WWDC24 and Apple Intelligence

I found WWDC24 to be a mixed bag.

I’m excited about the quality-of-life updates across Mac and iPhone, including the new Passwords app, updates to Mail, and continuity from the phone to the computer. I’m also interested but cautious about some of the intelligence Apple showed off.

I’m disorganized when it comes to the things on my phone and computers (ex, I have documents spread across 3-4 different apps), so having a more personalized (and private) “assistant” on my phone could be beneficial. I like the ability to teach Siri how to use apps to automate repetitive tasks, like what Rabbit was promising for the R1. Lastly, our household uses Siri a lot via the HomePod in our living area, so the improvements there will be nice.

On the flip side, the image generation stuff looked awful, and the whole idea felt very un-Apple to me. I honestly believe the presentation would have been better received without any of that included. It’s also a shame to see these sorts of features announced without any mention of how this impacts Apple’s environmental efforts.

Above all, it’s nice that Apple will be rolling this out in stages as a beta rather than forcing all sorts of half-baked AI “updates,” as we’ve seen from Microsoft and Google.