At 1am Beijing time on June 11th, the Apple Developer Conference, known as the "Technology Spring Festival Gala," was held as scheduled. The conference dominated the hot search list from the beginning, and Apple finally brought artificial intelligence "Apple Intelligence", which will soon be available for online experience. But many netizens expressed disappointment with other regular updates, and some even said that "Apple is moving towards Android.".
During the live broadcast of the WWDC24 conference, a reporter from Nandouwan Finance News observed that within half an hour of the launch event, Apple's stock price had plummeted by 0.9% and was continuously declining. According to Choice data, at the close of the US stock market on June 10th, Apple's stock price fell by 1.91%. Industry insiders have stated that even with the release of AI, investors are still disappointed with the content of the 2024 WWDC press conference.
It is worth mentioning that after the conference, Tesla founder and CEO Musk wrote, "If Apple integrates OpenAI into the operating system, my company will ban the use of Apple devices. This is considered an unacceptable security violation."
Apple announces that iOS 18 will be equipped with AI
According to a reporter from Nandouwan Finance News, prior to the press conference, Apple claimed that the IOS 18 would be the system version with the most changes and updates in history. But after the meeting, netizens expressed that they were not satisfied with Apple's regular updates except for AI, and also believed that Apple was catching up with Android, jokingly claiming that the biggest update of iPad 18 was the addition of Android's native calculator. Apple Intelligence is one of the most important updates for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and MacOS Sequoia.
It is worth noting that Apple did not release any new hardware products at this year's WWDC conference, mainly showcasing iOS 18 iPadOS 18、watchOS11、macOS15、tvOS18、visionOS2，AI Siri， In addition to the new features of headphones, Apple has also announced its new achievements in the audio and home fields, with the most highly anticipated being the Apple AI, which carries the most artificial intelligence imagination.
At the closing moment of the conference, Apple finally announced the latest news about AI: iOS 18 brings Apple Intelligence, a personal intelligence system suitable for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It can leverage the powerful functions of generative models based on personal scenarios, execute user voice or text commands by understanding natural language, and provide practical and targeted intelligent functions based on user scenarios. Apple Senior Vice President Craig Federighi stated at the company's annual Global Developers Conference that the AI platform called "Apple Intelligence" can help summarize text, create original images, and extract the most relevant data when users need it.
At the moment of the AI announcement, Apple's stock price experienced a slight rebound.
It is reported that this lifetime model supports A17 Pro, M1, M2, M3, and M4 chip devices. Apple announced that the Apple Intelligence beta will be launched this fall as a built-in feature for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. It only supports iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPad, and Macs equipped with M1 or later chips, and Siri and device language must be set to English.
Cook stated that Siri "the most important thing is that it must understand you and be based on your personal background, such as your daily habits, relationships, communication, etc." In terms of specific AI functions, users can rewrite, proofread, and summarize text in all scenarios through the system wide writing tools (email, memo, Pages, and third-party applications) built into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, enabling one click grammar proofreading, tone adjustment, and typo checking. In the "email" application, users can also view emails and receive suggestions for intelligent replies.
The update of iOS 18 once again strengthens the personalized settings of wallpapers, widgets, and app icons; Its control center has evolved from a single page to a more scalable Controls Gallery, allowing users to access more third-party apps and adjust their layout; IMessage has added new text effects, such as the ability to emphasize the tone of the text through underline. It also adds features such as application privacy locks, in addition to, watchOS 11、Safari、 Maps, emails, and more have been updated.
In addition to AI, Apple has also made regular updates to its software. Industry insiders indicate that the update range for visionOS 2 is not significant. For example, users can use advanced machine learning to spatialize regular photos and perform SharePlay in photo applications with spatial characters. At the same time, visionOS 2 has also upgraded the macOS screen extension, which can be expanded to a "fish screen" experience and a series of other features. Although the Apple Vision Pro headset has been on the market for less than half a year, visionOS has new applications appearing every day - over 2000 specifically designed for Vision Pro, and 1.5 million compatible iPhone and iPad applications.
In addition, Apple has finally announced that Vision Pro will soon be available for sale in the Chinese market. Vision Pro will be available for sale in multiple countries and regions, and Chinese market users can make pre orders starting from 9am on June 14th for a price of 29999 yuan (the 256GB version is priced at 29999 yuan for domestic use, the 512GB version is priced at 31499 yuan, and the 1TB version is priced at 32999 yuan). Industry insiders have stated that the release of visionOS 2 is an important milestone for both Apple and Vision Pro.
Collaboration with OpenAI raises privacy concerns
Another heavyweight news is that Apple officially announced a partnership with OpenAI in about two minutes, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also appeared at Apple's WWDC site. After the meeting, he tweeted that he was "very happy" to collaborate with Apple, and most of the time Apple focused on promoting its own AI technology.
It is reported that Apple will connect to ChatGPT supported by GPT-4o, and users can use it for free without having to associate an account. Apple claims that Siri (voice assistant) and Writing Tools (writing tools) available across all Apple platforms integrate ChatGPT functionality, allowing users to directly utilize ChatGPT's expertise, including its ability to understand images and documents. The specific scenario is that when the user's question exceeds Siri's ability range, the latter will pop up a request and obtain the user's permission, seeking a more refined and complete answer to ChatGPT. ChatGPT will log in to the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS later. Apple also revealed that in addition to the GPT-4o, it will gradually integrate other large models in the future.
A reporter from Nandouwan Finance News Agency noticed that many netizens expressed their greatest anticipation for Apple's updates on Siri and their great anticipation for generative AI to bring more convenience to daily life. Apple executive Phil Schiller stated that the Siri update can meet various user needs. "For decades, technology experts have been showing us the dream of being able to talk to technology, and it will do things for us," he said. "But this has never become a reality!" He said, "What we really want is to talk to devices in any way, and get information and help.".
Apple co-founder Kittlaus also stated that due to the high emphasis on AI technology, this year may be an important year for Siri as the company plans to integrate intelligent AI features into the iPhone. He said, "Siri has been stagnant for many years, but I fully foresee its imminent revival."
But a reporter from Nandouwan Finance News observed that since Apple announced its partnership with OpenAI, the privacy issue that Apple values the most has also been widely discussed. From Siri's history, it can be seen that Apple has always been cautious about privacy protection.
Experts emphasize that generative AI requires a large number of database calls, which may conflict with Apple's existing privacy policies, which is also one reason why Apple lags behind its competitors in the field of artificial intelligence. Privacy protection has been a key theme emphasized by Apple over the years. OpenAI technology is based on network scraping and ChatGPT user interaction to improve the model itself, which may violate some of Apple's privacy principles.
Therefore, a reporter from Nandouwan Finance News found that the Apple team has put a lot of effort into discussing Apple Intelligence's privacy protection capabilities. Apple claims that Apple Intelligence has placed great emphasis on user privacy since its design. Apple uses a "private cloud" computing method, and Apple Intelligence will enable cloud computing mode on dedicated servers using Apple chips to ensure the privacy and security of user data. Based on the powerful computing power of Apple's self-developed chips, it has sufficient capability to support most AI capabilities on the device side. Meanwhile, Apple's AI functionality only recognizes data and does not collect it.
When the capabilities of the end-to-end model are insufficient to complete the task, Apple also provides protection for the data usage of the cloud model. In order to reassure users that their data will not be uploaded to the cloud and utilized by the company, Apple has specially created the Private Cloud Compute, which is a set of servers with chip level privacy and security protection.
It is worth noting that in April of this year, Apple also released research on artificial intelligence models, focusing on large-scale language models (LLMs) that are the core of modern natural language processing. In the paper, Apple researchers benchmark the model on MacBook Pro laptops running the Apple M2 Max chip, and the results showed that these efficient models do not necessarily need to be connected to the cloud, which can improve response speed and provide a layer of privacy protection, as sensitive questions can be answered on the device itself rather than sent back to the Apple server.
For many years, Apple has been discouraging the use of cloud servers for data processing, and even condemning its competitors for doing so. Now, Apple risks using the cloud for artificial intelligence, which may lead to controversy. It is reported that Cook told investors in a May earnings conference call, "We believe in the transformative power and prospects of artificial intelligence. Apple has advantages that stand out in the new era, including its unique ability to seamlessly integrate hardware, software, and services, as well as its industry-leading breakthrough technology in Apple chips and our focus on privacy."
Apple style AI awaiting market observation
A reporter from Nandouwan Finance News observed that renowned analyst Guo Minggui also analyzed Apple's artificial intelligence strategy, believing that Apple will integrate powerful features into various aspects of its operating system and applications, which will become its advantage. He expects that after the end of WWDC, Apple will no longer be seen as a laggard in the AI industry. However, he does not believe that Apple has made breakthrough progress beyond market expectations, and Guo Minggui is also skeptical about whether the upcoming iPhone model and its accompanying operating system, which will be released in the fall, can trigger a wave of user upgrades.
It is reported that Guo Minggui believes that AI will be ubiquitous in Apple's main applications, and Apple's user interface design advantages will be fully demonstrated, with Siri's improvement being one of the biggest selling points. The interaction between users and Siri will become more natural. Industry insiders say that the tactics released by Apple are indeed dazzling, and it also intuitively reflects Apple's bets and anxiety on AI. However, the implementation time of most of these AI capabilities is still unknown, and the specific experience still needs to wait for further feedback on their use.
According to a reporter from Nandouwan Finance News, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2024, the shipment volume of AI smartphones in the price range below $1000 will reach 35 million, a year-on-year increase of 250%. Generative AI will drive the transition from smartphones to AI phones, refreshing experiences in multiple scenarios such as entertainment and mobile office. According to reports, Microsoft has invested $10 billion in OpenAI and its ChatGPT products. Google defended its dominant position in the search industry by launching Gemini. Amazon has injected $4 billion into the artificial intelligence startup, Antiopic.
Industry insiders have pointed out that Apple still plays a catch-up role in the AI field and holds a reserved attitude towards Apple's influence in artificial intelligence. According to insiders, Apple has also been developing its own large-scale language model, which is the technology behind ChatGPT like services, but progress in this area is not enough. In the event following the keynote speech, Apple Senior Vice President Craig Federighi confirmed that the company will collaborate with third-party models outside of OpenAI, with Google's Gemini model being highlighted as the first example. He clarified that Apple "has nothing to announce at the moment, but this is our general direction.".
According to Apple Vice President Federighi, users will be able to use the AI feature through beta testing later this year, and there are still some features that will be available until 2025. Therefore, the specific implementation and usage of the AI world depicted by Apple still need to be observed by the market.
But Apple's entry into AI has never been late, and having a large number of loyal consumers is the main advantage of developing artificial intelligence. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said that this will help Apple achieve great success in artificial intelligence even if it fails to achieve breakthroughs in large-scale language models. When these AI features of iOS 18 are released later this year, they will receive support from hundreds of millions of Apple devices worldwide, potentially making Apple the largest AI player overnight.