Apple’s annual developer conference is kicking off next Monday, and the company is slated to announce updates on all of its platforms. At WWDC, we typically do see some new hardware announced. For instance, last year, Apple announced the MacBook Air 15, as well as the Vision Pro. But this year, it seems there will be no hardware announced. That might not come as a huge surprise, given the iPad Pro and iPad Airs were announced last month.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who has a pretty stellar track record with Apple leaks, “there’s no hardware slated to be announced at WWDC unless Apple unexpectedly previews a new device launching later (to be clear: I don’t expect that).”
Gurman also specifically mentioned the Apple TV, saying that it “isn’t imminent”. There were reports that Apple would release a new Apple TV in the first half of 2024, and if that doesn’t happen at WWDC, then it’s not happening in the first half of this year.
Expect WWDC to be almost entirely about AI
With the latest reports of no hardware being announced at WWDC and the iPads having been announced ahead of the event, we expect that WWDC is going to be entirely about AI. This is similar to Google I/O last month, where the keynote had “AI” mentioned 121 times. However, we expect Apple to use that term far less, as Apple typically doesn’t use the same terms as its competition.
It was also reported recently that Apple had reached a deal with OpenAI, which will likely bring ChatGPT to the iPhone. While it’s actually already on the iPhone in the form of an app, we’d expect it to be baked into iOS 18. Apple is also reported to be working on its own LLMs for AI, which would likely be used for Siri.
There’s talk of there being a ton of new AI features in iOS 18, as well as the other platforms that will get updated at WWDC. To be clear, even without new hardware, Apple has a lot to go over, including iOS 18, iPad OS 18, macOS 15, visionOS 2, watchOS 11, and tvOS 18.
2024-06-03 15:04:21