How Apple gave the tech buzzword a complete 'miss'

 It won’t be an exaggeration to assume that the launch of the iPhone's is one of the most-awaited tech events of the year. The buildup, the hype and the anticipation around it makes it a phone launch than none other. Incidentally, even the keynote session at the Apple event on September 12 was also like no other phone launch in one aspect: the two words – Artificial Intelligence (AI) -- weren’t mentioned at all.
While every other brand worth its salt has been harping about AI capabilities in their smartphones, those two words were never uttered in any of the presentations Apple made about the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and the iPhone XR. Compare it with other brands – Huawei mainly – and you would notice that over emphasis on AI. Be it cameras or the processor, smartphone makers have been touting AI as the “game changer”.
Does Apple think any differently? Not really, but it focused more on machine learning (ML) and not AI.

In fact, the A12 Bionic processor that powers the three new iPhones are heavily reliant on ML. Neural Engine is what Apple calls it and all the ‘cool’ features of the iPhone are powered through it. For instance, the Face ID works primarily because of the neural engine.

In the latest iPhones, there’s more power than ever before and its mainly down to the A12 bionic chip and the neural engine. Apple claims that its neural engine is now 10 times faster than before. While the iPhone X could perform about 600 billion operations per second, the new range of iPhones can do a whopping 5 trillion operations.

While other companies say AI is boosting their cameras, for Apple it’s all about the neural engine. The company revealed that with the help of it one can take better images. The much-improved Portrait mode gets better because of the neural engine. How it works is that for example when you’re clicking an image in Portrait mode, the neural engine attempts to detail all things about the image – the person, the background among other things.

So Apple might not have mentioned the buzzword – AI -- of smartphone technology, it still is heavily invested in it and it’s at the heart of the new iPhones. “Think Different” used to be the tagline for Apple ad campaigns. Talk Different seems to be the mantra for its phone launches and talking about its features.