Post WWDC Rundown: The Apple Intelligence Age

I know it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but WWDC has given me a lot to think about and a lot to say. The star of the show was Apple Intelligence for M-Series and A17 Pro machines, but there’s a lot to digest here. I’ll do a rundown of some of my biggest takeaways. I am running the betas, so I have some first-hand knowledge. As always, I caution anyone who isn’t willing to accept a lot of risks to stay away from betas.

The tone-setter was the cold open. This wasn’t preachy, look what we did Apple, this was fun and played to the audience from the get-go. Hair Force One jokes were plenty and retro easter eggs from the OG Multicolor logo to the iPod stole the show. This was an Apple that maybe acknowledged that they’ve spent too much time playing to investors and not enough to the user base of late.

iOS and ipadOS 18

Some may say that this is the culmination of the Androidification of iOS. Yes and no, but that’s not a bad thing. If you thought iOS lacked customization in certain aspects, they heard you and to a far higher level than anyone expected.

First, we have the home screen where icons and widgets are no longer locked to the grid. I take that back, they still are, but there can now be empty spaces between the icons allowing you to place something anywhere on the grid you want it. It’s not as free-flowing as Android, but it’s worlds of magnitude closer. You also have icon customization options. There are light and dark options and these are completely independent of the system light/dark settings by default. If that isn’t enough, there’s a shader option to turn these any color you want. Since third-party icons aren’t iOS 18 ready yet, you’ll only see these used in Apple system apps. I rather like it. iOS 18 also gives you a view option to make the icons a bit bigger.

The home screen is the opening act here. The headliner is Control Center which is now basically infinitely customizable sheets of little widgets. Apple is making Control Center fully accessible to third-party apps, so it can be uniquely yours. If that isn’t enough, the lock screen has had the flashlight and camera buttons replaced by two control widgets. Using shortcuts you can replace the default camera app with one of your choosing right now. Camera apps using the control center infrastructure will have roughly the same privileges as Apple’s own app. This is what camera buffs have been asking for years, the ability to change the default app for one far more feature-packed. If I sound excited, damn right I am. This has been at the top of my iOS wishlist for well over a decade.

There are plenty of other features like Calendars and Reminders finally talking to each other, the ability to do math in the notes app, and trails in the maps app. That said, the Maps app has sadly been mostly insular to California and large metros, so who knows if we’ll see these come to most Maps users. We’re still waiting for Look Around to come to everyone 5 years later. Base RCS messaging is also coming sometime this fall. Yes, this means no end-to-end encryption found in some implementations.

I’m going to include ipadOS here with iOS, because, despite the available Mac-level hardware, Apple has made it very clear that the iPad is still a mobile device. If you want it to be more, you may be disappointed indefinitely. For this year, Apple leaned into what the iPad does well, writing with the Apple Pencil. Smart Script takes your scribbles and cleans them up to where people can actually read it. The Math notes feature is fully enhanced here. The big addition for this year is the calculator finally making an appearance. It’s been optimized for the iPad too with tools, modes, and handwriting support.

Yes, I have not said a word about Apple Intelligence, the Passwords App, or gaming. They’re coming in their own sections.

macOS 15 Sequoia and visionOS 2

This is going to be relatively short. The one big change unique to macOS Tree Country is a new continuity feature called iPhone Mirroring. Yes, this looks like an iPhone simulator, but it’s much more than that. Essentially it’s a remote desktop app for your iPhone. You fully control your phone and its apps, while still locked, and can even transfer data between devices in the way you wished AirDrop was able to. While this is running, your iPhone notifications are integrated with your Mac’s This is going to be a very powerful tool that not only allows you the full functionality of the iPhone inside your Mac, but allows your iPhone to sit and charge while your using your Mac. Cables everywhere will thank Apple.

I’m lumping visionOS in with the Mac because quite frankly both platforms’ biggest feature is linked: enhanced Mac Virtual display options including an ultra-wide equal to a pair of 4k displays side by side. If it wasn’t twice as much a physical 5K2K display, this alone would get me to buy Apple Vision Pro with everything else being icing on the cake. This is the future of computing.

Everything else is pretty appealing too. The ML is strong here with Apple turning your 2D photos into spatial photos. Everything has been enhanced with new gestures and capabilities. The home screen Is now more customizable and travel mode now works with trains. Yes, fellow Americans I know this is a foreign subject, but its big elsewhere. Trust me. Guest mode Is also much better. This is going to go over well for your office mate or your partner. Apple also took note of the enterprise deployment of Vision Pro. AVP in business is going to be one of its core user bases. If anything it may eclipse personal use.

watchOS 11, tvOS 18, and Other Minor Stuff

This is going to be brief. watchOS added the Vitals app, the TV App Sherlocked Amazon’s X-Ray in the form of InSight, and you can now you use your Matter-compatible Roomba to clear your floors inside the home app. The Enhanced dialog on Apple TV feature now works on TV speakers or your HDMI soundbar. There’s also now 21:9 aspect ratio support and new screen savers including Snoopy.

Yeah, that’s about it.

Unified Gaming Platform

There were three words I wanted to hear for the past couple of years: uniform gaming platform and Apple went right out and said it. This makes sense. Apple is effectively pushing APIs towards universal apps that can be used across Apple platforms. This is mostly true at this point. There still isn’t an AppleTV with an M-series chip, so this hasn’t come to the TV yet and Apple Vison (Vision Pro is the product not the platform) is too new as a platform yet. However, you can effectively buy most newer AAA titles and get them for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. This gives Apple an effective much larger customer base than any one platform alone. While AAA PC titles on an iPhone is precarious at best, even on the A17 Pro powered iPhone 15 Pro/ Pro Max, M-series iPad Airs and Pros effectively double the install base of the Mac. This gives you a much larger install base; thus some game developers are giving Apple another look.

Apple also did something they were not known in the past: taking developer feedback to heart. Apple’s new APIs and Game Porting ToolKit 2.0 have implemented AVX2 support. A lot of games and other 3D applications simply cannot be run without this Intel instruction set. It’s not entirely clear how Apple is doing this since AVX2 doesn’t exist on the Apple Silicon SoCs themselves, but it’s very welcome. Hopefully, it’s a sign that Apple is finally taking gaming seriously and will do what it takes to make its platforms top-notch for gaming. The relatively large amount of games announced, especially from Capcom and Ubisoft, especially Assassin’s Creed Shadows, on Ubisoft’s Anvil Game Engine is a sign that it might be headed in the right direction. Hopefully, we see movement from other larger game developers in the next year.

Apple Intelligence

AI has been the big buzzword of 2024. Most of it has been either LLM chatbots or what Apple still refers to as Machine Learning. Apple is getting into the game with a very Apple take on what it aptly calls Apple Intelligence. Rather than a single platform, this is more of a collection of ML and LLM tools that Apple plans to roll out to its platforms in the next few months. It’s going to have what you’d expect, LLM support for communicating with Siri, which is promised to have a large improvement. Let’s be honest here, Siri working would be a large improvement over what we have, but it can now work contextually. You can also use Siri through text normally now. There are also system-level writing tools like Grammarly and Stable Diffusion-like image creation. What’s better is that is that Apple gives devs access to all of this, finally, and it can work across apps.

What’s best is that Apple is doing this securely in tiers. The first tier is on-device, the second tier is specially designed Apple silicon servers running a custom OS just for this, and lastly can anonymously go out to third-party LLM providers. OpenAI is the first to sign up and they have confirmed that Apple is providing them neither data nor money, just the conversion opportunity for customers. You can use your ChatGPT subsection for additional subscriptions for additional features. It’s not clear if this will also give OpenAI access to additional data. What is also not clear is if Apple plans to give Apple One Subscribers extra features as well.

Apple Intelligence requires an M-series or A17 Pro or Later SoC so if you’re on an iPhone you’re going to have to have an iPhone 15 Pro.

Final Word

Apple gave everyone a little of something at WWDC 24. All the platforms have useful features and they collectively got enhanced gaming and vastly improved AI features through Apple Intelligence. If Apple Intelligence pans out, that’s what it will be known for. If not, it will be essentially a Snow Leopard-type year.