SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Apple unveiled a smart home speaker and numerous software updates on Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference, signaling a new focus on developing artificial intelligence technology.
During a marathon two-and-a-half-hour keynote speech, Apple officials repeatedly touted the company's AI and machine learning capabilities across all its new operating system updates.
Apple's new home speaker, called the HomePod, is a challenge to Amazon Echo and Google Home in the smart home assistant space. The device is directly compatible with Apple Music and Siri voice assistant. Apple is relying on its superior acoustics and its compatibility with other Apple products to woo customers away from competitors.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, took shots at the competition.
"None of them have quite nailed it," said Schiller. "Some make smart speakers but they don't sound as great."
Some Apple watchers say HomePod's comparisons with the Amazon Echo are unfair.
"It was reported last week as this Amazon Echo killer, but in reality it is more a smart music speaker," said Brian Blau, Gartner's research vice president, who specializes in Apple.
HomePod, which comes in either black or white, will start shipping in December at $349, nearly twice the price of the Amazon Echo.
In an operating system update, iOS 11 includes a revamped Siri voice assistant that offers translations and completes a much wider array of tasks that can be personalized based on the user.
It also comes with a newly redesigned App Store app and control center, a new Do Not Disturb While Driving feature that blocks notifications for drivers, and a slew of features on Photos, including snap-shot stills from videos and converting videos into GIF-worthy loops. Its new person-to-person payment, where iPhone users can pay each other on the Messenger app, drew a huge round of applause.
"Today, we are going to take the world's best and most advanced operating system and turn it up to 11," said Apple CEO Tim Cook of iOS 11, which will be made available in the fall.
Similar to iOS 11, watchOS 4 saw major changes, with Siri now its focal point. Apple created a new Siri-focused watch interface that personalizes its notifications based on the user's behavior at different times of the day. For example, Apple Watch would surface traffic and exercise notifications for early morning workout warriors.
Market analysts were largely impressed by the breadth of updates at the keynote speech.
"Very different WWDC than what I expected," tweeted Carolina Milanesi, analyst at Creative Strategies. "Way more hardware than I thought or seen over past years."
Blau was also impressed by Apple's "pretty strong offering," especially on the AI end.
"Apple's the last of the big 5 (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook) to reveal something about AI but only by less than a year," Blau said. "Now all the tech titans are engaged in AI technology."
Apple also had a series of hardware reveals. Apple announced a new 10.5-inch iPad Pro with slimmer side bezels, increasing the screen size by nearly 20 percent. The new iPad Pro's iOS 11 comes with a drag and drop feature, a new macOS-style dock, and a new Files app that help organize photos, videos and documents. The iPad Pro is shipping next week at $650.
In addition, Apple unveiled a new lineup of MacBook Pro and iMacs that have more processing and graphics power than previous iterations. It also gave a sneak peek for a new iMac Pro, which comes in space gray rather than the traditional white and is "the most powerful Mac ever made."
In front of thousands of developers, Apple's announcement of ARKit, a developer kit that allows mobile developers to create augmented reality apps, drew raucous reactions.
Augmented reality has been long seen as the new frontier for Apple. Many market analysts put long odds of Apple discussing augmented reality because it was so nascent. But with the ARKit reveal, Apple encouraged developers to create the next "Pokemon Go" or Snapchat with the goal making the iOS "the largest AR platform in the world," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering.
For the first time since 2002, Apple has returned to its roots to hold the WWDC in San Jose. For the past 14 years, Apple held the conference in San Francisco. Apple reverted back to San Jose to allow its 1,000 in-house engineers who work in Cupertino to visit the conference quicker and easier, Schiller said in a February interview.
