With September comes another annual Apple Event. Apple fans like myself opened up our browsers and Apple TV apps to tune in to the keynote, where Tim Cook hosts a slew of announcements, each more exciting than the last.

However, these days, the events seem to be a bit less exciting than usual.

Rehashed hardware designs with minor changes, incremental updates — why bother buying the new thing? 

But there is a significant, apparent shift in the Apple Ecosystem.

Apple’s focus is not hardware. It’s software.

To understand this shift, we need to look at hardware first. From a design standpoint, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, and the Mac are perfected in my opinion, given the state of hardware specs in 2024. For example, dating back to Jony Ives & Steve Jobs vision for the iPad, wanting it to be as close to a sheet of glass in the hand as possible. The M4 iPad is pretty much just that, the iPhone has been optimized in both product design and user experience, and the minor addition of the capture button on the iPhone 16 is a welcomed one.

Beyond this, Apple’s chipsets in the Mac, iPad, and iPhone have revolutionized personal computing. Both the A-series and M-series chips are the leaders in their respective industries, delivering unreal performance capabilities. We are at critical mass for what Apple hardware can do in 2024. So if it seems like hardware is becoming “boring”, I’d offer the take that it is optimized for this point in our human experience.

So what’s so great about dumb ‘ol software?

The real star of the show at DubDub (WWDC) & yesterday’s keynote was Apple Intelligence. Apple’s take on AI is not the most revolutionary thing in the world…yet. But remember — Apple thinks different. Data privacy and security are monstrous challenges in the world of AI. Users are faced with the challenge of trusting Artificial Intelligence with personal data to get the most out of it. Meanwhile, hardware limitations can only allow so much on-device processing before cloud solutions have to take over. So do you accept the limitations of a somewhat shitty experience due to limitation? Or do you consider taking the leap of faith and using cloud models to assist the processing and deliver you what you need quickly and seamlessly?

This is where Apple has the opportunity to elevate the standard. They claim that all outside communications will be heavily encrypted to keep your data safe, even from Apple themselves. Before you roll your eyes, have some faith in Apple here. They are pushing the way that we use computers into uncharted territory.

Vision Pro, Tim Cooks ‘magnum opus’, is a glimpse into what the future of computing could look like, albeit its $3500 price tag. Gone are the days of staring at a monitor and using a mouse. Now combine the power of AI, and suddenly it is as if you’re Tony Stark working with Jarvis.

Along with these advancements will come new ways to compute, new gestures, reimagined user experiences, and the ability to offload the mundane tasks via automation & machine learning, so that you can create more efficiently and focus on higher level tasks. If we invoke Moore’s law, we can also expect to see the compute power to increase, while hardware costs decrease.

It might not seem like much now The hype is wearing off and now we’re looking at what AI can do beyond being a glorified chat bot. We are looking societal impacts, and how this new technology can help rather than hurt. With great power comes great responsibility, and I don’t know about you, but I’d put my faith in Apple before Google or Microsoft. Until the next major hardware advancements, the winners in tech are going to be determined by software.

Now let’s hope we get an overhaul of iPad OS in the process….

What did you think about the Apple announcement? Reply to this email and let me know!

Cheers,

Paps

One More Thing — I help entrepreneurs & creatives drive engagement and scale growth with custom websites, apps, and integrations, and yes, that includes AI. Reply with the word ‘Apple’ to this email to learn more!