iOS 18

Apple today announced new accessibility features that will debut later this year in iOS 18 and its other operating systems (although as usual, Apple does not specifically refer to ‘iOS 18’ prematurely).

The headline addition is Eye Tracking, which will allow iPhone and iPad users with physical disabilities to control their devices just by looking at it with their eyes, with a new iOS gaze system somewhat similar to Vision Pro. Other new features include music haptics, Vehicle Motion Cues, and more …

If you haven’t yet watched yesterday’s OpenAI event, I highly recommend doing so. The headline news was that the latest GPT-4o model works seamlessly with any combination of text, audio, and video.

That includes the ability to ‘show’ the GPT-4o app a screen recording you are taking of another app – and it’s this capability the company showed off with a pretty incredible iPad AI tutor demo …

Today OpenAI held a spring update event, where it outlined some of its latest work on the ChatGPT platform. One key announcement was the arrival of a new Mac desktop app, but the larger focus was on a new flagship model of ChatGPT. This new model, GPT-4o, arrives just in time for a rumored deep integration into iOS 18 at WWDC.

Apple is finalizing an agreement with OpenAI to bring some of its technology to the iPhone this year, according to a new report from Bloomberg. With this deal, the report explains that Apple will be able to offer “a popular chatbot” powered by ChatGPT as part of its AI-focused features in iOS 18.

Coming on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that Apple was developing its own chips geared toward powering AI-focused data centers, today Mark Gurman at Bloomberg effectively confirmed the report while adding new details of his own.

We’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about iOS 18 having new AI-powered features, since Apple CEO Tim Cook himself has confirmed many times that the company has been working on generative AI features. Now a report claims that iPhone and iPad users will have the option of summarizing long text messages using AI.

2024 is shaping up to be the “Year of AI” for Apple, with big updates planned for iOS 18 and more. The rumors – and Tim Cook himself – make it clear that there are new AI features for Apple’s platforms in the works. Here’s everything we know about the ways Apple is exploring AI features…

Apple is reportedly planning to supercharge the Calendar and Reminders apps with iOS 18 and macOS 15 this year. These updates join a long list of other expected iOS 18 improvements, including new AI features, upgrades to Safari, and more.

It’s clear that we’re going to see some exciting new Apple AI features this year, and the usual way for the company to announce major new iOS features would be to preview them at WWDC, and then launch them in September with the new iPhone line-up.

But there could be a couple of reasons to hope for some kind of preview of these new features on the new iPad Pro during the May 7 Let Loose Apple event …

For some reason which utterly eludes me, 2024 seems to be the year of AI hardware. We’ve had the Humane AI Pin, the Rabbit R1, and even former Apple design chief Jony Ive reportedly seeking a billion-dollar bet for his own attempt.

Reviews of Humane were brutal, with those who tried it as unimpressed by its performance as they were bemused as to its purpose – and the Rabbit R1 isn’t faring too much better, with Marques Brownlee describing it as “barely reviewable” …

Apple is reportedly planning big updates to Safari as part of iOS 18 and macOS 15 later this year. According to a report on Tuesday, the changes will include a new AI-powered tool called “Intelligent Search” with page summarization, a “Web Eraser” feature, and more.

A new report today says that Apple has created a ‘secretive’ advanced AI lab in Europe, and it’s this facility which is responsible for some of its most ground-breaking artificial intelligence work.

The same report suggests that most of Apple’s AI specialists have been poached from Google, though this isn’t a great surprise give the background of the Cupertino company’s AI chief …

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman gives us a few more hints about what to expect from iOS 18 in terms of upcoming new software changes for the iPhone.

Gurman writes that alongside the slate of artificial intelligence features, iOS 18 will include updates to most of the popular built-in apps on the iPhone, including overhauls for the Photos, Mail, Notes and Fitness apps. The Calculator app will be updated with new features, and made available on the iPad for the first time.

We’re not far from the first official look at iOS 18 at WWDC 2024 on June 10. Whether you’d like to test out the new OS as soon as the dev beta is available or you’ll wait for the public beta or public launch, follow along for when to expect the iOS 18 release date.

Ahead of iOS 18’s debut at WWDC in June, Apple has released a family of open-source large language models. Called OpenELM, Apple describes these as: a family of Open-source Efficient Language Models.

In its testing, Apple says that OpenELM offers similar performance to other open language models, but with less training data.

In addition to new artificial intelligence features, Apple’s next round of OS updates will reportedly offer some big new features for the … Calculator app. Multiple rumors over the last week say that Apple is planning to make the Calculator app more powerful, add math features to Apple Notes, and bring the Calculator app to the iPad for the first time.

As indicated by much of the research material Apple has been publishing in recent months, the company is investing heavily in all sorts of artificial intelligence technologies. Apple will announce its AI strategy in June at WWDC, as part of iOS 18 and its other new OS versions.

In the latest Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman says to expect the new iPhone AI features to be powered entirely by an offline, on-device, large language model developed by Apple. You can expect Apple will tout the privacy and speed benefits of this approach.

When WWDC kicks off on June 10, there will be a lot of attention on Apple’s plans for new artificial intelligence features. In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reiterates that one of Apple’s primary focuses will be on privacy and on-device intelligence.

I’m sure it’s been said countless times before, but—now that would be a good name for a column!—iMessage could use a send quietly option that’s always available. Send quietly is a feature today, but it’s only available when the recipient is in a Focus mode.

People have been complaining about Siri for years now, arguing that it’s fallen behind the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant. With clear evidence that 2024 is going to see dramatic improvements in Apple’s AI features, will iOS 18 Siri finally turn things around?

I’m very much hoping the answer is yes, and think there are three clues which provide some reason for optimism …

iOS 18 is rumored to include a number of new artificial intelligence features spread across the entire operating system. A new rumor today suggests that one of those features could be “Safari browsing assistant.”

As for what that means, we are left to speculation for now…