Just yesterday morning, WWDC24 finally aired!!!!! Here's what came at the event!!!!
First, as in the event order, Apple TV+ just turned 5, which earned a special mention from Tim Cook. Speaking of the Apple TV, Insight allows you to see real-time the music playing and the actors on scene, subtitles now appear when you need them, and voice enhancement plus a new 21:9 format are here.
Next, visionOS. Photos can be turned into Spatial Videos, you can view photos with SharePlay, new gestures are here, Mac Virtual Display gets better resolution and bigger viewing options, train mode is here for a better experience on trains, and new APIs are here (TableTopKit plus Advanced Volumetric and Enterprise APIs). Canon also has Spatial Video compatibility with a new camera lens on its digital cameras. Speaking of Vision Pro, an international rollout now has a date (er, two of them): June 28 for the availability of Vision Pro in Singapore, mainland China, Japan and Hong Kong, and July 12 for the availability of Vision Pro in Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, and best of all France (my grandparents and relatives live in France). Preorder dates are Thursday for the June 28 countries and June 28 (!) for the July 12 guys.
After that, we have iOS. First, you can now customize icon color so that every icon is a specific color, or turn them into dark mode (even when you turn on dark mode for the whole iPhone). App placement can also be customized so that you can put an icon at the bottom away from the others, and now you can hide and Face ID lock apps (when you hide the apps, they're in a Hidden folder in the App Library). Control Center now has multiple pages for different subjects like music and smart home (oh, and speaking of your smart home, robot vacuum cleaners are now supported), and you can rearrange, change the size of, and add controls (even from non-Apple apps). Speaking of controls, the lock screen bottom controls can now be changed, and new Action Button controls based on lock screen controls are here.
Messages now has Send Later, more colorful Tapbacks, the ability to put any emoji as a Tapback, styling of text, text effects, and the ability to send messages (& Tapbacks!) via satellite. You can now specify contacts you want to share and devices you want to connect to apps as well. Game Mode is also here for iPhone, and Wallet gets its rendition of NameDrop (no email or phone number needed). Journal now gets AI-enhanced search and InSights (insights on your journaling). E-mails are now organized, with categories and AI-created lists of the most important e-mails (this is also done with notifications). Saving the biggest updates for last, Photos is getting a "big overhaul". Memories and photo folders (along with Collections, an all-new way to organize your photos by different categories, which includes a Recent Days tab with Collections of different recent days, including today) are now under the photo list, with a view switcher at the top of the screen. Collections, along with memories, folders and single photos can be pinned, and if you swipe to the right of the photo list, you get a carousel of memories that switches photo every few seconds for enjoyment.
For AirPods, Voice Isolation is here (which does what the name says), along with a way to just nod/shake your head to answer Siri and a Personalized Spatial Audio API (Need For Speed Mobile is first in line for the new API).
watchOS 11? ACTIVITY RINGS CAN NOW BE PAUSED!!!!!! AND YOUR RING STREAK WILL REMAIN ALIVE!!!!! No kidding. This is a feature we've been waiting for years now on: a way to have the rings get lighter on you when you need it. Speaking of rest and recovery features that we've waited SO long for, OVERTRAINING CAN NOW BE DETECTED AND MITIGATED WITH TRAINING LOAD!!!!!!! Even better, if that's even a thing!!! Other than that, there's the comparative blah blah blah of a new Vitals app (like an Apple Watch version of a Health app, only with less features (although it does notify you when multiple metrics are off compared to your average and the Apple Heart and Movement Study average).
Back to the other BORING software updates (specifically, the BORING iPadOS 18). Actually, just kidding, they're awesome, especially Calculator finally coming to the iPad with Math Notes (a feature where you can just write on a whiteboard with your Apple Pencil or finger math equations (they don't have to exclude variables and physics) and have them answered in your own script. That was my favorite thing of the event until they talked about AI. Oh, and there's also a handwriting corrector called Smart Script in Notes which supports both real-time writing and pasted writing, along with new floating tab bars that morph into sidebars for several apps and help someone less techy by using SharePlay to help them by drawing to where they should tap (or even taking remote control from them entirely). Other than that, there's mostly iOS-ported upgrades, but they aren't boring either, including the new Photos and Messages features.
Let's talk about macOS Sequoia (the "quoi" part is pronounced like "koi" but harder on the first qu sound. Sequoia is the name we've all wished for for years now, by the way!). First, iPhone Mirroring brings a way to look at your iPhone and interact with all its features even when it's far away from you (you can even use this when your phone is on StandBy!) with your traditional Mac operating tools. For security, the iPhone being mirrored is locked. Next, the Passwords app is here, along with Presenter Preview to preview what you're going to share in a video conference. Finally, Safari gets numerous improvements, like battery life, Viewer for videos front and center (with PiP as well), and Highlights for helpful info about websites (like, as an example Apple did, the address of the hotel you're looking at, or a link to watch a movie you're looking at a review of (along with info and a summary of the movie)) and website/article summaries. For Mac gaming, Assassin's Creed: Mirage just launched a few days ago, with the next Assassin's Creed game (Assassin's Creed: Shadows) coming to Mac right alongside consoles and Windows/Linux in November. More AAAs are expected too.
Ah, and here's the AI we've been waiting for for so long now. Can't wait for artificial intelligence! Uh-oh, I meant Apple Intelligence. It's mostly ChatGPT. What's most important about it, according to Apple, is that it uses your "personal context" to make the other 3 categories Apple posited: Language, Action, and Images. PERSONAL CONTEXT?! Is Apple using our most personal information all of a sudden??? No, it isn't. It runs all that it can on-device (so nothing's in data-hungry servers), and what's not is on Apple-made servers that only use your info to complete your query and not for collecting of data.
And maybe the best upgrade of them all for most users: a personal assistant that actually assists and doesn't repeatedly think I said the One Tree Hill album by Various Artists and not "One Tree Hill" by U2. There's some improved cosmetics, right, with a moving blue/orange/red gradient around the edge of the screen that moves with speaking just like the original bottom-screen colorful line, but let's move on to the improvements that we came here for, shall we? Siri now can do stuff across several apps and do in-app stuff, along with get things done based on what you have on the screen.
Back to Apple Intelligence, here's a move away from technicalities and towards new features powered by it. A feature called Genmoji can make new emojis based on a prompt, Image Playground can make images just by combining preset and made-up categories (it is integrated into several Apple apps, but there's also a separate app just for the new feature), and Image Wand in Notes can create images based on what's around a space circled with the new tool (or amplify drawings). Also, Memories can be made just by prompts, Clean Up is Apple's rendition of Google's Magic Eraser, and email making will be improved.
Finally, ChatGPT (on version GPT-4o) will be used (no login needed) with user permission for privacy in Siri prompts that Siri thinks may need the LLM, while subscribers can enjoy their special features with Siri without having to subscribe and pay again.
That's it! But it's still a lot.
By Leo
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