Apple has unveiled some of the most wide-ranging changes to its features across iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch and Macs including an entirely new Siri powered by privacy-assured artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Apple\u2019s on-device Siri AI will provide personalised answers based on users emails, photos, messages and other information, similar to what Android devices have been doing.<\/p>\n
A far more conversational Siri, with voices that can be customised, will allow people to simply describe what they are looking for, whether it be a family photo, a calendar invite or details from a message.<\/p>\n
Apple also announced big changes to parental controls to help protect children from disturbing content or interactions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Outgoing CEO Tim Cook opened the WWDC26, Apple\u2019s worldwide developer conference, by thanking all those who had helped in Apple\u2019s journey in changing lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to take a moment to express how important WWDC is to me personally, and how deeply meaningful it has been to meet so many of our wonderful developers. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve loved hearing your stories and learning about how you\u2019re enriching the lives of so many people around the world. <\/p>\n
\u201cYour imagination and ingenuity have inspired me for the past 15 years. <\/p>\n
Mr Cook said Apple would continue to be a company that aimed to bring people closer together, \u201cunlock new possibilities, and change the world in ways we can only begin to imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While Apple has been criticised for its delays in bringing AI improvements to users, Craig Federighi, Apple\u2019s senior vice president of software engineering, said Apple was determined to make truly useful upgrades for its users while protecting privacy.<\/p>\n
In a separate briefing, he explained that while Apple was collaborating with Google, it had developed guardrails to ensure no user information was shared off device.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Apple, our mission has always been to turn the potential of advanced technology into helpful and intuitive products for everyone, and that has never been more important than today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTruly helpful AI must be centred on our users\u2019 needs, deeply integrated into the products they rely on every day, grounded in personal context, and built with privacy at every step. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is our vision for Apple Intelligence. With useful features for browsing the web, expressing creativity, editing photos, and so much more, today marks a big step forward on our journey to integrate powerful AI into the core of our platforms and make our products even more personal and useful.\u201d<\/p>\n
How Siri will change across Apple devices<\/p>\n
The new Siri also offers a new dedicated app, along with integrated tools for writing and Visual Intelligence across platforms. <\/p>\n
One of the most impressive features in photo editing is Spatial Reframing, where you can improve the composition of a photo after it\u2019s been taken. That can even be done on old photos.<\/p>\n
You can drag a photo and preview in real time how the perspective shifts \u2014 as if they\u2019d repositioned the camera in the original scene. <\/p>\n
Apple says Spatial Reframing will only generate new content where the perspective has been shifted, ensuring the reframed photo stays consistent with the original scene.<\/p>\n
Users can also expand images with the Extend tool to give their subjects more breathing room.<\/p>\n
You can straighten a crooked horizon without cropping out anything important, or adjust the aspect ratio, and Extend will fill in the missing pieces. <\/p>\n
The Clean Up will get a major upgrade, so users can remove distractions with better quality and more realistic infill, even when the scene is complex.<\/p>\n
Building on its ability to alert users about weak and compromised passwords, Passwords can now automatically fix these for users.<\/p>\n
Using Apple Intelligence and Safari to agentically take action on a user\u2019s behalf, Passwords securely navigates through websites to sign in and upgrade their accounts to strong passwords.<\/p>\n
Image Playground will expand to do realistic photos<\/p>\n
Image Playground offers new ways for users to create high-quality images in virtually any style, <\/p>\n
Users can describe the changes they want to make \u2014 or simply tap, circle, or brush to highlight an object to move or resize it.<\/p>\n
Users also have new ways to use the images they create. In addition to places like Messages, Image Playground can now be used to generate Lock Screen wallpapers and Now Messages offers one-tap suggestions based on the context of users\u2019 conversations, such as creating a reminder or a note.<\/p>\n
For example, if someone asks for photos, Messages can also help users find the right ones, recognising keywords, locations, and people in their library to find the best options. <\/p>\n
When users call a business, Call Context surfaces relevant information \u2014 like a confirmation code or reservation number \u2014 directly in the Phone app. <\/p>\n
If a user calls an airline to change a flight, the Phone app can automatically find their confirmation code in Mail.<\/p>\n
Call Context looks at who the user is calling, not what they\u2019re saying, to surface helpful information; it runs entirely on device, so nothing is shared with Apple or anyone else.<\/p>\n
Apple Intelligence also makes it possible to add or modify events in Calendar just by describing the event. <\/p>\n
These new features are available for testing starting today through the Apple Developer Program at developer.apple.com, and a public beta will be available through the Apple Beta Software Program next month at beta.apple.com.<\/p>\n
Users who enable Apple Intelligence on supported products set to a supported language will have access this spring with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27.<\/p>\n
Apple\u2019s battle to get Siri AI on phones and iPads in Europe<\/p>\n
Greg \u2018Joz\u2019 Joswiak, Apple\u2019s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said the European Commission had ignored Apple\u2019s concerns about compromising user privacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually started engaging, or actually, should I say, tried to engage, with the commission late last year. <\/p>\n
He said Apple had offered a solution, a trusted agent system that would be an OS level intermediary to allow third-party access.<\/p>\n
But he said that was rejected by the Commission. <\/p>\n
The Commission has in turn blamed Apple, saying it was its decision alone to not comply to EU requirements.<\/p>\n
Mr Joswiak said the push to unfettered open access by AI agents had the potential to threaten people\u2019s personal memories and financial security.<\/p>\n
He said this threat could be replicated by other governments in the name of allowing competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t imagine anything more concerning for privacy than opening up an entire operating system. to a third party assistant with unfettered access to virtually everything on the user\u2019s device. <\/p>\n
\u201cWithout appropriate safeguards, any AI system could potentially read your messages, it could edit your files, it could delete your photos, it could take actions on apps without your knowledge or consent. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd again, this risk applies to everybody, including children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Joswiak said the EU was trying to give access even Apple did not have to information on people\u2019s Apple devices.<\/p>\n
He said Apple was committed to particularly protecting children with new parental controls announced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re likely to both be most vulnerable to exploits that could happen to them in their data.<\/p>\n
Mr Joswiak said Apple, which had about a 20 per cent market share in Europe was hardly a monopoly like Google or Meta.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe very strongly support interoperability. We provide literally hundreds of thousands of APIs to our developers.<\/p>\n
\u201c We have developers here from 65 countries,\u2019\u2019 he said during a briefing at WWDC26.<\/p>\n
While Apple was able to overcome DMA issues with Live Translation last year in the EU, Mr Joswiak said Siri AI was much bigger, and more difficult to resolve. <\/p>\n
A new solution could take months to develop and cost tens of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n
Apple\u2019s incoming CEO given rock star welcome<\/p>\n
Apple\u2019s incoming CEO John Ternus was given a rock star reception as he met with content creators ahead of WWDC26.<\/p>\n
Mr Ternus is set to officially take the reigns of Apple as CEO on September 1, while Tim Cook will become Executive Chairman of the Board.<\/p>\n
Mr Ternus was swamped by Apple fans at a welcome dinner ahead of the annual software supershow. <\/p>\n
A highly respected Apple veteran, Mr Ternus, very much regarded as the \u2018product guy\u2019 guru, smiled and joked with those swamping him for a selfie and a quick chat.<\/p>\n
The former mechanical engineer joined Apple\u2019s product design team in 2001, right around the time the original iPod was changing the music world.<\/p>\n
Mr Ternus climbed the ranks to become Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2013, and joined the executive team as the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering in 2021. <\/p>\n
He is particularly credited with launching iPad and AirPods.<\/p>\n
Mr Ternus also helped move the Mac line-up from Intel processors and onto Apple\u2019s own chips and led iPhone innovations including tougher glass and water resistance.<\/p>\n
Insiders says he cares deeply about how the engineering side of products dovetails with software, something that will be critical as Apple navigates striking the balance between AI innovation and customers\u2019 data privacy.<\/p>\n
Despite being seen by many to be way behind in the AI race after its aborted upgrades to Siri, announced at WWDC24, Apple remains a $A6.4 trillion dollar company.<\/p>\n
But Nvidia, an AI, chips and data centre powerhouse, now holds the crown as the most valuable company in the world, at $A7.05 trillion.<\/p>\n
The author travelled to Cupertino as a guest of Apple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple has unveiled some of the most wide-ranging changes to its features across iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-734535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}