Apple executives acknowledged at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) that Apple needs more time to make Apple Intelligence work well. In the meantime, Apple executives outlined Liquid Glass, a redesign that'll flow through Apple devices.
The company also announced new naming conventions for iOS, watchOS, tvOS, macOS, visionOS and iPadOS.
If anything, Apple's developer keynote highlighted how Apple Intelligence, outlined in 2024 with great fanfare, has fallen short of expectations. Craig Federighi, SVP of Software Engineering at Apple, noted how Apple Intelligence did ship features including email and notification summarization, notes, smart replies and ways to clean up video and photos.
Federighi said:
"We delivered this while taking an extraordinary step forward for privacy and AI with private cloud compute, which extends the privacy of your iPhone into the cloud so no one else can access your data, not even Apple. We also introduced enhancements that make Siri more natural and more helpful, and as we've shared, we're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal. This work needed more time to reach our high quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year."
He said that Apple Intelligence will get more languages, but the approach is incremental for now. "We're making the generative models that power Apple intelligence more capable and more efficient, and we're continuing to tap into Apple intelligence in more places across our ecosystem. Throughout today's presentation, you'll see new Apple intelligence features that elevate your experiences across iPhone, Apple, watch Apple vision pro Mac and iPad. Plus, this year, we're doing something new, and we think it's going to be pretty big. We're opening up access for any app to tap directly into the on device," said Federighi.
As for LLMs, Apple Intelligence will have a new foundation model framework that gives developers direct access with privacy and offline access built in.
"We think this will ignite a whole new wave of intelligent experiences in the apps you use every day. For example, if you're getting ready for an exam, an app like Kahoot can create a personalized quiz from your notes to make studying more engaging," said Federighi. "And because it uses on device models this happens without cloud API costs. We couldn't be more excited about how developers can build on Apple intelligence to bring you new experiences that are smart, available when you're offline, and that protect your privacy."
With that Apple Intelligence tease--that may not be reality until 2026--Apple moved on to other key items including a redesign for iOS that already has Windows Vista trending due to the resemblance.
A few thoughts:
- Apple Intelligence appears to be banking on local LLMs but given the rate of innovation that could be a mistake. Developers will need to figure out how much they can differentiate with Apple’s on-device model.
- Key details about the Apple Intelligence's approach for developers is lacking.
- Apple is clearly betting on privacy as a pitch for AI, but it's unclear whether focusing on its edge devices will keep pace with OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Microsoft to name a few.
- Apple does appear to be integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT across its applications. For instance, Apple said ChatGPT image generation is now available in Image Playground.
- It's quite possible that Apple will have to buy its way out of this AI pickle, but historically the company hasn't made big acquisitions. The valuations are stretched for foundational model players.
- The risk here is that Apple devices are merely a vessel for other companies' AI no matter how pretty the operating systems become.
Other news items:
- Apple's WWDC keynote was devoted to the redesign and the changes across devices looked strong. However, much of what Apple is proposing is in the latest Android today. See: Apple release on redesign.
- Developers are getting new APIs for location, enhancements to notifications in Apple Watch, App Intents, and other goodies.
- Visual Intelligence will pull up context across iPhone apps to give you more information, rating and other data.
