AI wasn't the focus of Apple WWDC. Here's why.

Apple's (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company's annual developer event, is underway. Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley joins Market Domination from Cupertino, California to share what Apple's WWDC signals about the company's AI efforts and where the iPhone maker stands in the AI race compared to other Big Tech players like Meta (META) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL). To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Video Transcript 00:00 Speaker A All right, well, it is day two of Apple's worldwide developers conference is taking place. That's in California.

And joining us now from that conference is Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley. Dan. 00:14 Dan Howley Yeah, Josh, uh, this is, you know, day two, as you said, developers are still kind of milling around, analysts and journalists like myself are, are also here. And there's some takeaways that we're getting from the event yesterday now. And so one of those is kind of based on Apple's approach to AI and how that's been kind of a slow trickle from the huge explosion that we saw last year with Apple intelligence to what we saw this year where instead of a new big splashy announcement, they had smaller bits of AI that they're weaving throughout their operating system.

It looks like that's going to be Apple's path forward, at least for now. And so we hear something about that new generative AI powered series that it's supposed to come at some point either this year or next year. We're still not entirely sure. That seems to be the way that Apple can compete and potentially win this AI race that they have against the likes of Google and Samsung. I think one of the things that gets conflated because of the idea that AI is so large is comparing Apple's approach to something like a Microsoft, which obviously provides the majority of its AI services to enterprises.

And yes, they do have consumers, but if you look at, you know, the balance, it's going to be on the enterprise side. And so they obviously compete with Google as well as far as smartphones, 02:47 Dan Howley but really it comes down to the enterprise and what they can offer to advertising. So Apple's approach is going to be different naturally, but this way of kind of moving forward with the dribs and drabs, generally, it seems as though I, I got to see a few of these, these features that are truly helpful updates. So it's not that, you know, we're still seeing those, you know, make emojis or things like that, but then there's also ways of adding functionality to existing apps with AI that so far seems to be pretty, pretty helpful for users. 04:00 Speaker A Dan, here, here's my big question for you as, as a reporter who has followed Apple for a long time.

You know, Apple not interested in being first and as you know, they are interested in, in getting it right and then succeeding in that market. So, and listen, that has proved to be a very successful tactic and strategy for Apple. Can Apple do that again, Dan, in your opinion, when it comes to AI? 05:00 Dan Howley I think they can, right? I mean, look, as you said, they've done this again and again. They were not the first with music players. I think the Microsoft Zoom might have been before that, or maybe not the Zoom, but there were things like mini disc players that tried to, you know, make smaller music players, but then the iPod came out and it killed it.

They weren't the first, uh, when it came to, uh, you know, smartphones, the idea of smartphones. Uh, there were ideas out there already, but they kind of just honed it and created the iPhone. And so same thing with, you know, wireless earbuds and smartwatches and fitness trackers, what have you. They've done this over and over and over again. And it, you know, it's their kind of MO where they let everyone trip over themselves getting out the, the, you know, the, the starting blocks, right? To be first.

Uh, and then they kind of take their time and provide products that don't miss or more often than not, don't miss and give general, general utility to users. And I think that's what they're doing here, right? So, uh, some of the offerings that they have on include the ability to, uh, you know, create spreadsheets very quickly from recipes that you may have, and you need to scale that up, uh, for, for different aspects of, of what you maybe want to do is as far as parties go and things along those lines. So I think that those are really truly helpful rather than, you know, the whole idea of let's take pieces out of images. They also spent a lot of this event catching up, really. So they have, uh, Google has what's called circle of search.

Samsung also offers it where you can circle something on your phone that you take a picture of or from your, your screen and then be able to search for it really quickly. Now Apple has that in their visual intelligence app, and that's a truly helpful feature. I use something like that on my own to, to search for something, a flower that I had seen, wanted to know if it was bad for my cats or not. 08:31 Dan Howley It turns out it was. Got it out of the house.

This adds to that. So there, I think that that strategy could absolutely take off here. Wall Street obviously wants to see a big explosive, splashy announcement. They're not getting that yet. We'll see what happens when Siri comes out.

And if Siri is even helpful as far as users go, are we going to want to use that on the daily, or is it just going to be something that we kind of, you know, use for a minute and then fall out of love with like the prior series? And then these smaller announcements become the more important ones. 09:33 Speaker A We shall see. Still a lot of questions after this event. Dan, thank you. Appreciate it.

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