If you have an Apple device, get ready for a fresh coat of paint!

ABC's Mike Dobuski reports on the new upgrades coming to all Apple devices

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right on the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone line.

(00:02):
Let's check in with our technology reporter. It's Mike Debuski
from ABC News on Tech Tuesday. Michael, if I've got
an iPhone or an iPad or a MacBook, I'm going
to see some changes. What should we expect?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah, that's right. So this week is WWDC. This is
Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, and it's usually a time when
we get a look at Apple's new software. Right, this
is a place for them to show up to developers. Hey,
here's the stuff that you're going to be building your
apps and your programs on for the next year. And
usually WWDC is a pretty big deal. They launched the

(00:37):
Vision pro headset at WWDC two years ago, and last
year they launched Apple Intelligence, which is their take on
the generative artificial intelligence game. This year, it's all about
their new design language, which is what they're calling Liquid Glass.
This is going to apply to all of Apple's mainstream
software platforms. That iOS for the iPhone, OS for the iPad, watch,

(01:02):
OS for the Apple Watch, and so on and so forth.
And what it is is a new look. They say.
It is the newest of the broadest update, I should
say since iOS seven all the way back in twenty thirteen,
and in practice that means that it's going to look
a lot more transparent. Things are going to have this
sort of shimmery, see through, sort of translucent effect to them.

(01:24):
This applies to things like the lock screen, where your
clock can have that effect. A number of the apps
within the Apple's ecosystem now have this sort of transparent
look to them. It's really interesting. It kind of reminds
you a little bit in some ways of the arrow
functionality from Windows Vista all the way back in the day,
which might not be the best association for Apple, but yeah,

(01:46):
it does have that sort of see through, shimmery look,
and they say this is going to be the sort
of next big design update for their software, coming to
all of their mainstream hardware products. It's available in developer
beta right now. I've been playing around with it. It's
going to go into public data next month and then
ship more broadly alongside the new iPhones in the fall.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
So this is just a cosmetic update to your device,
not necessarily functionality.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, there are some new features to talk about as well,
kind of across the board. We talked a little bit
about AI already. This, of course, is where Apple launched
our Apple Intelligence last year. In the last year, it
has kind of been a debacle. A lot of the
features that they tauted at last year's WWDC with regards
to AI have not yet shipped. But they did talk

(02:32):
about a couple of new AI features in addition to
the stuff that they're still working on. Kind of the
most interesting one of those is a new live translation
feature that's going to apply to phone calls and face signs.
So if you and I are talking, just a general
redesign to go in line with the sort of liquid
glass theme, you know, a whole host of different things.

(02:53):
I mean, this is a system that events that went
on for about an hour and a half or so.
It was just packed full of a lot of little
kind of quality of life things that Apple announced. But
I think the big takeaway is that Apple played it safe, right.
We talked about the Vision Pro being announced here two
years ago. Well, that has not been a hot seller
for Apple and when was the last time that you

(03:15):
heard about a Vision Pro Apple Intelligence. Again, a number
of those features have not yet shipped. Seems like the
new look this year is the news and that is,
you know, an order of magnitude less you know, run
around with your hair on fire than some of the
features that we've heard announced that Apple Developer conferences in
the past. Maybe that's exactly what they were going for.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
And this is all coming in when you just get
your automatic software update. I mean, people typically don't have
to do anything to get all this this new cool stuff,
the liquid glass, look at the some of these devices.
It'll automatically update when it becomes available widespread.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, depending on when you want to do it. You
can kind of prompt it. So this is going to
become go out of beta testing in other words, in
the fall, so you know that will be will show
up as a notification in your settings if you have
an Apple device that is compatible with this. It's still
relatively recent. Apple devices will be eligible for this upgrade,
but if you want to get a look at it early,

(04:11):
you can sign up to be there in their developer program.
I've been playing around with it on my iPad and
my iPhone for the last night and morning or so,
and next month it's going to become available as a
public beta. So a couple of more things polished just
around the edges just to make sure that you know
it's workable and usable, so you know, a couple of
different options there. It's happening, but if you want to

(04:33):
get an early look at it, you can ask you
can do that.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
I had a friend slightly off topic speaking with Mike Debuski,
ABC News Tech reporter at someone spending some time with
someone over the weekend who listens to the show likes
our segments on Tuesdays, wanted me to ask you a
question about AI, and that is, do you have are
people using AI now without really even knowing it just
by opening up your phone and scrolling through some apps

(04:58):
or you know, maybe Google Search and we know Google
uses some AI, But I mean, do you have to
choose to use AI now or is it just sort
of something that is going to be automatically baked into
your normal day to day phone operations.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Well, I'm going to give you kind of a frustrating answer.
It's yes and no. So artificial intelligence is a very
broad term. Everything from autocorrect to Google Search to the
latest open AI model is technically AI. Right. It really
just describes a computer that has some degree of you know, intelligence,

(05:34):
right that can you know generate something from something that
was not there before, from a set portion of data.
The recent iteration of AI that everyone's been talking about,
that you and I talk about a lot is generative AI,
and the hype cycle around that was picked off by
open ai in twenty twenty two with a launch of
chat GPT. That specific type of AI technology is getting

(05:57):
baked into more and more things, though you would still
notice it, I think is the kind of key takeaway, right.
Google does use artificial intelligence to give you your search results.
It uses generative artificial intelligence to give you the AI overviews,
the sort of AI generated piece of texts that appears
on top of a lot of Google searches now, so

(06:20):
there is still a way to distinguish between those things
behind the scenes that might be a little bit of
a different story. I think you're absolutely right to identify
that it is cropping up more and more to the
point where you might not be able to tell the difference.