I don’t have a lot to write about today’s announcements during WWDC24 from Apple Park. Is that what we call the spaceship? Apple Park? I should go there and get the full Apple Park Spaceship Experience. I hear it’s a real “E” ticket ride.
As a daily constant user of Apple products, I was interested in what the latest iterations of all the operating systems was going to bring the to the masses. I even blocked time off in my work calendar so I didn’t miss a beat. I walked away feeling kind of “meh+” about the whole thing.
A.I. doesn’t really get me worked up with excitement. I mean, it’s kind of neat, but it’s just a computer program cleverly grabbing whatever it can and regurgitating it back to the user based on some sort of input. It sounds intelligent, but A.I. isn’t really intelligent. It’s the new hype thing though and all the companies think they’re going to make money by mentioning “A.I.” in their products. But in too many cases it’s like saying Tide Pods are Gluten Free.
Anything to beef up Siri’s capabilities with a dose of sanity and basic functionality is a welcomed addition to the experience, so there’s that.
I definitely don’t need to make cartoons out of images of my friends to let them know they should have a happy birthday, and in that way I feel like Apple REALLY dumbed down and/or cheapened their line of products with gimmicks like this. I usually feel a warm and fuzzy from Apple; this doesn’t give me a warm nor fuzzy. But integrations with calendars and relating my schedule to things I have to do and the like… that’s something I can get on board with.
I was really surprised at how little time, comparatively, was spent with the Vision Pro enhancements. I feel like Apple has lost a bit of their enthusiasm for their Spatial Computing platform, even though it was just released in February. I don’t feel bad for the folks that spent $3500+ on these new devices, as I feel like it was sold long before it was ready to be useful, but I was surprised there wasn’t a little more movement forward with the platform.
The other thing that surprised me was the on-board A.I. processing is limited to the latest and greatest “Pro” edition of the iPhone, and that’s it. Obviously it’ll work with new phones coming out this fall. But if I had the latest “consumer” edition of the iPhone and I was left out of the loop I’d be a little perturbed. I still have an iPhone 13 Pro that works quite well, so I knew I wouldn’t be in that mix.
