What caught my eye at WWDC 2024

Well that was probably the most interesting WWDC in a while. Not saying it was great or perfect, but definitely a turning point. That intro was amazing though! Here’s what caught my eye along with my gut reaction:

iOS

• Custom home screen icon placement - Wow, finally.
• Custom home screen icon tints - Hmm, not quite right.
• Ability to lock apps - Nice, but also sherlocks this as a paid app feature.
• Ability to hide apps - Sus stuff aside, hiding utility apps is a win.
• iMessage RCS support - Finally.
• iMessage rich text - Oh cool.
• iMessage emoji tapbacks - Finally. Yes. Perfect.
• iMessage scheduled texts - Finally. Yes. Perfect.
• iMessage over satelite - Oh cool.
• Airpods shake/nod for accept/decline - Oh cool. That won’t misfire at all…

watchOS

• Live activities - Oh cool. Also cool that it reuses dynamic island activities.
• Vitals app - Oh cool, hopefully useful.

iPadOS

• SharePlay drawing - Oh cool. I need this on iOS!
• SharePlay control - Oh cool. I need this on iOS!
• Calculator app - Wow, finally.
• Math notes with calculations, variables, and graphs - Oh wow, yes! Amazing! Wish I had this in college.
• Smart script for cleaning hand writing, pasting, and spell checking - Oh wow, yes! My hand writing is miserable.

macOS

• iPhone Mirroring - Oh wow, love it, now add this to SharePlay!
• iPhone Notifications - Oh wow, yes! I’ve wanted this before!
• Tile snapping - Wow, finally.
• Passwords App - Wow, finally.
  • I don’t think this sherlocks existing password managers. I think the main win here is that this is going to get more people to actually use a password manger who would never before. I’m not switching anytime soon, but this is still a big win and step forward for online security generally.

visionOS

• Widescreen mac mirroring - Nice, I’m sure others will love this.

tvOS

• InSight - Eh, cool I guess.

Apple Intelligence

• AI == Apple Intelligence - Haha, of course they find a way to steal AI!
• Website summaries - Nice!
• Priority notification - Oh cool, this is going to be useful!
• Writing tools - Cool, but this does mean more content will be generated.
• Image editing - Love it!
• Image generations - Cool tech…bad ethics. Also creepy.
• Context aware and conversational Siri with more integrated actions - YES! Gold star! What Siri was meant to be! Can’t wait! ⭐️
• Privacy cloud compute - Good!
• Genmoji - Haha, I love this!
• Audio transcribing Oh cool!
• ChatGPT - 🤮