November 8th. Apple stated that the latest iMac will be 1.7 times faster than the M1 chip in the 2021 iMac, with graphics processing speed increased by 2.1 times, even six times faster than the older iMac with Intel chips. The new iMac also features an enhanced neural network engine for processing artificial intelligence tasks. With the support of the newly released operating systems such as MacOS Sequoia 15.1 and iPadOS 18.1 on Monday, devices with the M4 chip can start using the new Apple Intelligence features