- Apple's next Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024) is scheduled for June 10 to June 14.
- The event will see a tonne of announcements including AI features, iOS 18, macOS 15, and beyond.
- The only catch is, there won't be any hardware updates at WWDC 2024.
In just a few days, we will witness the epic WWDC 2024 (Worldwide Developers Conference 2024) from Apple. The event is all decked up, the dates are set, and the tech community is eagerly waiting for Apple to announce a tonne of new software and hardware among other reveals. If you just landed on this page trying to find what Apple would uncover at the WWDC 2024, here’s a sneak peek into what we can expect.
WWDC 2024: The Dates
Before we can get to the juicy part, let’s get the obvious part out of the way. Apple is all set to hold WWDC 2024 on June 10, and it will run through June 14. The Special Event will commence at 10 am PT / 6 pm BST / 1 pm ET. It will be streamed on Apple.com (of course) among other platforms. The “Platforms State of the Union” commences at 1 pm PT on June 10 followed by labs and sessions that will run throughout the week.
What To Expect At WWDC 2024
Coming to the question of the hour, what can you expect at WWDC 2024? Well, turns out there’s a lot to discuss on AI and software, and you know, sprinkle some rumors around hardware too, and you get what we could anticipate will arrive at the event.
AI is everywhere
The AI space is advancing at lightning-fast speeds. Samsung went on big with Galaxy AI for the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, and it has trickled to other flagship Galaxy phones as well. Google is banking on AI as well along with OpenAI, Microsoft, and a few other brands. The major exception is Apple, (unfortunate, but we knew what was coming already), that was seemingly lagging up until this point. Looks like the Cupertino-based giant will join the wagon soon.
According to Apple exec Greg Joswiak, the upcoming WWDC2024 will be ‘Absolutely Incredible!’ and that’s a nudge towards AI. He hasn’t shared any list of AI features yet, but we are hoping we will get to see a tonne related to AI at the upcoming WWDC 2024. Based on rumors, we should get AI fine-tuning Siri, summarize texts, churn up messages using generative AI, and AI-powered playlist tool onboard Apple Music to name a few.
According to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, Apple kickstarted Project Greymatter to introduce AI tools across its core apps including Messages, Safari, notes, Photos, etc.
I understand that the subtitle may be misleading since we did not disclose any details on AI at Apple, but the truth is, the iPhone giant has kept it under a secured vault (metaphorically). Again, we are just an inch close to discovering what it is keeping it mysterious.
From what we know so far, AI will be the most extensive part of WWDC 2024 where Apple will make some of the biggest announcements of the decade.
iOS 18 and iPadOS 18
You must have already heard about iOS 18. It is going through a series of beta updates before making its official announcement at WWDC 2024. Well, it is a successor to iOS 17 (of course), offering a bucketload of new features, UI changes, and AI-related upgrades. Gurman says Apple will introduce AI features across iOS 18 that will be helpful for users in their daily lives, unlike the gimmicky features that Android manufacturers are loading their devices with.
We already read about Apple’s core apps getting their AI support and that’s true across both iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. Some upcoming AI features that we know about our voice memo transcriptions, photo retouching, AI-assisted writing on Pages, an improved web search on Safari, and smart recap of missed messages and notifications among others.
iOS 18 is in line to bring certain design changes to accommodate cues from visionOS — Apple’s OS for its AR/VR-based headset. We recently heard about the ability to arrange app icons on the home screen as and how you like instead of the previously limited customization options.
Apple Maps on iOS 18 will see support for topographic maps. There’s RCS for the Messages app that would eventually make chats between iPhone and Android users more fun. It’s difficult to capture every mention of iOS 18 and features in a constricted space as this, but we tried covering some major points leaving rest for WWDC 2024.
Related
watchOS 11 and macOS 15
As usual, when there’s a major iOS update, there’s usually macOS and watchOS around the corner as well. This year, we would see both watchOS 11 and macOS 15 with the latter getting its hands on AI features as well. Named after an unconventional place in California, macOS 18 might be called Shasta, Diablo, Condor, Farallon, Pacific, Mammoth, Rincon, Grizzly, or Sequoia.
watchOS 11 is around the corner as well although, it’s highly likely that the update is nothing more than a fairly minor one and not a major overhaul. We have heard about AI features reaching watchOS 11 so that’s something you could be on the lookout for at WWDC 2024.
Next-gen Apple Watch 10, scheduled for launch this fall, is suggested to bring features detecting sleep apnea and hypertension. WatchOS 11 will have the chops to handle both of these health-related features, although we will have to wait and watch before making any confirmation just yet.
tvOS 18
tvOS across Apple’s lineup of TVs received ample annual updates. This is also a fact that the overall UI might not be changed to feel that kind of significant shift but at least, the tvOS versions change, right? tvOS 18 is in line to arrive at the WWDC 2024 with a few minor improvements as well. Apple could be on its way to integrating tvOS well into the Apple ecosystem as it did with tvOS 17 which brought FaceTime to Apple TV. We are hoping for more updates on the same so let’s keep it to that for the moment.
VisionOS 2.0
Apple unveiled Vision Pro at the WWDC last year and people were blown away by the cutting-edge technologies and features it brought on-board. It had an operating system called visionOS. Cut to now, we are expecting a visionOS 2.0 to bring upon apps made just for the headset instead of running iPad versions of apps in compatibility mode.
We are talking mostly about the core apps such as Stocks, Voice Memos, Podcasts, News, Calendar, Maps, etc., that are likely to get a vision-ish treatment with the upcoming visionOS 2.0. One of the publications mentioned a feature called ‘respiration tracking’ that would help users with meditation experience via the Mindfulness app on the Vision Pro, however, we will have to wait until more information isn’t available about it.
There May Not Be Any Hardware Update At WWDC 2024
If you were eagerly waiting for this section explicitly, I might have bad news for you. Up until this point, Apple hasn’t declared any pointers of what will be announced at WWDC 2024. However, there’s a huge possibility that we might not see any hardware update at the upcoming conference even though last year’s event was a hardware powerhouse.
We were hoping for a Vision Pro sequel, but that’s just too early to arrive anyway. Perhaps, we could see an M3 chip-powered Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro but let’s take it with a pinch of salt. For now, we do know that the next hardware event will be for iPhone 16 in September this year.
