3 Apple WWDC 2024 Highlights To Drive Creativity and Productivity

Jun 18 2024
by Ilona K.

Table of contents

Apple Intelligence
Platform Updates
Privacy Protection

Closing the season of major developer conferences of 2024, Apple has unveiled a series of new features, systems and software updates at its annual WWDC 2024 event. Explore 3 highlights to empower your online business with it.com Domains.

Apple WWDC, commonly called ‘Dub Dub’, provided a view into the company’s take on AI (artificial intelligence) applications for personal and business use cases. Productivity, privacy and personalization were at the spotlight, as the company shared updates to its iOS, macOS and iPadOS platforms, as well as the brand new Apple Intelligence system.

Explore three Apple WWDC 2024 announcements that can help your team drive creativity, enhance communication and boost productivity for your business.

Apple Intelligence

A personal intelligence system for iPhone, iPad and Mac, Apple Intelligence combines generative AI models with the user’s personal context to create text and images, take actions in apps and analyse data to accelerate everyday tasks.

Those are valuable for small businesses aiming to maximize time and resource usage on handling administrative tasks like email and conference call communications, organizing schedules and getting things done. Coming in beta this fall, Apple Intelligence offers:

System-wide Writing Tools to improve the copy you create in Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps. Whether you’re crafting an email to partners or a blog post for your website, Writing tools allow you to compare different versions of text created, adjust the tone for the audience, proofread the copy and summarize lengthy texts into a short paragraph, a list of bullet points, or a table.
Message prioritisation. Mail app got a new Priority Messages section with the most urgent and personal emails, showing a summary of the messages without a need to open it. You can also use a Smart Reply to draft a quick answer.
Audio transcription. In the Notes and Phone apps, you will be able to record, transcribe, and summarize audio to recall key points.
Image Playground. Available in Messages, Notes and as a standalone app, Image Playground allows creating images from a description and a chosen style.
Genmoji. Personalised emoji based on a prompt or an uploaded photo.
Siri improvements. Apple’s personal assistant will benefit from generative AI by maintaining context from one request to the next, perform tasks in apps and use the user’s context to prompt the next action.

What can you use Apple Intelligence for? Communicating and performing tasks on Apple devices with AI support, getting help for your website’s content with Writing Tools.

Source: Apple Newsroom

Platform Updates

As expected, Apple has previewed the updates to its software platforms, including iOS 18, macOS Sequoia and iPadOS 18. Coming this fall, they offer new functions to boost productivity when working on Apple devices.

iOS 18 gets options to arrange apps and widgets in any open space on the Home Screen, customize buttons on Lock Screen, and additional tasks to perform from Control Center. Mail app features a new digest view that pulls together all of the relevant emails from a business. Finally, Safari in iOS will be able to surface key information about a webpage – for example, a summary of offerings on a landing page or contents of an article.
iPadOS 18, in addition to features offered in iOS, will now offer Math Notes to type or write out mathematical expressions to get them solved, along with new handwriting tools in Notes, designed for Apple Pencil
macOS Sequoia enhances continuity between iPhone and Mac with iPhone Mirroring, enabling full access to and control of iPhone directly from Mac.

All three platforms will be integrated with Apple Intelligence and ChatGPT – for the latter, users can access it for free without creating an account, or connect their premium account to access paid features.

What can you use the updated Apple platforms for? Getting content summaries, enhanced working on multiple devices, saving time on regular tasks by customizing screens.

Source: Apple Newsroom

Privacy Protection

When it comes to generative AI, privacy is the hottest topic on the agenda. Many companies fear using public generative AI models for business use cases to avoid data leaks.

At WWDC 2024, Apple dedicated significant time to explain its two-fold approach to processing data using Apple Intelligence, including on-device and on-server processing. Common tasks like transcribing calls, editing copy or scheduling meetings that can be processed directly on the device won’t involve Apple’s servers.

For complex AI requests, Apple Intelligence will draw on Private Cloud Compute servers, but will send only the data relevant to the task. This data won’t be stored or made accessible to Apple. Apple also noted it doesn’t train its generative AI models with private data or user interactions, which, as The Verge claims, “is unique compared to other companies”.

Apple took into consideration privacy protections for those accessing ChatGPT — their IP addresses are obscured, and OpenAI won’t store requests. ChatGPT’s data-use policies apply for users who choose to connect their account.

Finally, the company has introduced locked and hidden apps for those who don’t want others to accidentally see the apps they are using when showing their screen, and the new Passwords app to help access account passwords, passkeys, Wi-Fi passwords, and two-factor authentication codes.

What can you use Apple’s privacy protection capabilities for? Using Apple Intelligence with more confidence that your private or business data will not be used to train public AI models, and securing the content on your Apple devices.