Apple’s 2024 full of surprises set up an unpredictable future

Hi, it’s me, Father Time. This is my 421st More Color column, only about 20 of which have been part of my annual attempt to predict the future while blaming myself for failing to properly predict the year gone by. (Look, if I got them all right, 421 of the columns would be prediction-based!)

To the task of predicting, I bring years of experience. The Mac’s 40 years old and I’ve been associated with Macworld for 27 of those years, which is, uh… two-thirds of the Mac’s existence? Geez. You know, I was the summer intern once! (Kurt Cobain was alive then.)

Anyway, who better to listen to than Father Time, just before he turns into a New Year’s Baby? Next time I’ll once again fearlessly attempt to predict the future, but for this column we’re all going to point at laugh at my failures… or will we? Maybe I had a good year in 2024. Let’s see.

Year of the iPad

The iPad exited 2023 in a shambles. It hadn’t been updated in more than a year. But I used my prediction sense to assume that the product line would be refreshed and start to make more sense in 2024, and it did.

I predicted that the iPad Air and iPad Pro would differentiate themselves by using different keyboards, with the Air using the old Magic Keyboard while the new Pro model would get a fancy new keyboard (with aluminum and a function row!) along with a gorgeous OLED display.

Nailed it. Let’s move on… oh, wait, what’s this? Unfortunately, I’m being told that I explicitly talked about how the M3 chip would be great for the iPad Pro. And of course, in that Apple pulled one of the greatest surprises of the year: the iPad Pro debuted with a never-before-seen chip, the M4!

I also missed on the low-end iPad front. While I correctly predicted the demise of the 9th generation iPad with home button, I thought there would be a 11th generation bump to the line. There wasn’t. The 10th generation model is still with us. At least the original Apple Pencil and its janky Lightning to USB adapter is finally history.

All quiet on the Mac front

“With the M3 processor already out in the world, I suspect that the Mac’s 2024 will be largely devoted to updating existing models to add in the M3,” wrote some dummy in December 2023.

Yes, the M3 MacBook Air debuted. But after that, things got weird. That iPad Pro got all the M4 glory! and Apple just pressed fast-forward on all of its product releases, skipping over the M3 and going to the M4 with a redesigned Mac mini (not predicted by me, alas) and new versions of the MacBook Pro.

Unfortunately, that means I missed in predicting that “all existing Mac models will see M3 updates…. not just the Mac mini but the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.” Instead, Mac Studio and Mac Pro fans wait for an M4 release sometime in 2025. But at least the Mac mini we got was better–smaller and faster–than I expected back in December.

At least I got a few other minor Mac predictions right: “Apple will update its input devices from Lightning to USB-C… at least a year later than we all hoped they would do it. No new Apple display standalone this year, though. I’ve been burned too many times.” Someone could really run up the score by constantly predicting no new Apple standalone display.

Some other hardware and services

The problem with predicting the iPhone is that we hear about the shape and size of iPhone models so far in advance that it takes all the fun out of it. So I predicted some improvements in base iPhone camera hardware, but we already knew about one more year for the iPhone Plus, though nobody predicted those eye-poppingly bright colors on the iPhone 16 models.

Sometimes it’s the picks you don’t make: I said I wasn’t seeing the rumors of a revamped 10th anniversary Apple Watch, and the updates there were much more modest.

I did inaccurately predict that Apple would make another deal for sports rights. The company’s MLS experiment continues to play out, but I expected Eddy Cue would have talked Tim Cook into a few more trial balloons by now. At least I accurately predicted that Apple would–despite always being mentioned–not make any big deals to purchase studios or streaming services.

And then there’s the Vision Pro, which if you’ll think back to last year had been announced but hadn’t yet shipped. I am going to give myself a pat on the back for my non-prediction prediction that there wouldn’t be a “clear verdict” on the AVP by year’s end, because it’s “a 1.0 product with a high price.” That’s pretty much where we are, unless you consider this year validation that whatever the Vision Pro is, it’s impossible for it to be a hit product because it’s just too limited and expensive. Apple’s playing the long game with visionOS, and I don’t expect that we’ll be able to judge this saga for many years yet.

And now, Apple Intelligence

But who are we kidding? The big story of the year is Apple’s wholehearted embrace of large language models with the introduction of Apple Intelligence. We all sort of knew this was going to happen, but the level of commitment Apple has made to the bit is admirable.

“This feels like the year where Apple will aggressively show off its attempts to integrate more machine-learning-based technology into its devices,” I wrote last December. Yep, I got that right, but I was wrong in suspecting that Apple would only enable some features on the iPhone 16 Pro. Instead, it’s the iPhone 15 Pro that can lord it over its lower-end cousins, while all iPhone 16 models are eligible.

I don’t really know what to make of my prediction that “Siri 2.0 is going to happen.” That’s obviously wrong, but I do enjoy all the caveats I laid out, saying it would have a lot of guardrails and limitations “that make it less useful than other chatbots” and “will probably be labeled as a beta.” If there’s a better Siri coming, it’s still not here at year’s end… unless you use ChatGPT with iOS 18.2.

Apple Intelligence is in fact not just the story of the year, but the story of next year. And probably the next few. It’s notable that Apple’s probably going to be rolling out new Apple Intelligence features all the way through WWDC next year. At which point it’ll begin selling us on new features for the next cycle, which will once again only be partially complete when 2025 comes to an end. All those who play the prediction game, be warned.