The biggest announcements from Apple’s most important event of the year—and quite possibly ever

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman didn’t get any airtime, but he was in attendance:

Look who I ran into at #WWDC24 ⁦@sama⁩ pic.twitter.com/Ab06ahyagf

— Roscoe Rubin-Rottenberg | WWDC24 (@knotbin) June 10, 2024

Without further ado, here’s a look at the biggest announcements from Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote.

The big stuff

• APPLE INTELLIGENCE:
  • CEO Tim Cook promises it will be powerful, intuitive, integrated, personal, and private
  • All the major operating systems announced at the event—including iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and MacOS Sequoia—will debut the new personal intelligence system, which puts generative models at the core of your experience to give you relevant information while still protecting your privacy in every step
  • The A17 Pro chip, and the M1 through M4 chip, all support Apple Intelligence (that’s iPhone 15 and later, and all Apple Silicon Macs—so if you don’t have one of these devices and want to experience Apple Intelligence, you’ll need to upgrade this fall)
  • Siri can plug into ChatGPT (more on this below) for free, but if you already subscribe, you’ll get access to OpenAI’s premium features
  • Capabilities of Apple Intelligence:
    • At its core, Apple Intelligence can create language and images, and take action
    • It can prioritize your notifications to make sure you don’t miss anything important
    • Writing tools can edit and rewrite your notes, messages, and essays
    • You can create original images in unique styles to make everyday conversations more enjoyable (like sending a picture of your mom in a superhero costume to wish her a happy birthday)
    • It can take action, like “play the song that Ray texted me,” or “flip my camera”
    • It understands personal context so when you make a request, it can look at all of your relevant personal data: Let’s say a meeting gets rescheduled and you’re wondering if you’ll be able to make it to your daughter’s concert in time; Apple Intelligence can look at past messages, times, dates, and even traffic information, to help you problem-solve
  • Experiences for Apple Intelligence:
    • Siri is getting a major upgrade after its debut 13 years ago to be more natural, contextually relevant, and personal to you
    • Siri looks different: It’s now a glowing light that wraps around the edge of your screen
    • Even if you stumble over your words, Siri will understand what you’re talking about
    • Even if you don’t know the name of a particular iPhone feature, you can describe what you want to do and Siri will help you out
    • On-screen awareness: If your friend sends you an address, just say “add this address to his contact card” and Siri will automatically know who “his” is and do the work for you
    • Siri can take hundreds of new actions in and across apps, like asking for photos of your friend in New York wearing her pink coat. If you say “make this pop,” it’ll enhance your photo.
    • Siri can draft a summary of your meeting notes and send them off to your teammates
    • Thanks to its ability to index all of your apps and data, Siri can find and look through things it never could before, like find information from an email sent years ago, fill out forms from your ID or driver’s license, and more
    • Siri can rewrite messages so you can choose which message you like best, which is incredibly helpful for people who want their cover letters to come across perfectly
    • Apple Intelligence can change the tone of your writing to be more friendly, or even rewrite your message as a poem
    • Siri can write a TL;DR for a long message at the top of your messages to coworkers and friends by summarizing your notes in bullet points; it can also summarize emails sent to you to help you cut to the chase
    • Notifications are simplified, prioritized, and summarized to help you reduce noise
    • GENMOJI! Instead of using emoji to represent how you feel, you can create an emoji of your own design (!) Just by describing what you want, like a T. Rex riding a wave on a surfboard
    • Playground lets you create brand-new AI images in three different styles (animation, sketch, or illustration) and gives you a preview of an image you’ve described before sending it off to your friends via Messages
    • A dedicated Image Playground app lets you experiment with creating your own images to share via Messages, Freeform, Keynote, or on social media
    • If you make an original sketch of your own, just circle it and you can create a spiffy AI-generated version of that same image
    • A Clean Up tool in the Photos app can help you remove unwanted aspects of your photos
    • It’s easier to search photos, videos, or create a memory movie just by describing what you want to see
    • You can record and transcribe audio in the Notes app, and when it’s done, Apple Intelligence gives you a summary
    • Siri can tap into ChatGPT to help you answer certain questions, so if you have a bunch of ingredients and want an interesting recipe, you can confirm it’s okay to share your question with ChatGPT, and it’ll bring you answers without leaving your conversation with Siri
    • ChatGPT can help you create bedtime stories, and even illustrate your bedtime story (!)
• IOS 18, the newest iPhone software coming this fall, comes with:
  • The ability to customize app widgets and apps, including the ability to change the color tint of all your app icons
  • A Dark Mode for the entire iOS home screen interface
  • A new customizable Control Center: multiple pages to swipe between your phone, home, and music controls; the ability to resize your controls; and a new gallery to choose which controls you want to see and toggle
  • The ability to lock an app, so friends and family can’t open certain apps or see sensitive information (this is going to test a lot of people’s trust in their relationships)
  • The ability to react to any message in Messages with any emoji or sticker, and you can format text to be bold, underlined, and more
  • The ability to schedule Messages (!)
  • The Mail app intelligently 👀 separates your mail into categories: primary mail, transactions, social media updates, and promotions
  • The ability to exchange Apple Cash without needing to share phone numbers or email addresses; just hold your phones together to pay
  • A redesigned Photos app that organizes your photos into categories like trips, people and pets, and more; a carousel for your favorite photos and featured photos (surfaced by the app)

The smaller stuff

• AirPods:
  • You can nod your head yes, or shake your head no, to interact with Siri using your AirPods—for those occasions where you don’t want to speak in public, for instance
  • AirPods Pro gets voice isolation to intelligently 👀 remove background noise and enhance call quality
• Apple TV+:
  • Apple’s streaming service, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, is getting new original movies and shows featuring big names like Matt Damon, Vince Vaughn, Harrison Ford, and others
  • Apple TV+ gets a new feature called InSight, which can tell you which actors are onscreen, or what song is playing (like Amazon’s X-Ray feature for Prime Video)
• MacOS Sequoia, the next-generation software for Mac computers, comes with:
  • iPhone Mirroring, which lets you see what’s on your iPhone—and control it—on your Mac
  • The ability to place all of your windows in smart tiles and arrange them, so you don’t have to resize everything by hand all the time
  • A new Passwords app, which syncs across your devices; no more needing to dig through your Settings app
• WatchOS 11, the new software for Apple Watch, comes with:
  • The ability to intelligently 👀 surface information it thinks you’ll need with the Smart Stack, like when your Uber is arriving, or the translation app if you’re traveling
  • An effort rating to tell you how hard you’re working out compared to your average
  • More details about your metrics and vitals to help you understand how changes may be linked to other aspects of your life like elevation or illness
  • Cycle tracking now supports gestational age to help you track your pregnancy
• iPadOS 18, the next-generation iPad software, comes with:
  • All of the big iOS 18 features, including a customizable Control Center and home screen
  • A floating app bar to improve navigation, which can be customized so each app can feel distinct
  • The ability to share your screen with someone else, so you can teach a friend how to do things on their iPad with your own (grandparents rejoice!)
  • Math notes, where you can use handwriting to do complex math—and your iPad will solve your math problems for you, using your own handwriting (!), once you scribble an equal sign (RIP homework)
  • The ability to refine your handwriting as you scribble and take notes. It’ll also spell-check for you. You can also paste text and it’ll appear in your handwriting (this is bonkers)
• VisionOS 2, the first major software update for Apple Vision Pro (which launched in February), comes with:
  • The ability to create spatial photos from photos you’ve already taken
  • Show you the time and battery level with simple hand gestures
  • Travel Mode, so you can keep working or watching entertainment in a moving vehicle
  • New developer APIs and frameworks to support experiences for the enterprise or tabletop
  • Support for third parties to create spatial video experiences, so you can shoot immersive video with a special Canon camera, or enjoy 3D videos on sites like Vimeo
  • New immersive content, including an Apple short film, and videos from Red Bull and The Weeknd
• Apple Vision Pro is coming to more countries, including Japan, Singapore, China, Australia, Canada, and others, this summer