TL;DW: Apple Intelligence is Apple training their models locally on your personal Apple product data (aka anything you do on an iPhone, Mac, iPad or your Apple ID) using their Apple Silicon chips as well as building a Apple Siri voice assistant client for OpenAI's ChatGPT. The features seem gatekept to newer Apple products and they claim it's opt-in.
It looks like "AI" is here to stay as capitalists have placed it in most supply chains and industries. Goes without saying, but don't buy Apple, you're just buying yourself a one-way trip to a digital jail where the walls are made out of "seamless apple ecosystem" and "shiny metal devices that are cold to the touch."
Especially don't buy anything from the Apple Store because that's trashy Global North treat brain behavior.
Many people are saying this. You need a fuckin' recognition guide to tell the most recent iPhone releases apart and I can't think of the last time anyone seriously claimed apple had a killer software feature.
Their chips are pretty good when it comes to power and efficiency, so that and their closed ecosystem that allows them to fine tune everything are their main advantages on a technical level. Other than that, they're being held up by marketing and social clout, which works better in some markets than others.