Another year, another WWDC! In this year’s keynote, Apple focused on customizing the user experience with personalization and intelligent tooling. Built with privacy in mind, users benefit from a variety of new customization options from their home screens to their messages and beyond. Content creators and developers have new avenues for generating unique experiences, and employees are granted new tools to stay productive.
Apple also introduced their take on generative large-language models through their implementation of Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence gathers user behavior to deliver an experience catered specifically to you, taking context-aware information and delivering it when it’s needed most — all with a privacy-first mindset. Many of the new features in the upcoming macOS, iOS and iPadOS are powered by Apple Intelligence.
Read on for a recap of the latest news from Apple.
- visionOS
- macOS
- iOS
- iPadOS
- watchOS
- Home and audio
- Apple Intelligence
visionOS 2
The Apple Vision Pro made its debut in February 2024, taking the world of spatial computing by storm. Game developers created games to fully immerse players in their surroundings, doctors used simulators to fine tune their surgical skills in 3D, and countless new apps for productivity, gaming and planning are in development today.
Jamf offered same-day support with the release of management in visionOS 1.1. If you want to add the Apple Vision Pro to your organization’s device fleet, it will be available for pre-order in additional countries in the coming weeks:
- Friday, June 28: China mainland, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore
- Friday, July 12: Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the U.K.
Apple announced their first major update: visionOS 2, which offers new ways to connect with memories and loved ones, and powerful new APIs.
Photos
Spatial photos bring life and realism to memories with your loved ones, allowing you to nearly step into the memory again. Machine learning in visionOS 2 adds spatial information to your photos not taken with a spatial camera, taking them to the next level of realism. And with SharePlay coming to the Photos app, it’s easier to share your favorite photos and videos with your favorite people.
Private, high-resolution displays
Apple Vision Pro lets you extend your Mac with Mac Virtual Display, a large, private and portable 4K display. Whether you’re gaming, editing videos or analyzing data, you can take advantage of the ultrawide display equivalent to two 4K monitors side-by-side.
This makes traveling even easier — take your Apple Vision Pro and get a private movie theater on the plane to catch up with the latest award-winning new shows from Apple TV+. This is perfect for an on-the-go employee to catch up with their work and indulge in some entertainment while they travel.
Powerful tools for videographers and developers
Videographers can tell powerful brand and product stories with spatial, immersive video. 180 degree, 8K recording with spatial audio brings stories to life. This unique capability places Apple devices in a strong position in the world of content creation. With Canon offering a spatial camera, you can record and edit professional videos seamlessly.
Developers can leverage new APIs to create sophisticated apps:
- Volumetric APIs for more immersive 3D objects
- TabletopKit to anchor elements to a flat surface
- Enterprise APIs for industry-specific tasks like surgical training or equipment maintenance
macOS Sequoia
The next version of macOS, Sequoia, ushers in a new chapter of productivity and creativity. The Apple ecosystem gives users unparalleled integration across all kinds of devices. Your Mac, iPad and iPhone work effortlessly and continuously to make you your most productive self.
Continuity
Many of us love how simple the universal clipboard makes pasting text from your Mac onto your iPhone (or vice versa), or how universal control makes your devices work together as an integrated display. iPhone Mirroring is the next step in this seamless experience, allowing your to mirror your iPhone onto your Mac, even if your phone is in the other room.
Any iPhone notifications sent to your Mac open in iPhone Mirroring automatically and all iPhone audio comes through to your Mac. Your phone stays locked in the other room or integrates smoothly in Standby mode. Mirroring makes it easy to share files from your Mac to your iPhone with a simple drag-and-drop.
Tiles and video conferencing
With Sequoia, you can snap your window tiles to different parts of your screen to stay organized. And if your house is disorganized too, you can add a background to your video calls, previewing it in Presenter Preview.
Passwords app
The new Passwords app works across all your devices to manage all your passwords and passkeys. This includes:
- Wi-Fi, app, website and shared passwords
- Verification codes
- Sign in with Apple
- Passkeys
Safari
Safari is the world’s fastest browser and is built with a privacy-first mindset. In Sequoia, it’s easier to digest your content with Highlights — machine learning that summarizes key information. A redesigned Reader removes distractions to make it easier to read webpages, creating a table of contents and a summary for quick browsing.
iOS 18
Customization and privacy
Apple added more customization options to your home screen with:
- Flexible icon locations, including on the bottom or side
- Dark mode and tinted icons
- The ability to lock or hide apps that require authentication to enter
This offers a new way to protect sensitive apps and share private information.
Control Center
Control Center gets a redesign with new groups of controls. With a continuous swipe, you can view:
- Standard controls
- Media playback
- Home controls
These controls can be rearranged and resized, and developers can add their own control options too, making this experience customizable to your specific needs.
Messages
Expressing yourself through messages is better than ever with:
- Text formatting, including bold, italics, underline and strikethrough
- Tapbacks with redesigned favorites and emoji of your choice
- New text effects
You can also schedule messages and stay connected even when you’re out of service. Using the same technology as SOS, you can send messages via satellite. And with Rich Communication Services (RCS), you can message those without iMessage with richer media and delivery.
Mail is improved to organize your inbox. With automatic on-device categorization of your messages, it’s easier to stay up to date and organized. Mail will sort your messages into:
- Primary for contacts and time-sensitive information
- Transactions for receipts and updates
- Promotions for marketing and sales messages
- Updates for newsletters and everything else
You can interact with messages from a certain business in one view, making it easy to scan through these messages or remove them.
Photos
Photos gets its biggest redesign ever! You can organize your view based on the types of images you care the most about. Beneath your photo grid, view your Collections with your favorite albums, like your recent days, trips, or people and pets. And view a Carousel of your best photos in a poster-like view.
iPadOS 18
Productivity tools
The new floating tab bar makes it easier to navigate to different parts of an app, expanding to a full menu when needed and keeping content edge to edge. And in apps like Pages, Keynote, Numbers and Swift Playgrounds, it’s easier to browse your documents.
Across app animations are more responsive, improving the user experience. These animations are available as APIs for developers to use in their own apps.
SharePlay
When screensharing with SharePlay, you can draw on the screen to show what action the user needs to take. Or for more involved work, you can ask permission to remotely control their iPad or iPhone.
Calculator and Notes
Calculator has come to iPad! Based on the iPhone calculator, on the iPad it’s updated to take advantage of the bigger display. It also features Math Notes, which allows you to write out math problems for your iPad to solve. Math Notes:
- Uses the same functions as the scientific calculator
- Supports variables
- Updates equations in real time
- Generates graphs based on your handwritten equations and variables
The Notes app also supports Math Notes! It also uses Smart Script to recreate your handwriting style to clean up your handwriting. You can type, rearrange, and scribble out what you wrote, and Notes will clean it up for you.
watchOS 11
Activity
The Apple Watch encourages people to stay active. The next version of watchOS offers in-depth data about your workouts including:
- Impact on your body over time
- Effort rating
- Training load
You can personalize your activity rings too by customizing your goals based on the day of the week or pausing your rings when you need a day off — without ruining your award streaks.
Health
With watchOS 11, it’s easier to track your key vitals and gain a better understanding of your health. The new Vitals app highlights when your health metrics are outside of your typical range and points to possible factors. Pregnant users can also track gestation age and their heart rate to stay informed about their health.
Stay connected
Intelligent widgets show up right when you need them, warning you about upcoming rain or offering translation when you’re traveling. This translation app, new to Apple Watch, uses machine learning for voice recognition and translation, so you can dictate right to your watch.
Now supporting Live Activities, you can stay on top of your favorite events or use features like Check In. Developers can add their own Live Activities to Apple Watch too.
Home and audio
AirPods
Interacting with your AirPods is more intuitive — if you get a call, you can shake your head yes or no to pick up or reject the call. Voice isolation removes background noise to deliver the best call quality, while the personalized spatial audio API lets game developers create the best auditory experience.
Home and tvOS
InSight, available on AppleTV+, allows you to view what actors, character names or songs are on your screen in real time. tvOS uses machine learning for greater vocal clarity so you don’t miss any dialogue, and subtitles show up intelligently.
Apple Intelligence
Many of the new features above are powered by Apple Intelligence. It makes your devices personal to you without compromising your privacy.
Capabilities
Apple Intelligence offers a variety of capabilities, including:
- A deep, natural language understanding for writing and rewriting tools
- The ability to create original images in multiple styles
- The ability to take action on your behalf
- An understanding of your personal context, delivering relevant data that's useful to you in the moment
Architecture
To understand the user, Apple Intelligence gathers a lot of information. With privacy in mind, Apple designs its devices to be powerful enough to process this information on device and to adapt with your behavior. Apple Silicon chips create the foundation to make this kind of processing possible.
For models beyond the scope of on-device processing, Apple created Private Cloud Compute (PCC). These servers, built on Apple Silicon, never store your data, is used only for your request, isn’t accessible to Apple, and has a verifiable privacy promise. Your device only relies on PCC if its query can’t be processed on device.
Experiences
Apple Intelligence powers these new experiences:
- Siri redesign for a more natural, relevant and personal experience. Siri also integrates with your workflows, works with ChatGPT, is aware of what’s on your screen and isn’t limited to apps made by Apple
- Mail writing tools to adjust your email’s tone, to proofread your writing or to write a summary of a long email
- Notifications summarized and prioritized to reduce interruptions
- Image generation, including emoji, illustrations in Image Playground or Image Wand in the Notes app
- Photo editing to remove distracting objects
- Memory movie creation based on your description
Software development kits are available for:
- Image Playground
- Writing tools
- Siri
- App Intents
Summary
The Apple WWDC 2024 keynote only further illustrated their unrelenting focus on building endpoint-oriented and privacy centric experiences for their users. From the fun yet powerful changes made on each platform, to their paradigm-shifting Apple Intelligence, Apple is showcasing how it is possible to deliver great new capabilities without sacrificing your privacy and security.
