As an Apple nerd, the week of WWDC is both a great and a terrible time to launch something new. Almost no one will pay attention to this new website, yet it gives me much to write about.

If you’re also an Apple nerd (and if you’re reading this, there’s an above-average chance you are), Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference offers a ton to explore, learn, and generally obsess over. For many, it sets the direction for the rest of their year, acting as something of a launching pad, a new beginning.

For over two decades, WWDC was a major focal point of my year. I worked in Apple’s Worldwide Developer Relations organization (WWDR), which puts on the show, and the team I was on, Developer Technical Support (DTS), was an integral part of it.

Months of long days, sleepless nights, and endless planning meetings culminated with WWDC Monday. It was immensely gratifying to see the results of many months of hard work from the teams make it to the stage or screen. And while much of what was announced at any given show was a surprise to me, my excitement was generally tempered by having already spent a lot of time living on the new software.

Not so this year. It’s my first WWDC “on the outside” since 2001^[1], and my anticipation for what’s new was sky-high.

Restraint

Leading up to WWDC, there was much speculation about what Apple would do with AI, and its impact on the company’s fortunes.

Apple answered, but they sure took their time.

Monday’s Keynote (anchored by Craig Federighi) was effectively two events. The first sixty minutes was the normal annual updates of Apple’s software product lineup: All the new features coming in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, watchOS 11, macOS Sequoia, and visionOS 2, with a surprisingly long Apple TV+ segment. Despite the hype, there wasn’t a single mention of “AI” or “artificial intelligence” in this first hour.

I must applaud Apple’s restraint here. I speculated last week,

What if Apple announces “Siri AI” and says it’s “Advanced Interactions” or “Apple Intelligence”?

“Edit your photos using your voice. Powered by Siri AI….”

“Xcode 16 helps you write code twice as fast using Siri AI.…”

“In the newly improved Developers Forums, you can quickly find answers to your code-level questions thanks to Siri AI….”

They get to utter “AI” a bunch of times, but make it distinct from “artificial intelligence”.

It would be very Apple to try to redefine what AI means.

🤔

What I expected was a presentation littered with “AI” droppings to satisfy those carping about Apple falling behind in AI. Instead, Apple stuck to their usual language as they highlighted new features enabled by “intelligent capabilities”, “machine learning”, and “powerful new algorithms”, just as they have for years.

It was in the back forty minutes that we finally got what for many people was the main attraction: The introduction of “Apple Intelligence”, Apple’s name^[2] for their on-device, privacy-focused, and deeply integrated take on artificial intelligence.

Apple Intelligence

Tim Cook introduced Apple Intelligence this way:

At Apple, it’s always been our goal to design powerful personal products that enrich people’s lives, by enabling them to do the things that matter most, as simply and easily as possible.

We’ve been using artificial intelligence and machine learning for years to help us further that goal. Recent developments in generative intelligence and large language models offer powerful capabilities that provide the opportunity to take the experience of using Apple products to new heights.

So as we look to build in these incredible new capabilities, we want to ensure that the outcome reflects the principles at the core of our products. It has to be powerful enough to help with the things that matter most to you. It has to be intuitive and easy to use. It has to be deeply integrated into your product experiences. Most importantly, it has to understand you, and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, your relationships, your communications and more. And of course, it has to be built with privacy from the ground up. Together, all of this goes beyond artificial intelligence. It’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step for Apple.

I include the entire quote^[3] because I see this as Apple’s AI thesis. Their privacy-first approach to AI is all about experiences and functionality, not data collection. Technology as Infrastructure, not as a business model. Apple Intelligence gives Apple (and developers) the ability to craft experiences that are relevant to you, using the extraordinarily personal information available on your device, and without compromising your privacy.

This is the right approach. People care about what technology lets them do—or can do for them—not the technology itself. They buy a new iPhone because it “takes better photos” not because it has an “ƒ/1.78 aperture.” The technology enables the feature, but it’s not the feature.

For Apple, it’s not about AI, it’s about what AI enables.

What sets Apple Intelligence apart from other offerings are Siri’s deep integration with the system, on-device processing, and new cloud server infrastructure.

With Siri’s improved integrations, better natural language understanding, and awareness of my personal contexts, my iPhone, iPad, and Mac—which already know more about me than my wife or mom—will be able to use that knowledge even more directly.

It’ll do this without needing to go to the cloud. Much of Apple Intelligence will be processed locally, which is a massive win for both speed and privacy. (It does require devices with the latest Apple silicon: iPhone 15 Pro, or any M-family iPad or Mac. One can presume any new phones announced this year will work.)

For requests too complex to process locally, Apple’s new cloud server infrastructure adds scalability. Private Cloud Compute uses Apple silicon-powered servers created specifically for this task. Limited data is sent to those servers, the data is used only for your requests (not to train models for others), and then the data is deleted once the task is complete.

As Craig said,

You should not have to hand over all the details of your life to be warehoused and analyzed in someone’s AI cloud.

This is what differentiates Apple from everyone else doing AI, and why Apple remains one of the few companies I trust with vast amounts of my personal data. Apple Intelligence is built, as Tim noted, “in a uniquely Apple way.” They aren’t trying to monetize your data, so there’s no need to hold onto it. It’s a solution “only Apple” could make.

Siri

There were several demos showcasing the capabilities of Apple Intelligence. Many were tied to generative writing and images, done locally, and constrained to specific contexts. I found them interesting, but not exciting.

There were three examples which delighted me. All were tied to Siri’s deeper integration into and across the system:

1. You’re filling out a form and it requires your driver’s license. If you have a copy of your license in Photos, Siri will be able to find that photo, copy your license number, and type it into the form for you. I had this exact need just a few days ago. I had to launch Photos, search for “driver’s license”, tap on the text icon, and copy and paste the number. It was quite handy, as I didn’t have to leave the couch to grab my wallet, but I can’t wait until I can say “Siri, paste in my driver’s license number.”
2. A friend sends you a Message with his new address. You say to Siri “add this address to his contact card”. Siri knows what’s on your screen, what an address is, how to get and format an address, what “this” address refers to, what a “contact card” is, who “his” means, what it means to “add to contact card”, and how to add it to the Contacts app.
3. You’re picking your mom up from the airport. You ask Siri “what time is my mom’s flight landing?” Siri knows who “my mom” is, what flight she’s on (because of an email she sent earlier), and when it will land (because it can access real-time flight tracking). You follow up with “what’s our lunch plan?” Siri knows “our” means you and your mom, when “lunch” is, that it was discussed in a Message thread, and that it’s today. Finally, you ask “how long will it take us to get there from the airport?”. Siri knows who ”us” is, where “there” is, which airport is being referenced, where you are now, and real-time traffic conditions.

I’ve been dreaming about these types of interactions since first seeing Apple’s Knowledge Navigator concept video, where—among other futuristic things—an “intelligent agent” has such deep contextual knowledge about a professor, it jumps in—unprompted—with the answer to a forgotten appointment time.

History

The WWDC video opens with Phil Schiller flying an airplane filled with Apple executives^[4]. Craig is pumping them up ahead of the show, then they all parachute out above Apple Park. The airplane, the jumpsuits, and the parachutes themselves are all liveried in the six colors of the classic Apple logo. It’s a lovely callback to Apple’s history.

Ninety minutes later, toward the end of the event, Craig gives us the tag line for Apple Intelligence: AI for the rest of us.

This is another callback to the earliest ads for Macintosh, the computer for the rest of us, and I think it encapsulates everything about how Apple envisions their place within the broader AI ecosystem.

The original series of ads compared the graphical user interface and one-button mouse of Macintosh to DOS-based PCs where you typed in cryptic, text-based commands to get things done. In one ad, a Macintosh is removed from a zippered bag:

It’s more sophisticated, yet less complicated.

It’s more powerful, yet less cumbersome.

It can store vast amounts of yesterday, or tell you what’s in store for tomorrow.

It can draw pictures, or it can draw conclusions.

It’s a personal computer from Apple, and it’s as easy to use as this.

The ad ends with a finger pressing a mouse button, highlighting the simplicity of using a Macintosh.

With new visuals, and some minor changes to the narration, this could be an ad for Apple Intelligence.

It can’t be coincidence that a Keynote that opens by evoking the early days of Apple computing, ends with one too. Apple is saying there’s Artificial Intelligence, which is all about LLMs and models and prompt engineering, and which requires specialized knowledge and lots of typing to accomplish anything, and there’s Apple Intelligence, which uses context and relevance and personal knowledge to make it easy to be creative and productive.

The pundits worry Apple has fallen behind.

Apple is telling us this is just the beginning.