Apple just announced that WWDC 2024 will kick off on June 10, 2024, and there are many expectations that Apple will make some new AI announcements this year.
Apple’s announcement event states that a special event will take place at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, where the M2 chip, along with the newly redesigned MacBook Air, was announced at WWDC 2022, and where the MacBook Air 15-inch , M2 Ultra and Apple Vision Pro were announced at WWDC 2023.
Rather than being a consumer products issue, WWDC (short for Worldwide Developer Conference) is a weeklong conference in California that is much more focused on professional software developers in the Apple ecosystem than on new product launches. However, Apple has used the conference’s opening keynote in recent years to make major new announcements, such as the Mac Pro, the Apple M2 chip, and more.
A lot has happened since the last WWDC, namely the explosive growth of generative AI, which Apple has said will come to its products later this year. Given the audience for this conference, June 10 seems like a perfect time to outline Apple’s AI strategy to compete with companies like Google and Microsoft.
Apple is keeping tight-lipped about its revelations before they’re announced on stage, but they do drop hints, and Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior VP of marketing, wasn’t exactly subtle in his sharing of the announcement on X (formerly Twitter) .
Put #WWDC24, June 10-14, in your calendar. It’s going to be absolutely incredible! pic.twitter.com/YIln5972ZDMarch 26, 2024
While AI likely won’t be the only thing we see at WWDC 2024, all signs point to this being a major AI announcement, at least in terms of Apple’s future AI strategy.
What we expect to see at Apple WWDC 2024
In terms of AI, we expect Apple to show off on-device generative AI, such as GPTs or image generation running locally on iPhones and iPads, and likely on MacBooks and Macs as well.
Apple’s M-series and A-series chips in computers and mobile devices respectively have had neural processors (NPUs) built into them for a few years, but there hasn’t been a big push from Apple to get into the future. kind of generative AI work that hit the industry like a meteor at the end of 2022.
Apple’s Neural Engine, as it calls its NPUs, should be more than capable of running the kind of AI workloads that an Intel or AMD NPU is running now, and Qualcomm has been quite aggressive in promoting the generative AI capabilities of its Snapdragon chips, especially in the Samsung Galaxy S24.
To compete, Apple needs to deliver a generative AI response, and a keynote at a conference full of software developers who will likely be tasked with deploying and extending new AI toolkits and frameworks across iOS, macOS and beyond seems like the perfect fit location.
However, that doesn’t mean it will all be AI. We’ll also likely see iOS 18 announced at WWDC, likely with new AI features leading the way, but also with other, more typical quality of life improvements across Apple’s various software platforms, like watchOS 11.
On the hardware front, it’s way too early for new iPhones to be released, even as we get into the perpetual rhythm of iPad releases, so we wouldn’t be surprised if they make an appearance. The only other hardware announcement we might see is the Apple M3 Ultra, a follow-up to the late 2023 release of new MacBook Pro models with M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips.
The M3 Ultra is a workstation-class chip, so it will be something that an industry and developer audience would be much more interested in than the average consumer, so a WWDC announcement of a Mac Studio and Mac Pro refresh with M3 Ultra is a possibility.
We’ll almost certainly hear a lot more speculation and a lot more rumors flying around as we get closer to the kickoff of WWDC 2024 on June 10, but we’ll have to wait until Tim Cook takes the stage at Apple Park to find out sure what Apple has planned for the rest of 2024.