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WWDC24 - Apple Event Recap

June 14th, 2024

WWDC24 - Apple Event Recap
Anh Nguyen

by Anh Nguyen

COO & Co-Founder at Gummicube, Inc

WWDC24 is in the books! Apple's latest event brought groundbreaking new updates to all of its devices and respective operating systems that look to reshape the way users interact with their devices. From the introduction of Apple's native artificial intelligence to overhauls coming to your everyday Apple apps, get the inside scoop of what's to come this fall and beyond.

Apple AI is Here

AI has been a hot topic in recent times with companies across a variety of industries expanding upon it or incorporating it into their products and services. Most notably, companies like OpenAI with their ChatGPT service have shone a spotlight on the utility of generative AI models for everyday use cases.

Apple is looking to capitalize on this by incorporating ChatGPT into its products, branding it in good ol’ Apple fashion, Apple Intelligence.

What is Apple Intelligence?

Hopping on the AI trend, Apple looks to bring the power of ChatGPT to devices while adding its own touch that promises to conserve user privacy. Users will be able to enjoy the same generative text and image capabilities found on OpenAI’s native model, now optimized for select iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices.

ChatGPT’s inclusion brings all-new Apple Writing Tools. Your device will now be able to scan and understand the context of what is on your screen or detected in the background to provide useful snippets of information across a range of different use cases. For example, Writing Tools will be able to provide summaries of long emails, transcripts of phone calls, and proofread or rewrite text. Additionally, it can also identify essential information like potentially time-sensitive events sent through a text message or prioritize notifications by based on the content within them. It’s not just about writing, it’s also about accessing and organizing all your text-formatted content better than ever.

Image generation is another breakthrough feature for Apple devices. This new technology can be found across a variety of new tools. Image Playground, for example, is a new experience that lets users create unique images based on a prompt. This prompt can consist of a description, concept, or a photo from a person’s library. It builds upon the already popular image generation abilities of GPT-4 and lets users export visuals to presentations, messages, social media, and much more.

Apple Intelligence will also be able to scan and pull up specific images based on user commands. For example, someone might want to search “photos of Katie with a red shirt on”. Their device will then show the user photos matching the prompt, making image search faster and more convenient.

A big concern with AI and data processing has been privacy. Apple’s approach to data privacy with Apple Intelligence consists of on-device processing for simpler everyday tasks and prompts and an all new Private Cloud Compute for more complex requests. Apple states neither technologies store data with information used solely for requests.

iOS 18 - What’s New?

New Era of Siri

This fall, select iPhones will be able to enjoy all of the above features and new capabilities Apple has to offer. A large part of Apple Intelligence is how it looks to affect Siri and users’ everyday interactions with their devices. According to Apple, the virtual assistant will now boast “richer language understanding and awareness of your personal context.” This means your commands and prompts can be more akin to natural language than before and Siri will also be able to understand and complete complex requests across different apps considering the content of each of them.

ios 18 siri improvements
Source: Apple

These enhancements to Siri ultimately usher in a revolutionary new era for how you interact with your iPhone. Siri can now help you organize important information, pull relevant content across multiple apps, take actions on specific screens with “onscreen awareness”, and understand you much better than before, making for what looks to be a supremely useful virtual assistant.

Personalization, Convenience, & More

With iOS 18 come even more customization options for users. Widgets and icons are no longer subject to the ‘grid’ Apple would limit them to, meaning your screens can be laid out according to how you want them to appear. Taking it a step further, is the ability to completely change the colors of app icons with a new and improved Dark Mode. Want red icons? You can do that. Looking to match them to your background photo? That’s possible too.

Another area being revamped is the Control Center. Following the trend of increased customization, come new ways to personalize your Control Center with an updated layout that lets you access more controls and even determine the sizes of each one – making the Control Center layout completely up to you.

iOS 18 control center
Source: Apple

Users will also now be able to enjoy optimized experiences across a variety of native Apple apps. Photos is getting an overhaul, making it easier to find and organize images. Messaging has been expanded with more ways to express yourself, support for RCS messaging, and texting over satellite. Apps like Mail, Safari, and Apple Pay are also seeing major upgrades to help make the experience more organized and convenient for users overall.

Apple Intelligence & iOS 18 - What You Need to Know

We’ve covered just a handful of new features announced at WWDC24. The benefits accompanying each of the updates announced promise to bring enhanced experiences across several apps for iPhone users. So developers will naturally be asking, “how will this affect my app?”

Luckily, Apple Intelligence for developers will be available in a beta version, allowing you to leverage the new capabilities their Apple’s AI tech provides to curate experiences for your app similar to how Apple does for its native ones. With this potentially comes new ways to connect with users, encourage reegangement, and improve retention among a plethora of other possibilities.

It’s important to stay up to date with Apple’s current guidelines and adapt as necessary once Apple Intelligence is made available to you so that you can be among the first to harness the power of Apple’s native AI to your advantage before your competitors.

Ready for Apple Intelligence and iOS 18? Trust Gummicube to keep you up to date on the latest iOS developments and strategies that you can use to stay competitive and grow your app.

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