macOS 27 Golden Gate marks a major upgrade for Apple Intelligence, two years after its initial launch. The generative AI features are now unavoidable—Apple removed the toggle that previously allowed users to disable Apple Intelligence and delete the downloaded AI models. Golden Gate defines the release across marketing, features, chips, and disk space requirements.

Beyond the AI fanfare, the underlying operating system receives a "Snow Leopard" style update. Golden Gate addresses the most irritating design flaws from macOS 26 Tahoe, adds incremental improvements, and promises under-the-hood optimizations to make common tasks faster and more reliable.

The Golden Gate update is the first macOS release since the mid-2000s not to support any Intel Macs. It requires an Apple M1 chip or better, effectively ending support for the last 2019 and 2020-era Intel Macs. All Apple Silicon Macs support Apple Intelligence, which never ran on Intel-based hardware.

Apple Intelligence in Golden Gate is powered by the AFM 3 Core model, built in collaboration with Google. A more advanced AFM 3 Core Advanced model requires an M3-family processor or newer and at least 12GB of RAM. Currently, only more expressive Siri voice capabilities and improved voice dictation require the advanced model.