Introduction
Apple have concluded their annual WWDC event and there was, as always, a lot to take in. For those short of time, the video above summarising 18 things is worth a watch and I’m going to attempt to unpack a few of the other features in more detail below in terms of their relevance for education or commercial customers. I’ll have separate sections for Apple’s take on Artificial Intelligence (they’re labelling it Apple Intelligence) as well as a section on Privacy and Security (given Apple’s historically strong focus in these areas) but first a few hyperlinks into the post below for quicker navigation:
- Vision Pro
- SchoolWork and Assessment Mode updates
- AppleID’s renamed as Apple Accounts
- Apple Intelligence is announced
- Jamf have posed good questions for educators around use of Apple Intelligence
- An iPad calculator … and much more with Math Notes!
- SmartScript helps messy handwriters (and the dysgraphic amongst us)
- Use AI to create custom images right from your device – no external service needed
- Cautions around data hoovering and the need for grounding in LLM powered AI offerings
- The partnership between OpenAI and Apple
- Apple’s Passwords App – a great step towards stronger security
- Enhancements to Platform SSO & stronger integration to your IdP
- Remove Activation Lock on organisation owned devices via ABM/ASM (at last!)
- Closing Thoughts
With that done, I want to share a few key take away thoughts that have stuck out to me.
Firstly, it’s evident to me that Apple are looking to move their Vision Pro headset beyond a consumer product and into something targeted at Enterprise and Education customers as it will now have enrolment and MDM management features on par with other Apple devices. This is a logical extension for me given we have seen Microsoft attempt to do this with HoloLens 2 and Meta with the Oculus/Quest AR headsets as well. Whilst these devices remain expensive, the developer community will no doubt welcome the opportunity to build industry specific applications for the Vision Pro, and IT managers will feel more comfortable onboarding these onto their networks if they can be managed and updated centrally from their MDM of choice. I would not be surprised at all to see a world class educational app debut for the Vision Pro in the coming months, showcasing the best of the hardware and software that Apple have created.
Secondly, it’s evident Apple is continuing their long support of education with some additional features coming to SchoolWork and Assessment Mode. SchoolWork looks like it will benefit from the AI enhancements (see below for more) that are landing across many EduTech offerings now, allowing teachers to quickly see trends in student homework, set personalised practice sets and even auto-grade assessments more quickly. Assessment Mode has been extended and developers will now be able to leverage “multi app” functionality which will mean use of approved secondary apps to students during assessment e.g. calculator support, whilst the rest of the device is locked down for the test:
Whilst a native calculator app on the iPad has been a long time coming, this new one (AI powered) can be controlled via your MDM of choice during assessment mode. This means that ahead of high stakes assessment the more powerful features such as scientific mode and the newly announced “Math Notes” can be disabled if the teacher or school wishes.
Lastly, it appears that Apple are transitioning away from the terminology of “Apple ID” and moving to “Apple Accounts” – although the documentation does not appear to have caught up yet (Managed Apple IDs for Apple devices – Apple Support (AU)). There was a renewed push for Managed Apple Accounts at WWDC24 (What’s new in device management – WWDC24 – Videos – Apple Developer) and some announcements on how to migrate personal Apple ID/Accounts into a managed environment (more on this below).
I expect the ability to easily migrate personal Apple ID/Accounts that use an education/work email address into a managed Apple ID/Account will be a big deal for IT Admins who wish to control those more effectively.
As other commentators have pointed out, Apple waited a while to announce their take on AI and, when they did, used the phrase Apple Intelligence instead of Artificial Intelligence, so I’ll drop a few thoughts below.
Apple Intelligence (AI)
The Writing Tools (Rewrite / Proofreading) will be welcomed by teachers and students who struggle with formal writing and this highlights the speed with which Generative AI is being added into more products to accelerate content creation and improve readability (see here on other thoughts I’ve shared). There are, of course, some cautions that come with this: how do educators know how much of what a student writes is their own content vs AI generated? Are students grasping key concepts of punctuation or are they totally reliant on a tool to check / correct for them?
This touches on the larger question of the extent to which technology reduces the need for individuals to ‘know’ things (are times tables critical to memorise if you have access to a calculator all the time?) but also highlights the need for schools and organisations to have their own AI Policy of when and how to use AI tools (our engagements with customers show that over 75% of users are already leveraging AI in day to day work, even though less than 40% had an AI policy they were aware of).
Jamf have provided some good questions for educators to prompt critical thinking ahead of wide scale deployment and use of these tools:
Education Takeaways from WWDC 2024 (jamf.com)
- How do tools like Math Notes and the handwriting enhancements impact on the purpose behind the deployment to have that broad impact on learning and teaching?
- How do these enhancements, specifically Apple intelligence, lend themselves to a more personalized approach to learning for students?
- How might the new AI features be supported where they can have a positive impact or be switched off if they provide too much assistance when the focus should be on the student’s own ability?
Beyond the Rewrite and Proofreading, I think it was the Math Notes that captured the most attention in the area of Apple Intelligence:
Again, the ability to see this as a gamechanger built into the device for a personalised tutor to help solve complex math equations may be something schools, students and parents wish to embrace. Certainly, other platforms have had similar functionality for a while (Math Assistant in OneNote) but the difference here is this is being made available in a native app on all Apple devices meaning there is no further action required for a student access it.
In the end, whilst adding a native calculator to iPad was long overdue, I’m pleased to see that Apple added considerably more functionality to it when they did eventually launch it and the Math Note is an excellent AI powered extension. Building on this, it’s great to see Apple’s “Smart Script” feature use AI to improve the legibility of handwriting, they describe it as:
With the power of Apple Pencil, Smart Script makes handwritten notes fluid, flexible, and easier to read, all while maintaining the look and feel of a user’s personal handwriting. Smart Script allows users to write quickly without sacrificing legibility by smoothing and straightening handwritten text in real time.
iPadOS 18 introduces powerful intelligence features and apps for Apple Pencil – Apple (NZ)
My handwriting is not amazing, and my son has dysgraphia meaning his handwriting is often slow, messy and at times difficult for others to read easily. Leveraging Smart Script with an Apple Pencil means notes written with Apple Markup (digital ink) can be automatically enhanced for legibility, spacing and even converted into typed text if required. From an accessibility perspective, this is something many students and educators will be keen to experience so that the best ideas of students are not ‘lost’ behind illegible handwriting.
Lastly, one of the other cool features announced at WWDC24 that will likely resonate with educators and students is some of the custom image generation functionality that is going to be built right into the device – Apple call this “Image Playground”. In a recent AI workshop I ran, I created a bunch of images generated by AI using a third party tool to add some pop and sizzle to my presentation and tweak the images specifically for the themes I was wanting to convey. Now, students and teachers will be able to do this directly from their Apple device which will:
- Allow them to use hardware/software they’re already familiar with / own so it will be a quicker task to generate the images
- Reduce the need for additional usernames/passwords on third party tools, thereby reducing complexity but also removing risk of student information being compromised if the third party had a security breach
With AI generated images I can see creative writing tasks flourishing as students are prompted and inspired with very bespoke images created for that specific writing task. It will also allow students to illustrate their writing with custom images that will not have any copyright concerns on them.
There were a lot of additional announcements of features in the Apple Intelligence section of WWDC24 which I won’t cover here, however I would make one final caution in this space. It’s evident that all vendors are going to be scouring the cloud and on-device content for ‘context’ to make their AI offerings very smart and useful – this is called ‘grounding’ in an AI context. In many cases this is very helpful and welcomed by the end user. However, It is worth considering when this could go wrong e.g. a teacher using their work iPad for personal usage as well, a student on a shared iPad getting contextual AI info based on the work of another student who used that iPad etc.
This is the world we will all need to navigate as to be effective, AI will need to “know” as much as possible about individuals to deliver the most value.
This seems like a good time to move to Security and Privacy Considerations.
Security & Privacy Considerations
One of the biggest announcements in my mind was the partnership between OpenAI and Apple. For those unaware, OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT and also the underlying Large Language Models (LLM) that Microsoft rely on with their Copilot AI products. It is the ChatGPT functionality that powers both the Writing Tools and Image Playgrounds mentioned above and both OpenAI and Apple have been quick to talk up the privacy considerations here:
Privacy protections are built in when accessing ChatGPT within Siri and Writing Tools—requests are not stored by OpenAI, and users’ IP addresses are obscured. Users can also choose to connect their ChatGPT account, which means their data preferences will apply under ChatGPT’s policies.
OpenAI and Apple announce partnership | OpenAI
I’ve spoken with many businesses, schools and universities about the privacy features (or not) of various AI products and so it is good to see that Apple have proactively addressed this, stating that user requests will not be stored by OpenAI (and thus used to train the underlying LLM) and a further step being taken to obscure a user’s IP address making it harder (or perhaps impossible) for OpenAI to correlate queries for the same user.
These types of privacy considerations will be increasingly a ‘default consideration’ in education contexts I believe, as well as in other highly regulated industries. Again, a company / organization wide AI policy is critical here to guide users on when and how they can use AI in their work or studies. There has been some high profile criticism of this partnership, notably from Elon Musk (who may have some bias here given his own development of Grok AI on the Twitter/X platform):
For now, I think it would be prudent for education institutes and businesses to be keeping a close eye on developments in this space.
For me, the fact that Apple devices will prompt the user every time it will go to OpenAI/ChatGPT for help with a user query is a good level of transparency. It indicates to the user that Apple’s own onboard AI requires assistance or additional information to provide a good answer to the user and, at that point, the user can decide if they want their query to go to the internet.
Sam McNeill, Cyclone Technology Strategist and Apple Business Lead
Another important announcement from Apple was the enhanced and dedicated Passwords app with syncing across all devices. New Zealand’s CERT NZ highly recommend the use of Password Managers as part of their “Top 10 Critical Controls”
Even with multi-factor in place, a strong unique password is still important. Giving your people the tools to make this easy increases the likelihood of them using strong passwords that are different for each system. It also makes it easier to manage shared passwords such as your business’ social media accounts.
The important point of this control is that your organisation should be providing your staff with a password manager tool that works for them. Without the right tools, your staff won’t be able to make strong passwords.
CERT NZ’s Critical Controls | CERT NZ
For organisations prioritising security, this will be a welcome addition and for users with access to an iPhone, iPad or Mac device this will allow them stronger unique passwords for the various apps and services they use. Given Apple’s focus and investment in this area, as the The Verge has pointed out, users may have a higher degree of confidence in using this:
With the backing of Apple, it may seem like a safer option for people spooked by security breaches suffered by others like LastPass.
Apple’s standalone Passwords app syncs across iOS, iPad, Mac, and Windows – The Verge
I have been using DropBox.com’s Password Manager which is excellent and integrates nicely across my Apple devices and Edge browser extension, but will now seriously look at Apple’s Passwords app and see how it compares.
Another announcement from WWDC24 that enhances the privacy and security inside the Apple ecosystem is improvements to Platform SSO on macOS with announcements of IdP integration with FileVault unlock, and stronger security options where developers can sync more services back to the password managed by the Identity Provider. Here’s one example provided:
In this example, the policy states an attempt should be made to authenticate against an IdP before unlocking FileVault. However, a more restrictive policy is applied against the Screensaver unlock where an authentication is required and not just attempted.
Reducing the need for continuous entry of passwords to different platforms is important and more educational and commercial organisations will be looking to embrace Platform SSO as part of their Zero Trust approach (more on this here) – I’m personally really happy to see Apple’s increasing focus on this level of enterprise integration as it will help mainstream the adoption of macOS alongside Windows 11. Further evidence of embracing enterprise device management requirements and support for heavily regulated industries was Apple’s callout for the new external Disk Management Configuration policy, which will now allow configurability of mount policy to be defined as:
- Allowed
- Disallowed
- Read Only
Finally, a comment on the updates to Apple Activation Lock – if you’re unfamiliar a device can be placed into Activation Lock to prevent an unauthorised user from accessing it (usually this is done when a device is lost or stolen). At WWDC24 Apple announced that organisation owned devices in Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager can now turn off Activation Lock for these org-owned devices. I’d imagine this is a huge relief for schools where a teacher or student has placed a school owned device into Activation Lock based on their personal Apple ID/Account.
I have heard horror stories of schools trying to unlock a device they own when a teacher has left the employment of the school but have locked the device using their personal Apple ID/Account. Thankfully, with this update to ABM/ASM this will be a problem no longer.
Closing Thoughts
There is a lot to process here from WWDC24 and I am sure that over the coming weeks and months more insight and information will be released from Apple themselves and also from the developer community as they start to get hands on with these new features announced from Apple.
As always, education is a large winner here given they get access to industry leading technologies often at a fraction of the price of commercial orgs. However, if you work in a highly regulated industry you will no doubt welcome the continued focus on security and privacy alongside ever-expanding enterprise integration capabilities that Apple have announced at WWDC24.
Many people remain highly excited about the capabilities of Generative AI and Apple’s announcement of their take on GAI, named Apple Intelligence and powered (in part) by a new partnership with OpenAI’s ChatGPT means they are keeping abreast of their competitors in this space and like Microsoft have done with Copilot on Windows 11, it appears that Apple are keen to deeply integrate this into the hardware/OS experience for Apple users.
