WWDC24

I’m really excited about Apple’s WWDC announcements. Anyone who remotely follows Apple would know that AI was expected to be the main event at this year’s conference. I was not really paying close attention to the speculation and news leading up to the event, partially because I didn’t have much time with our 9 month-old, and partially because I wanted to experience the keynote with an open mind.

I was really pleased to see how deeply integrated their new AI features are across many apps and aspects of their operating systems. In some ways I think they’re promising a lot that probably won’t live up to expectation initially, but I do think this is laying the right ground-work for the future. What has made Apple so successful is integrating great ideas and technologies into their products in ways that make complex technologies easier to use. I was also surprised how deeply integrated these AI changes are just one year after their ground-breaking Vision Pro and spacial computing announcement. Although, I do find these new AI capabilities to be far more compelling because the impact is across their entire product line.

Vision Pro is incredible in it’s own right, and stunning how well it works (from what I’ve heard), but it just doesn’t have the immediate main stream application that the rest of their product line does. And I think that’s ok. I think spacial commuting is going to unlock a variety of new innovations and improvements in a number of industries and I’m very excited to see the changes over the coming years.

To me, one of the most compelling fundamental changes that they’re making is how Siri is going to gain a better sense of context. The lack of context is one of the primary reasons Siri is not a go-to for more tasks, but I understand why this hasn’t existed up until now. Apple’s privacy-by-design ensures that our personal information isn’t stored in ways that it can easily be leaked or stolen. When Siri was first implemented, most of the capabilities were server-side, meaning Siri started with very little, if any, personal information to utilize when responding to requests or attempting to infer meaning/context.

Others building competing virtual assistants could easily surpass Siri in capability by simply using and storing more personal data from users. And to be honest, this made for great experiences with other services. But the lack or privacy focus or unclear business/monetization models of other companies has left me mostly uninterested in fully investing in alternative product ecosystems.

I don’t expect Apple to catch up to competitors in terms of feature-parity and capabilities. I think it’s partly why they chose to partner with OpenAI for a segment of their AI offerings, but I do think Apple’s privacy-centered approach and attention to detail and user-experience when integrating capabilities into products will make future AI features and capabilities compelling for many years to come.

I can’t wait to try some of these new features in the coming OS releases. I’m fairly certain my expectations will be a bit higher than the intial version of these features can deliver, but it’s an exciting start nonetheless. I think it’s also impressive that they followed up last year's huge announcement with something equally, if not more impactful. I can only imagine the engineering efforts that went in to Vision Pro. The system wide integration of AI features seems equally massive in scale to me, (which I say with little knowledge of how Apple is organized and achieves these massive goals).

There were a number of other interesting changes coming in the next OS’s that I’m excited to see as well. I was happy to see Journal is getting a few new features. I was really worried they wouldn’t continue to develop Journal given how little recognition it received at last year’s WWDC. The search function alone is enough to get me to make a complete switch from Day One (sorry Day One, I really like what you guys have done, but the the integration Apple offers with photos, workouts, location, etc. including limitless photos and video attachments, is simply unparalleled).

And a number of other new features like scheduled messages, sending messages/SMS via satellite, automatic email categorization and summaries, safari digest view, tap to pay with Apple Cash (unfortunately still likely to be underutilized until this is a cross-platform standard), the Vitals app, custom data stores for Core Data (long overdue), and custom control widgets among a host of other small, but compelling improvements and features.

With all of these new capabilities, on top of many existing features and services that could benefit from further development, I hope that next year is less focused on the “next big thing” and a lot more focused on continued refinements and polishing. I can only imagine how difficult it is to continue to build high quality products and services at the scale Apple operates today. I find it amazing and hope to see them continue this legacy for many decades to come.