Highlights and Key Takeaways from WWDC 2024: Summary of Key Announcements

Economy
By Liam

4 minutes reading Last updated: June 11, 2024 | 08:00 IST

At WWDC 2024, Apple announced major updates across its entire product lineup, focusing on improving user experience, privacy and ecosystem integration. Additionally, the US-based tech giant has revamped its digital assistant Siri with more capabilities powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Finally, Apple debuted its personal intelligence system called Apple Intelligence, which uses generative models for personalized interactions and integrates ChatGPT for advanced content generation. Here are the key takeaways from Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote address.

visionOS 2 for Vision Pro

visionOS 2 is a major update for Apple Vision Pro and introduces a number of new features:

  • Spatial Photo Experience: Enhances the immersive experience with spatial photo support.

  • New Gestures: Adds support for new gestures, improving interaction.

  • SharePlay in Photos app: Allows spatial personas to join shared photos.

  • Travel Mode: Includes train support for a better travel experience.

  • Higher screen resolution: Later this year, Vision Pro will support a resolution equivalent to two 4K displays.

The new features in iOS 18 focus on customization, communication and security:

  • Home screen: Apps and widgets can now be moved and the home screen supports customizable colors and new dark mode app icons.

  • Control Center: Introduces a new group of controls accessible with a swipe gesture, showing connected devices in the home and allowing quick adjustments to controls. The controls can also be accessed from the lock screen and the action button can bring up these controls.

  • App lock: Independent app lock, which places hidden apps in a secure folder.

  • Messages: Includes support for RCS messages, emoji and sticker tapbacks, scheduled messages, text formatting, integrated text effects, and satellite messages for iPhone 14 and later models.

  • Email: Categorization of on-device emails into primary, transactions, updates, and promotions (available later this year).

  • Game Mode: Mac’s Game Mode comes to iPhone.

  • Photos: A comprehensive new design simplifies accessing memories and organizing photos, with built-in intelligence for collection creation.

  • Audio: Siri supports gestures like nodding, voice isolation for AirPods Pro, and personalized spatial audio for gaming, with “Need for Speed ​​Mobile” being the first title to support this feature – available later this year.

  • TV: Apple TV Plus gets an insight feature similar to Prime Video’s screen option and support for 21:9 format projectors.

watchOS 11 for Watch series

watchOS 11 introduces several new features aimed at improving health and usability:

  • Training load: Tailor-made for enthusiasts and athletes.

  • Vitals App: A new app to quickly view vital health statistics.

  • Cycle Tracking: Enhanced with pregnancy tracking features.

  • Smart Stacks: Automatically adds widgets such as weather and translation.

  • Check-in: a new feature for the Apple Watch.

iPadOS 18 for iPad

The updates in iPadOS 18 focus on productivity and ease of use:

  • Floating Tab Bar: Customizable and movable to a sidebar.

  • SharePlay: Allows remote control of someone else’s iPad.

  • Calculator app: Finally on iPad, with support for Apple Pencil.

  • Smart Script in the Notes app: Improves handwriting using on-device machine learning, making it smoother and easier to read. Pasted text appears in handwritten note format, with support for spell check, text wrapping, and copy/paste functions.

macOS Sequoia for Macs

macOS Sequoia improves continuity within the Apple ecosystem:

  • Wireless iPhone Mirroring: View and control your iPhone remotely using a Mac. Notifications and audio are forwarded to the Mac, with mirroring supported even when the iPhone is locked. Drag-and-drop functionality is included.

  • Tile Position: Allows quick tiling of windows, similar to Windows.

  • Background Replacements: Available for FaceTime and Zoom.

  • Passwords App: Coming to Mac, iPad, iPhone and Windows.

Safari

Safari continues to lead with an emphasis on speed, privacy and user experience:

  • Feature Highlights: Uses machine learning to detect and present interesting content.

  • Reader Mode: Now includes summaries and table of contents.

  • Viewer: Brings videos to the foreground with system video controls.

Apple Intelligence

Apple introduces a new personal intelligence system:

  • Generative models: Designed with privacy in mind, suitable for prioritizing notifications, summarizing content, and generating images using photos from the library.

  • Personalized actions: for apps and Apple devices, powered by on-device intelligence available on the A17 Pro and Apple Silicon from the M1 chip.

  • Private Cloud Compute: for specialized processing that requires cloud support.

Renewed Siri

Siri gets significant improvements:

  • Natural Interaction: Redesigned for more natural, relevant and personal interactions.

  • Visual redesign: A new wake visual that lights up around the device display.

  • Text input support: Similar to other AI chatbots, with on-screen awareness.

  • Contextual Actions: Extracts context from personal content such as photos, messages, calendar events, etc.

  • Rewriting Tool: Helps write specialized content with context awareness.

  • Smart Reply: for quick answers.

  • ChatGPT integration: for content generation, available later this year, requiring user consent to send information to ChatGPT.

First print: June 11, 2024 | 08:00 IST

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