Let's go!
Let's start with Apple executives skydiving and Tim Cook touting “breakthrough new intelligence capabilities.”
In minutes
Kickoff is just around the corner! We'll be live blogging all the big announcements and more, so make sure you don't miss it.
Apple executive hints at AI during keynote speech
Apple's senior vice president of marketing, Greg Joswiak, tweeted that watching today's keynote would be a “smart move,” suggesting that Apple will be announcing AI-related updates today.
The calm before the storm
Joanna Stern, a Wall Street Journal columnist and NBC News contributor, posted from a quiet corner of the event, which is about to get busier.
Don't expect Apple stock to rise much today
Just before kickoff, Apple's stock is actually trading a bit lower.
Apple analyst Gene Munster also said not to expect the company to do much once the presentation begins.
Munster noted at X that Apple's expected AI rollout is already “priced in” after recent statements from Apple executives previewing it.
Munster notes that since that post on March 26, Apple's stock price has risen 15%.
“At the end of the day, today's announcement is pretty much known and priced into the stock,” he said. “The question going forward is whether Apple will demonstrate its core capabilities in AI.”
Tim Cook previews WWDC
Apple CEO Tim Cook teased today's event in a post on X from the company's picturesque campus.
Analysts say Apple AI is on track
Many have criticized Apple for being too slow to adopt AI, but independent analyst Ben Thompson says the company is getting the timing right.
“AI will complement Apple's business, not disrupt it,” Thompson wrote on his website Stratechery.
He noted that rather than AI replacing smartphones in the near future, smartphones are more likely to become the platform on which AI technology is released, and that if Apple announces a partnership with OpenAI (expected to be announced today), it will reduce the threat that OpenAI will develop its own device to rival the iPhone.
“[They] “Apple is well positioned to be a big winner in AI,” Thompson wrote about the company.
A piece of Apple history
Bloomberg's John Erlichman points out that on this day in 1977, Apple began shipping its Apple II computers, putting the company on the map and making personal computing available to the masses.
On-site at WWDC
Reporting from Cupertino, California
You can already see this happening at Apple Park.
We're on stage outside the Steve Jobs Theater with the rest of the media, but the event is a short walk down to the Apple Park Loop, and while the temperature is a cool 62 degrees, it's expected to get significantly hotter as the day progresses.
More than an hour before the event was due to start, there were already people at the entrance trying to get the guests excited, and cheers could be heard from time to time.
Longtime Apple analyst Munster: WWDC is the most important since iPhone launch
Gene Munster, a longtime Apple analyst and managing partner and co-founder of Deepwater Asset Management, said today's conference is Apple's most important since it announced the launch of the iPhone more than 17 years ago.
In the X post, Munster said today is more important to the company's future than the announcement of the Apple Store (July 2008), iPad (January 2010), Apple Watch (September 2014), Apple TV (March 2019) and Vision Pro (June 2023).
“While AI won't be a direct revenue driver initially, integrating it across product lines will be essential to growing existing products,” he said.
