Overall impressions

I’ve heard people describe this as one of the most influential WWDC in the last 10 years. I can see where they are coming from on this and really think that Apple is making a bet on ‘AI’ and trends that are pretty interesting. There’s no doubt that they are late to the latest hype of the LLM game, even though they’ve been using Machine Learning and Neural Nets for quite a long time now. They don’t have the huge, deeply trained models that other companies have but I don’t think they are going to need it. Having a smaller model that has the context of your life (which is strongly contained on your phone) seems like a winning combination.

iOS 18

• Any emoji to react - Great feature I'm excited to see
• Genmoji - I like the idea, I’m really curious about the execution
• Text effects - Cool if everyone is on the iPhone
• Put apps wherever you want on screen - Anything adding customization is great
• Photos, arranging and memories - AI not mentioned in the beginning, but very cool prospect

Mac OS Sequoia

This is going to take some time to learn how to spell correctly

• Mirror iPhone on Mac screen - Very excited to try this out
• Window organization - Catch up feature, but good
• Stand alone password app - Much better experience, love it

iPadOS 18

• Math Notes - Incredibly cool demo and great for figuring out stuff on the fly
• Smooth out handwriting - Could notes become the default note-taking app for me?

Apple Watch

• Pause your rings - Yes! If I’m sick I want to keep the streak alive
• Workout trends - I’ve been using Gentler Streak for this, and it’s a great feature
• More intelligent photo face - Looks good

Apple Intelligence (AI)

First off, genius branding to take the ‘AI’ term and make it your own. Slow clap to Apple on this one

• Personal Context, Private cloud

It really feels like Apple is trying to lean heavily on the personal/private nature of their relationship with customers. And if they can pull it out, it may turn out to be the the most interseting use of LLMs that we’ve seen. Being able to ask questions about your life is such a great example of harnessing the power of computers.

Conclusion

Very cool demos that got me excited to run this on my own personal devices. I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone (anyone?) but it’s going to be cool to see the iterations and what is going to be coming out in the fall for millions of iPhone users to try out