Craig Federighi told WWDC on 8 June that Apple's most powerful on-device Apple Intelligence model, and the features it enables, will ship on the most capable iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems. The floor is 12 GB of unified memory. That list is the iPhone 17 Pro, the 17 Pro Max, and the iPhone Air. Plus iPads with M4 or later and 12 GB, Macs with M3 or later and 12 GB, and Vision Pro with M5.

The base iPhone 17 ships with 8 GB. It keeps standard Apple Intelligence and the rebuilt Siri in iOS 27. It does not get the bigger on-device model. MacRumors and Tom's Guide both filed the cut on 8 June from Federighi's line: expressive voices and more advanced dictation.

The sentence on the stage was Craig Federighi's. Tom's Guide, Dave LeClair, 8 June, printed it in full: "Our most powerful on-device model and the features it enables, like expressive voices and more advanced dictation, will be coming to our most capable iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems." MacRumors, Hartley Charlton, the same afternoon, put the hardware under that sentence: 12 GB of unified memory, and a list that starts with the iPhone 17 Pro, the 17 Pro Max, and the iPhone Air. The 8 June cut is the news, not a September rumour. The features named on the floor were two. The memory floor named with them was 12 GB.

Apple's bigger on-device model needs 12 GB and an iPhone 17 Pro
IPHONE 15 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)Download

A copper iPhone on dark marble
A copper-finish iPhone face-down on dark veined marble, silver Apple logo, a raised triple-camera island, USB-C on the bottom edge, city lights through a window. No faces.

Apple Intelligence has used an 8 GB floor since 2024. That is two years of one number. 8 June 2026 is the first time the company raised the bar, and it raised it for a subset, not for the whole assistant. The 8 GB phone still runs Apple Intelligence. The 12 GB phone runs the bigger on-device model as well. Those are two stacks on one operating system, iOS 27, not a single switch labelled Siri. Charlton's 8 June piece is the first clip this calendar hangs on. LeClair's Tom's Guide file is the second. 9to5Mac posted the same list the same day. Three desks, one floor, one number: 12 GB.

The phone list is short on purpose. iPhone 17 Pro. iPhone 17 Pro Max. iPhone Air. Federighi did not add the base iPhone 17. MacRumors and Tom's Guide both wrote the reason as 8 GB of unified memory on that SKU. A second RAM figure for the Pro, the Pro Max, or the Air was not published. They are on the 12 GB list. The base 17 is on the 8 GB list. That is the cut as filed on 8 June. No other iPhone SKU is being added here.

The rest of the 12 GB list is not a phone. iPads with M4 or later and 12 GB of unified memory. Macs with M3 or later and 12 GB of unified memory. Vision Pro with M5. Apple published those as conditions, not as a catalogue of every board that ships. An M4 iPad that does not have 12 GB is not on the bigger-model list. An M3 Mac that does not have 12 GB is not on it either. Which iPad or Mac configurations clear 12 GB was not filled in on 8 June. The condition is the news. M4 or later, and 12 GB. M3 or later, and 12 GB. Vision Pro M5, named as a product.

The copper still is the object in the pocket: a phone on marble, Apple mark on the back, a raised camera island, USB-C on the bottom edge, a window of city light. No face. It is not a teardown. It is not a RAM map. It is the product class Federighi was talking about when he said most capable iPhone.

MacRumors came back on 10 June. Tim Hardwick's file is the one that names what 12 GB actually buys. Two things. More expressive Siri voices, with controls for expressiveness and pace. A major accuracy gain for systemwide dictation: speech turned into polished text on the fly, capitalization, punctuation, and formatting handled automatically, with improved speech understanding meant to cut errors. Hardwick's line is the one that stops the 12 GB floor from being read as Siri wholesale. The 12 GB model improves how Siri sounds and how well it transcribes. It is not the whole rebuilt assistant.

Everything else in the Siri AI rollout, on that 10 June filing, runs on the broader Apple Intelligence device list. Personal context. On-screen awareness. Web answers. The dedicated Siri app. Visual Intelligence. Writing Tools. That list still includes the iPhone 15 Pro, the iPhone 16 lineup, and the base iPhone 17. They keep standard Apple Intelligence and the rebuilt Siri in iOS 27. They do not run the 12 GB on-device model. They do not get the new expressive voices. They do not get the more advanced dictation engine. Older voices, less precise dictation, same chatbot-style assistant. That is Hardwick's cut, two days after the keynote.

An iPhone in a jacket pocket running a Personal Assistant thread
A dark iPhone in an olive jacket pocket, screen titled Personal Assistant, a flight card for Delta DL2174 JFK to BOS, a weather reply of 14.4 °C, time 11:30. No faces.

The iPhone 16 lineup and the iPhone 15 Pro still run those standard Siri AI features in iOS 27. That sentence was already true on 8 June. 9to5Mac wrote it as continuity: many of the new AI features run on the same hardware supported today, including iPhone 15 Pro. The shock on that desk was the base iPhone 17 missing the bigger on-device model. The 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max, in LeClair's file, support iOS 27 and the Apple Intelligence features they already had. They miss the new on-device model. A RAM SKU for those phones was not printed. The feature split was. Standard stack: yes. 12 GB model: no.

Private Cloud Compute is the other half of Federighi's architecture sentence. On 8 June he said Apple adapted the new foundation models to run on device and on servers using Private Cloud Compute. 9to5Mac's same-day file said users on hardware that does not make the 12 GB list should still reach many of the same features, relying on Private Cloud Compute, and that those round trips will be slower than the on-device versions. That is 9to5Mac's line, not a bench this paper ran. A medical note, a legal draft, a child's homework: those are jobs you do not send to a rented model. The 12 GB phone can do more of that work without a Private Cloud Compute round trip. The 8 GB phone still runs the standard on-device stack. It is a smaller one. Features that still leave the device still leave through Apple's private-cloud path, not through a public chatbot. Apple has not published parameter counts for either on-device model. None are invented here.

The pocket still is the clerk as a user sees it. A Personal Assistant thread. A flight card: Delta DL2174, JFK to BOS, Friday 24 October, 7:15 a.m., Terminal 4, Gate B32, seat 14C. A weather reply: mostly cloudy, high 14°C, no rain. Time 11:30. No named person in the frame. The still is not an Apple marketing screenshot and is not being treated as one. It is the job Federighi was selling: personal context, on-screen work, a clerk that stays with the phone. The 12 GB cut is about which phones run the bigger local model while they do that work. The 8 GB phones still do the work. They do it on the standard stack, with the older voices, and with dictation that Hardwick called less precise.

iOS 27 was in developer beta on 8 June. Hardwick, 10 June, had a public beta the next month and a general release in the fall. This print date is 30 August. The fall build is the one that will ship the split to retail. The split will still be the split: 12 GB for expressive voices and advanced dictation on device; 8 GB for the rebuilt Siri and the rest of Apple Intelligence. Developer weeks do not rewrite Federighi's list. They ship it.

Apple did not publish a 16 GB iPhone, an 8 GB iPad SKU named as a product, an M3 Mac configuration list, or a parameter count for the on-device models on 8 June. MacRumors and Tom's Guide did not invent them either. The published floor is 12 GB unified memory for the most powerful on-device Apple Intelligence model. The published 8 GB SKU is the base iPhone 17. The published 8 GB floor for Apple Intelligence dates to 2024. The published first raise of that floor is 8 June 2026, for a subset.

The list is the story. iPhone 17 Pro. iPhone 17 Pro Max. iPhone Air. iPads with M4 or later and 12 GB. Macs with M3 or later and 12 GB. Vision Pro with M5. The base iPhone 17, at 8 GB, keeps standard Apple Intelligence and the rebuilt Siri in iOS 27. It does not get the bigger on-device model. The iPhone 16 lineup and the iPhone 15 Pro stay on the standard Siri AI features: personal context, on-screen awareness, the standalone Siri app, Visual Intelligence, Writing Tools, web answers. They do not run the 12 GB model. Expressive voices and more advanced dictation stay on the 12 GB machines. Federighi said so on 8 June. MacRumors and Tom's Guide filed the cut the same day. Hardwick named the two features on 10 June. That cut is the news.