WWDC24AIAIAIAIAIAI Also, AI
Juli Clover
Happy WWDC Dates Announcement Day to those who celebrate.1 I joke, but there are plenty! (It's June 10 - 14, 2024, btw. Keynote will be on Monday, June 10.) And this year strikes me as potentially more important to Apple itself than in years past.2 Not only is the company under assault from many different angles on the regulatory front, Wall Street has soured of late on their taste for Apple. In a rather ravenous Bull Market, no less. Not long ago, Apple as by far the most valuable company in the world in terms of market cap. Today, they're over $500B behind Microsoft. That's not a typo, let alone two typos: $500B. Microsoft.
The reason why should be fAIrly obvious.
Satya Nadella's miraculous turnaround from Steve Ballmer's lost decade aside, Microsoft hitching their wagon to OpenAI has pushed the stock back into growth mode territory. Apple, meanwhile, has a Services narrative. And that's about it.
Or was it. Begun, the Apple AI hype cycle has.
In a tweet, Joswiak said that the WWDC 2024 event is going to be "Absolutely Incredible," and he deliberately capitalized the first two letters of each word, AI.
First off, shouldn't it be a 'xheet'? Second, Joz is a Michigan Man, so he gets a pass on the cringe dad joke. But in all seriousness for Apple, it is rather fascinating how much they've been talking up AI ahead of any actual AI announcements, from Tim Cook on down. Clearly, they know the assignment here.
But one interesting aside from Mark Gurman today:
Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy will include a slew of new proactive features to assist users in their daily lives. The company isn’t planning to debut its own generative AI chatbot, though. Instead, Apple is holding talks with potential partners like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI to supply generative AI services, Bloomberg News has reported.
While they've clearly been testing one internally, I'm not sure what good launching an AI chatbot would do beyond checking that particular AI box. But, I mean, have you talked to Siri recently? Larry David has! Any AI chatbot Apple launched would have far more downside than upside. And I can't help but wonder if we're not near the top of the chatbot cycle anyway at the moment. Chat is but one aspect of how you should interact with AI. Apple can and should do better, frankly – even if they have to outsource it to start.
Regardless, get ready for it. "AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI" is going to make "5G, 5G, 5G, 5G, 5G, 5G" sound subtle in comparison.
1 The fact that 'WWDC24' looks a lot like 'WW84' -- as in Wonder Woman 1984 -- seems like a silly overlap. Then again, Apple's own press release notes that: "Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984."
2 Sort of humorous/wild how buried the stated updates to visionOS are. This is Apple's first new platform in years. And the first major update to that. All anyone cares about is "AI, AI, AI, AI, AI".