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Apple WWDC 2024 Announcement Hot Take
Firstly, I’m relieved. For the last two months, a significant part of me was actually starting to think Apple apparently missing the AI boat might be the start of their downfall.
Then, last week, I saw that Nvidia had knocked Apple off their no. 2 spot, which only fueled my concerns further.
But make no mistake: what we saw in today’s announcement was exactly what I thought we needed to see and much more.
I knew that Apple needed a different take on AI than what everyone else is doing. It wouldn’t be enough to just make Siri do what ChatGPT can do. We needed to see a much more privacy-focused system and, of course, one that has deep integration with the iOS ecosystem.
My main concern was wondering how they would allow for on-device processing to perform as well as the server-based LLMs. Luckily, they seem to have struck a home run with that too by allowing for cloud processing power in a totally private way. This is a huge deal. Think in terms of unlimited processing power in the cloud without your data ever actually being visible to anyone with access to those servers. This is what we need to really embrace AI.
AI systems will end up knowing more about us than our closest friends and family after years of interaction data pouring into them. We want to start this era with privacy first—not as an afterthought. And it seems as though Apple is here to make that happen.
But it’s not just the privacy element of allowing so much on-device processing, supported by private cloud processing. It’s the way the tools are integrated across the ecosystem.
This is so fascinating because it’s something that only Apple can possibly do now, as a result of their hardware and software integration. It seems like a wonderful payoff for Apple’s approach all these years.
To have an ecosystem of apps all able to work with an AI assistant to make it faster to get stuff done is so exciting.
Things like moving assets between apps, intelligent extraction of data from content, changing between formats, AI summary and sorting of emails, and intelligent prioritisation of notifications are all very transformative workflows and, of course, almost certainly only scratching the surface.
Of course, I should never have doubted them these last few months. Apple has a history of simply waiting for the first-run products to settle before coming in late with something that beats everyone else.
But wait, I hear you say—didn’t Apple just use ChatGPT? Well, not really. It seems to me that they realised they needed to integrate external chatbots because their own models are more focused on ecosystem integration and ability. Whereas LLMs like ChatGPT have world knowledge and other models in the future might specialise in other areas. Apple is just being sensible and recognising now is not the time to make people feel locked in anymore. I don’t see this as a cop-out at all—just a great all-around solution that has enormous benefits for users.
Ben Vallack