Last year we had the most enthusiastic WWDC in recent years with the usual updates to all Apple operating systems (iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS). Additionally, we had the presentation of the new Mac, iPad Pro and also the announcement of the HomePod and iMac Pro, which made the keynote so full of news that it didn't allow for a break to absorb everything that was happening.
A WWDC 2018 was an event with a calmer pace and consisted only of software presentations, but it was no less significant, with important updates for iOS and macOS, which was more cherished than usual. The presentation of the event may not have been as memorable as the previous one but it was not for lack of important news that included some surprises.
Keynote's focus has been on iOS in recent years, and this year Apple had two announcements that were not only unexpected but also appear to be a direct response to recent criticism.
After a turbulent year, in which the purposeful reduction of performance in iPhones with degraded batteries was often misrepresented in the media and brought back the old conspiracy theory of planned obsolescence, Apple responded with the announcement that iOS 12 will improve the performance of older devices. This announcement is surprising because normally there is always some loss of performance with an operating system upgrade and even maintaining the level of performance would be good news. Despite the criticism, it makes sense that under normal conditions this is not a priority, because new chips are always so superior to those of the previous year, that the investment of time in optimizing the operating system can be used to create new features or improve existing ones. . It's a difficult balance to maintain and is expected to undergo changes over the years, but for now I think that all iPhone users who don't have one of the most recent generations will be satisfied.
Performance improvement on an iPhone 6 plus running iOS 12 compared to iOS 11
The other big new feature that took me completely by surprise was the shortcuts for Siri. Despite being introduced several years before its rivals, Apple's voice assistant/artificial intelligence is considered inferior to its equivalents from Amazon and Google. My hope is that Apple chooses to make Siri an independent operating system, capable of learning from the user in order to better understand their habits and truly be a personal assistant. Even if Apple manages to significantly improve Siri in the coming years, it still needs to satisfy its current users and Siri shortcuts will allow each of us to personalize this assistant (albeit manually), and thus give Apple some more time to develop a smarter solution. It's not the big innovation I was hoping for, but it's good enough for me to start using Siri more often and I hope it will appeal to many other users.
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