My only interest in AI would be a more conversational SIRI and a better autocorrect. If both were more contextually aware that would be great. Unlike almost all Apple pundits, who can’t mention the assistant without a strong put down, I find that SIRI works great right now for the relatively simple queries and commands I give it - it works at least 95% of the time. I couldn’t care less about summarizing, rewriting, image generation or the hallucination-prone LLMs.
I have a 13 Pro Max which does everything I want except for camera zoom - it would be nice to have a good 10x zoom with an image stabilization good enough to support it. I like to take bird pictures in decent light and the 3x is not quite good enough.
I was tempted by the 16 Pro Max mainly for the 5x zoom, but nothing else about it is compelling. I don’t think I would like the fiddly camera control button and the battery life and thermals in my current phone are still great. I can wait for a more suitable phone.