Apple's WWDC 2024: AI, iOS 18 & What's Next for You

TL;DR

Apple finally embraces AI with 'Apple Intelligence,' brings massive customization to iOS 18, and at last adds a calculator to the iPad. A deep dive into what matters for you. #VentureStep #Apple #WWDC2024

INTRODUCTION

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is always a major event in the tech calendar, but the 2024 edition marked a significant strategic shift. After months of silence while competitors raced ahead, Apple finally revealed its comprehensive strategy for artificial intelligence, alongside a suite of updates across its entire product ecosystem that places a heavy emphasis on user customization and privacy. ¹¹¹¹

In this episode of Venture Step, host Dalton Anderson breaks down every major announcement, from the highly anticipated iOS 18 to the groundbreaking features of Apple Intelligence. Drawing on his background in programming and data science, Dalton cuts through the marketing hype to analyze what these updates actually mean for users, developers, and the tech industry as a whole, comparing Apple's new direction to the established features of its rivals. 222

From long-awaited features that have been standard on other platforms for years to truly innovative AI integrations, this conversation covers the entire spectrum. Discover how Apple is balancing its clean, streamlined user experience with a new world of personalization, why the iPad is finally getting a calculator after 14 years, and how a new messaging standard is set to end the infamous "green bubble" vs. "blue bubble" debate. 333

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Apple Intelligence is Here: Apple has officially entered the AI race, branding its suite of features as "Apple Intelligence," which prioritizes on-device processing for privacy and partners with ChatGPT for more complex tasks. ⁴⁴⁴
• Customization is King: iOS 18 introduces a new level of personalization, allowing users to freely place icons, apply color themes to their home screen, and customize the Control Center—features long available on Android. ⁵⁵⁵
• The Messaging War is Over: Apple is adopting the RCS messaging standard, finally enabling high-quality photo and video sharing between iPhone and Android users, effectively ending the compression issues that plagued cross-platform communication. ⁶⁶⁶
• The iPad Finally Has a Calculator: After 14 years, Apple has added a native calculator app to the iPad, which includes a new AI-powered "Math Notes" feature that can solve handwritten equations. ⁷⁷
• Privacy Remains a Core Focus: Even with the integration of cloud-based AI and third-party models, Apple emphasized that user data will be handled anonymously and never stored, maintaining its long-standing commitment to privacy. ⁸⁸⁸

FULL CONVERSATION

Dalton: Welcome to VentureStep podcast where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book review. ⁹Today, we're going to discuss a whole bunch of features Apple just dropped during their WWDC 2024 conference. ¹⁰ We're going to break it all down from customizable iPhones to frankly long-awaited AI features. And one of the biggest drops Apple has ever done: the iPad calculator. You heard it. ¹¹

Dalton: iPad is getting a calculator. ¹² Huge. So we're going to discuss everything, but before we dive in, I'm your host Dalton Anderson. ¹³My background is a bit of a mix of programming, data science, and insurance. ¹⁴Offline, you can find me running, building my side business, or lost in a good book. ¹⁵

iOS 18: Is Apple Finally Catching Up to Android?

Dalton: So for the iPhone, which would be iOS 18, a lot of the features that were created were actually things that Android has had for a very long time. ¹⁶There's a lot of excitement from Apple users, but for people who don't use Apple, they're a bit confused because one of the feature updates was you could freely place icons wherever you want on your home screen now. ¹⁷I remember being like 12 when I had a Samsung when I was really young, maybe 13, and I could do that then. ¹⁸

Dalton: Majority of the features enable customization of your iPhone. ¹⁹So if you want to make your home screen a certain color, all your apps a certain color, or if you want to place certain icons wherever you want, you can do that now. ²⁰

It's interesting the parallels, but for Apple, they're adding these features that enable users to mess up their home screen or customize it however they want. ²¹Android already has a lot of features built out and they're just cleaning everything up. ²²

The Great Theme Engine Debate: Apple vs. Android

Dalton: They have this theme engine that's similar to Android's Material U theme engine, where the apps have to opt in to having their icons changed for their app. ²³The big apps would do it for the most part, but there are some big companies that just won't, and it messes up your whole look and feel. ²⁴ With Apple's theme engine approach, you can actually overlay the color over the icons. The developer doesn't actually have to opt in to this theme engine. ²⁵This just overlays the colors on the app. ²⁶The caveat is sometimes when you're doing this forceful color change of the icons, they become unreadable. ²⁷

Hidden Apps: A Feature for Privacy or Secrecy?

Dalton: There is this other option, which is super suspicious, where you can now have hidden apps on your home screen. ²⁸You can have these app folders to where you can have hidden apps, which is suspect in itself and brings up all sorts of trust issues. ²⁹What hidden apps would you need to have? ³⁰The only thing I could really think of is if you had a partner and you're doing stuff that you don't want them to see, which is probably bad. ³¹

My only advice is if you feel the need to go through your partner's phone to see if they have some hidden messaging app or dating app, you should probably just let them go. ³²

Dalton: You can now customize your control center across multiple pages, apparently. And it's been a while since I've used Apple, but I remember when I was like 13 years old, I could do that on my Samsung back in the day. 33During the conference, maybe the people are paid to clap, but there was some serious applauding for being able to customize your control center. 34

Bridging the Divide: RCS Messaging Comes to iPhone

Dalton: You can now schedule text messages. This is a feature where if you know you're going to be really busy and you want to make sure that you send your friend or family member "happy birthday," you can schedule it for the next day. ³⁵

Dalton: And one of the biggest things that they announced for communication enhancements was you can now message with Android users without any of the caveats. ³⁶So if you're listening and you're not in America, there's a whole big green bubble, blue bubble thing. ³⁷It's because people use the native messaging apps in America and they don't use WhatsApp or any of these third-party messaging apps. ³⁸

Google has been putting a lot of pressure on Apple for years on getting RCS put together. Apple didn't want to do it because if they allowed proper communication between Android and Apple, there isn't the societal pressure in America to have an iPhone. ^39393939

Dalton: The big feature that they're dropping is this thing called RCS, which stands for Rich Communication Services. ⁴⁰⁴⁰⁴⁰RCS is a messaging format that is kind of the new SMS. ⁴¹It's able to support photos, videos, and more data, as well as being encrypted on both sides. ⁴²It's more secure, it's more feature-rich, and it's just overall much better than SMS. ⁴³

Dalton: With that being said, once you update to iOS 18, you should be able to enable RCS on your phone. ⁴⁴So when you're texting your friends that have Android, you'll be able to send a video to them and they'll be able to send a video to you and it won't look like a potato filmed it. ⁴⁵It won't be all blurry and compressed. ⁴⁶They did say that you're going to stay green and blue, but it just won't matter because you'll be able to communicate properly. ⁴⁷

What's New with Vision Pro 2.0?

Dalton: Switching over to Vision Pro. Vision Pro came out with their Vision 2.0 software. ⁴⁸The two big things that they came out with were spatial photos and videos. ⁴⁹You can take photos on your iPhone or other devices, upload them to your iCloud, open that up in your Vision Pro and from there you'll be able to turn your photo or video into a spatial video, which is pretty cool. ⁵⁰

Dalton: They have improved Mac mirroring, which is when you use your compute on your Mac and then you can display windows via Vision Pro. Apparently, you can do double the resolution than what you used to be able to do. 51

I still am concerned about Vision Pro's future if they don't open source their software because Meta's Quest VR headsets are on open source software and that allows other developers to develop apps and make hardware on their own. ⁵²

After 14 Years, the iPad Finally Gets a Calculator

Dalton: iPadOS 18, once you update to it, you will get the long-awaited calculator app. ⁵³Apple released their iPad in 2010 and it was launched without a calculator app. ⁵⁴ They've done it. They added the calculator app. ⁵⁵One thing that they did that's a little different is you can take out your stylus and go to this other app called Math Notes, and you can draw out equations and change the variables on the fly, and it will change the result, which is really cool. ⁵⁶That's used by AI to convert your handwriting, read it, and then do the calculations to output back into your handwriting. ⁵⁷

Introducing Apple Intelligence: Apple's Take on AI

Dalton: For a while now, Apple's been very silent on AI and they haven't said much about it. Now they are saying AI and they are launching their AI unveiling with their own proprietary models, which is great. ^58585858They're branding AI as their own brand called Apple Intelligence. ⁵⁹

Dalton: They're gonna have on-device processing for easier tasks. ⁶⁰They'll have a various slew of models that will be able to do different things for you. ⁶¹It will be launched on the highest version of the iPhones. ⁶²For Mac, you will get these features if you have a pro model. ⁶³

How Apple Intelligence Handles Your Data

Dalton: If you want more complex things, you'll be handled off-device using what they called Apple Cloud Compute, which sends your complex prompt to Apple's cloud infrastructure. ⁶⁴Everything is handled anonymously and it's never saved apparently, and then it's sent back to your phone. ⁶⁵

The ChatGPT Integration Explained

Dalton: If your task or prompt isn't something that Apple can handle, ChatGPT will take over. ⁶⁶ This is kind of sketchy, I think. We'll see. Apparently, it's anonymized and never stored, but we've heard that kind of stuff before many times. ⁶⁷Apple is really good about privacy, so maybe it's not an issue. ⁶⁸

Basically if your task or prompt is complex, you'll get a prompt on your phone saying, "Hey, are you alright with us sending this to ChatGPT?" ⁶⁹You have to press yes every time. ⁷⁰

Fun with AI: Genmojis and Photo Cleanup

Dalton: They're also launching a cleanup tool in photos. ⁷¹ It's similar to Android's Magic Eraser. It will allow you to remove unwanted elements from your photo. ⁷²So if you took these special photos with your family and someone is in the background just doing whatever, you can remove them from the photo, which is really nice. ⁷³

Dalton: They're also doing Genmojis. Genmojis are, you guessed it, personalized emojis using text prompts. 74 They have Siri improvements. Siri will become more proactive and have a more natural voice. 75They're slowly leading it into becoming more agent-like, where it can act on your behalf and open apps and do stuff for you. 76

Updates for AirPods, Apple TV, and WatchOS

Dalton: For AirPods, a couple of updates. I think the most interesting one was head gesture controls where you can answer calls or respond to prompts with a nod or shake of the head. The AirPods would know if you're shaking your head yes or no to answer the question. ⁷⁷

Dalton: For Apple TV, one thing I thought was really nice was what I'm going to call information overlay. ⁷⁸When you swipe down on the remote, you can see the actors and actresses and the music that's playing in that present picture, which is nice. ⁷⁹

Dalton: For WatchOS, there weren't that many updates. ⁸⁰They have a training mode which will show your workout trends and your progress over time. ⁸¹

Dalton: Apple continues to focus on privacy and customization, and they're doing so now with AI-powered features. ⁸²iOS 18 brings long-awaited features and communication improvements, while Apple Intelligence prioritizes on-device processing and user privacy. ⁸³ What do you think about these feature updates? If so, please leave a comment. And if you like the content, you can subscribe. I wouldn't mind it. ⁸⁴

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Apple
• Android
• Material U
• Google
• WhatsApp
• ChatGPT
• Meta (Oculus/Quest)
• Tinder
• Samsung

INDEX OF CONCEPTS

Dalton Anderson, VentureStep, WWDC 2024, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sonoma, visionOS 2.0, WatchOS, Apple Intelligence, Android, Material U, RCS (Rich Communication Services), Vision Pro, iPad, iPhone, Mac, AirPods, Apple TV, Google, ChatGPT, Meta, Oculus, Quest, Samsung, USB-C, Siri, Genmojis, Math Notes, Cleanup Tool, Magic Eraser, Apple Cloud Compute