I expect that a lot of WWDC will be Apple trying to get more developers to build AI products for their platforms, because at the moment, Apple products don't have much AI. The other tech companies have integrated user facing LLM products into a significant part of their ecosystem - Google and Microsoft have them up front and center in search. Apple's AI offerings for end users are what exactly? The camera photos app that does minor tweaks to photos (composing from multiple frames). What else actually is there in the first party ecosystem that significantly leverages AI? Siri is still the same trash it's been for the last 10 years - in fact IMO it's become even less useful, often refusing to even do web searches for me. (I WANT Siri to work very well).
So because their first party AI products are so non-existent, I think WWDC is a desperate attempt by Apple to get third party developers to build compelling AI products. I say desperate because they're already a year behind the competition in this space.
(I can imagine they'll be trying to get developers to build Vision Pro software too, though I hear sales there have collapsed so again, way too little, too late)
They have tons of computer vision, NN inference and natural language processing in their products. It's reductive to say Apple products don't have much AI.
For one thing, I can search for any text I’ve ever take a photo of. Finding a picture of someone I took 20+ years ago by searching for a single work I remember on their t-shirt is pretty cool, and is all done on-device.
I think it’s important to remember that there are a bunch of actual useful AI-driven features out there that aren’t just GenAI chatbots.
What AI products are present in other ecosystems (eg. Android, Samsung, whatever) and missing from Apple?
Honest question: I find the platform distinction largely meaningless in most cases apart from “what your phone looks like” and “can you side load apps”…
I am guessing you are not familiar with the AI-powered vision features that already ship since a few years. Mostly accessibility related, so I am not surprised you missed it.
Yep. Google, the AI company, only recently launched image descriptions in TalkBack, which VoiceOver has had for years now. Google still doesn't have Screen Recognition, which basically does OCR and image/UI classification to make inaccessible apps more accessible.
Don't get me even started on TalkBack and Android. It was never on-par with VoiceOver, and is still a few years behind... However, VoiceOver is also getting slowly, but surely, worse and worse over time when it comes to small subtle bugs...
So because their first party AI products are so non-existent, I think WWDC is a desperate attempt by Apple to get third party developers to build compelling AI products. I say desperate because they're already a year behind the competition in this space.
(I can imagine they'll be trying to get developers to build Vision Pro software too, though I hear sales there have collapsed so again, way too little, too late)