Thoughts on WWDC 2024
Some quick impressions of yesterday's keynote.
The good
A lot of cool stuff:
New home screen and control center customizations: nice.
Password app: finally! (1)
iPhone mirroring on macOS: never saw this coming, but very cool.
Snapping windows, and layout keyboard shortcuts on macOS: finally (part two).
Math Notes: whoa. I'll probably never use this, but man...makes for an impressive demo.
Remote control through SharePlay: handy.
Mail improvements: all looks very useful.
Pausing activity rings: Fi.Na.Lly...!!!!
And then...
The Big One
Apple intelligence. There's a lot to dissect here—too much for today, too early to tell how well any of it will actually work. Some of it is an expansion of what we've already been experiencing for years through machine learning, analysis of content, etc. But a lot of it is new and, it seems, developed in-house. It looks like the deals with OpenAI, Google et all are meant to supplement the features that will be available. A temporary stopgap? Maybe.
But the major revelation: anyone who walks into an Apple Store today to buy an iPhone 15 is NOT getting Apple Intelligence. The minimum specs call for an iPhone 15 Pro. Apple is selling devices that were released last fall, which won't support the biggest feature coming next fall.
That blows my mind. (2)
Polishing over the singular
This is an addendum of sorts. The benefits of a more intelligent operating system are clear, and there are welcome advances in the Mail app, in Photos, anything to do with organization and surfacing content. Writing Tools? I'll certainly be happy to get a grammar checker in Bear. But I watched with a mix of excitement and dread. Tweaking our handwriting to something "cleaner"? Swapping a hand drawn sketch for a generated image that has absolutely no personality whatsoever? It might make notes slicker, but doesn't it also evacuate individuality? This feels like an uncomfortable extension of having an AI compose an email for us, or rewriting it to make it "better". In all cases the process is effectively removing us from the equation. Like a compressor, flattening dynamic range, our voices averaged until nothing stands out.
The Crush ad may have been more ominous than we thought. I hope I’m wrong.
1: Not many details, but it looks clean and seems to get all the basics right. I moved away from 1Password just before they went Electron, and Apple's built-in system has been rock solid. From what I can tell, the app version will add most of what was missing. A much welcome UI too.
2: Couldn't they support more devices by leveraging the new Private Cloud Compute servers? It would be slower and more limited but...a compromise?
