On the early morning of June 11, Apple's 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), dubbed the "Apple Spring Festival," officially kicked off. During the event, Apple introduced the new operating systems for its entire range of products one by one. The newly launched iOS 18, which attracted the most public attention, supports users to customize widgets in the control panel and introduces a new privacy-protecting App Lock. In addition, the new systems for Apple's other hardware products will also bring users a more personalized and intelligent deep experience.

One highlight of the conference was the official unveiling of Apple Intelligence, Apple's first generative AI model. Apple announced that Apple Intelligence will provide a series of AI features for the new systems of its products. With the support of Apple Intelligence, the user experience of Apple products has been further enhanced, and the intelligence level of Siri, the intelligent voice assistant, has also reached a new level. In the opinion of industry insiders, Apple's innovative application of AI has provided a new example for the development of the industry.

WWDC 2024 Opens

At the WWDC 2024 conference, Apple's CEO Tim Cook and other executives introduced new operating systems (OS) that support hardware ranging from smartphones (iPhone), tablets (iPad), and computers (Mac) to smartwatches (Apple Watch) and the head-mounted "spatial computing" display device (Vision Pro).

Among them, the new features supported by iOS 18, the all-new operating system for the iPhone, have attracted much public attention. User customization of the home screen is the most significant feature of iOS 18. It is reported that iOS 18 supports users to freely set app icon themes, freely place app icons, and adds an option to automatically fill in dark colors for app icons in dark mode. At the same time, the Control Center of iOS 18 adopts a multi-page layout, allowing users to swipe up and down different controls and customize their arrangement and size.

In addition, the functionality of the Messages App under iOS 18 has also been updated, allowing users to bold, underline, and italicize text in messages to be sent, as well as schedule messages for timed delivery. It can also send messages via satellite without a network connection.

In the Photos section, the Photos App under iOS 18 adds more buttons at the bottom to filter and sort photos of specific scenes. Users can customize the location of favorite and selected photos, and a carousel will be displayed at the top when viewing photos. The album editing interface has also changed, with all photos displayed with slightly rounded corners by default, and images can be grouped by faces.

In terms of protecting user privacy, iOS 18 introduces a new App Lock feature, supporting the use of Face ID to lock individual apps and hide them. Additionally, iOS 18 allows users to set which contacts an app can access and restricts an app's access to the network and accessories.

Notably, iOS 18 also supports a gaming mode, where the system optimizes for gaming scenarios, minimizing background activities to ensure the highest frame rate performance, providing a better gaming experience for gamers.

Apple stated that iOS 18 will be released this fall and will be available as a free software update for iPhone XS and later models.

All Product Systems Updated

In addition to the iterative optimization of iOS 18's features, Apple's new operating systems for other products, including iPadOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2, have also been unveiled, with multi-dimensional updates to further optimize and improve the user experience.

Among them, watchOS 11 focuses more on