📱Apple Intelligence & the Next Wave of Apps
Apple's WWDC is always a spectacle, leaving a trail of shiny new features. This year we got something special - Apple Intelligence. Let’s analyze it through a product lens.
Four things you’ll get from TWIP today…
How Apple Intelligence Will Trigger the Next Wave of Apps📱
What Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk think about Apple Intelligence💭
A video from Wired on “Will AI Kill the App?”🎥
Our Masterclass on E-Commerce Pricing Strategies💰
🔍Apple Intelligence Will Trigger the Next Wave of Apps
We've all witnessed the app revolution of the last decade. The explosion of downloadable tools for every imaginable task was fueled by device makers and operating systems like iOS, opening up platform-level capabilities to app developers.
For instance, GPS-based location services birthed Uber🚗, motion sensors fueled fitness trackers🏃♂️, and photo processors unleashed a wave of imaging apps📸
Apple’s unveiling of Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024 suggests another seismic shift – the mainstreaming of embedded AI.
🌍It opens up a world of possibilities for app-based businesses.
With Apple Intelligence, platform-level AI capabilities (embedded AI) are woven into the very fabric of Apple’s operating systems and it’s available for developers on the latest versions of every Apple product out there.
And Apple isn’t the only company tinkering with embedded AI.
If you take stock of the tech behemoths, Microsoft with its Copilot+ PCs💻, and Google with its Gemini Nano for Pixel📱, entered this race first. However, as we have seen in the past, Apple has a knack for mainstreaming technology🥇.
With Apple Intelligence, embedded AI is now democratized and reaching millions of Apple devices (including yours), while you are reading this right now!
How does Apple Intelligence work?
Apple Intelligence utilizes on-device processing and private cloud computing to power AI features like image recognition, natural language processing (NLP), gesture tracking, on-device dictation, and potentially more sophisticated functions in the future.
This signifies a move away from public cloud-based AI, offering several advantages:
🔌Offline Functionality: AI features can function even without an internet connection.
🔒Enhanced Privacy: Data processing happens on your device or on a private cloud where your data is your own, minimizing privacy concerns associated with sending data to the cloud.
⚡Improved Performance: On-device processing translates to faster response times and a smoother user experience as the apps we build only need to only call upon the embedded AI capabilities of devices in which it is installed and not to AI service providers on the cloud.
Apple Intelligence represents a fundamental shift in how users interact with technology. With the new update, Apple’s phones or computers would evolve to not just react to users’ commands, but also anticipate needs🔮
Here are 3 things embedded AI brings to users
1. Simplification of complex interactions💬
Two things will happen here.
Voice control will become ubiquitous🎙️ making dictation and voice commands the primary way to interact with devices.
Gesture-based controls will become even more powerful, allowing for natural interaction with devices using hands or even eye movements👁️, which Apple has already given us a glimpse of.
2. On-device augmented reality🕶️
GenAI coupled with advanced image processing is going to open a flurry of opportunities from ecommerce to gaming to better human connectivity.
3. Breakthroughs in accessibility♿
Features like real-time captioning, object recognition for the visually impaired, real-time audio descriptions, and voice control could become seamless thanks to embedded AI.
What does all this mean for the digital products you are building?
The products you build today can now utilize the superior embedded AI capabilities of the platforms they would be installed in. So, if you are building apps today, here are three things you need to pay attention to.
🌐Shifting Development Landscape: Developers will need to adapt to a world where core functionalities might be handled by the platform's AI. The focus will shift towards building experiences that seamlessly integrate with and complement these built-in features.
📱Rise of the Micro-App: With AI handling basic AI functionalities, specialized apps might become less necessary. We could see a rise in "micro-apps" that focus on niche functionalities or hyper-personalized experiences.
🎨Focus on User Experience (UX) Design: As AI handles the heavy lifting, product success will hinge on exceptional UX design that leverages the power of embedded AI to create intuitive and delightful user experiences.
As Tim Cook rightly points out, “Together, all of this goes beyond artificial intelligence. It's personal intelligence.”
In his speech on Monday, Cook listed five principles they used to bring Apple Intelligence to life.
(1)It has to be powerful enough to help with the things that matter most to you.
(2)It has to be intuitive and easy to use.
(3)It has to be deeply integrated into your product experiences.
(4)Most importantly, it has to understand you and be grounded in your personal context, like your routine, your relationships, your communications, and more.
(5)And, of course, it has to be built with privacy from the ground up.
These five principles highlighted by Cook, can also be applied to the products we are building for the upcoming wave of embedded AI devices.
In Siam Computing, the product development studio I founded, I’m utilizing the platform-level AI capabilities of the next wave of smart devices to build a healthcare companion for the elderly ❤️. Solving for trust and accessibility is the core theme.
Trust by personalization – the app speaks to them in the language they are comfortable with, using context-aware tools embedded in the phone’s OS. And, accessibility by using embedded GenAI to generate images and create audio notes that the elderly can understand, instead of using text.
🌟This is our commitment to leveraging embedded AI to transform lives and enhance human connection. What’s yours?
You may also be interested in
📺Steve Wozniak’s TV interview about Apple Intelligence
Steve Wozniak is “very excited” about Apple Intelligence as it takes “your bits of data and not data from around the world.”
However, he has reserved his judgment on the embedded AI developments in Apple and asks users to proceed with caution. He says that a demo always looks good, but he believes in seeing how it works and then giving an opinion of it.
Meanwhile…
Elon Musk is being very ‘Musky’ about Apple Intelligence…
I’m not kidding, this is the actual tweet posted by Musk, and not a parody account. I checked twice.
The CEO of Tesla, took to X (Formerly Twitter) stating how disappointed he is with the OpenAI-Apple collaboration. Sharing his reaction, he also posted that if OpenAI comes to the iPhone’s OS, the devices will no longer be allowed in his companies.
Also Watch
📺Will AI Kill the App?
Generative AI can write code, conjure interfaces, and carry out tasks. That might just reinvent software as we know it… So, is the end of the road for apps?
In this video, Mike Mason, Chief AI Officer at ThoughtWorks and Birgitta Böckeler, AI-First Software Delivery Lead at ThoughtWorks explore how generative AI is changing software development and perhaps, ultimately, software itself.
Our ProdWrks Masterclass
More than 100 Leaders Found This Webinar on E-Commerce Pricing Strategies Useful
While the entire world was focused on Apple, we successfully hosted a masterclass on E-Commerce Pricing Strategies on Saturday, with Sulakshana Sarathy, who has led sales at Myntra and Flipkart.
More than 100 people, mostly founders and managers of online retail brands attended the webinar where Sulakshana discussed the "why" behind each aspect of e-commerce pricing, how it impacts consumers, and what we can do as leaders to improve the customer experience while making business sense.
Sulakshana shared insights from her own experience of working as an e-commerce business leader for 15+ years and patiently answered queries from the audience during the Q&A session.
Get Invited to ProdWrks Masterclasses
ProdWrks is our product community + publication. We’ll be hosting more masterclasses and webinars in the future with a closed circle of leaders in techbiz.
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I hope you enjoyed this week's curated stories and resources. Check your inbox again next week, or read previous editions of this newsletter for more insights. To get instant updates, connect with me on LinkedIn.
Cheers!
Khuze Siam
Founder: Siam Computing & ProdWrks