Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024 keynote on June 10 was packed with announcements that signal big shifts for app developers – especially those of us building retail, e‑commerce, and digital storefront experiences. Apple is doubling down on personalization, seamless payments, and new platforms, all of which present opportunities to elevate shopping apps and backend commerce infrastructure. Below we break down the most relevant updates across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, and Apple’s developer tools, translating them into actionable insights for commerce-focused teams

One of WWDC 2024’s headline unveilings was Apple Intelligence, a new system-wide “personal intelligence” layer powered by generative AI models. Built to run on Apple devices using Apple Silicon, Apple Intelligence can understand and generate text or images, automate tasks across apps, and leverage a user’s personal context – all with privacy in mind (most AI processing is on-device, with heavier tasks offloaded to Apple’s own secure servers via Private Cloud Compute). This is Apple’s answer to the AI wave, aiming to make Siri and the OS much smarter without compromising user data.

For retail and e-commerce apps, the implications are significant. With Apple Intelligence, Siri gets a makeover – it can now maintain context better and pull information from third-party apps (with permission) to handle a wider range of user requests. In practical terms, a customer could say, “Hey Siri, where’s my package from ShopX?”, and Siri might retrieve that info from the ShopX app or email confirmations to answer, instead of just saying “I can’t help with that.” Apple even integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology at a system level to help interpret images and documents and to enhance text interactions. Imagine a shopper snapping a photo of a product and asking Siri (or a built-in assistant) for details or similar items – Apple’s AI could enable that kind of experience in the near future.

Because Apple’s generative AI features are largely on-device, apps could eventually leverage them for personalization and support without cloud costs. While Apple hasn’t yet opened full access to these foundation models for every developer (that came later, in 2025), WWDC24 made it clear that the future of iOS involves AI-driven user experiences. As technical decision-makers, we should plan to integrate with frameworks like App Intents (which tie into Siri and system intelligence) to ensure our apps’ content and actions are accessible via natural language. In short, Apple is providing the AI smarts at the OS level – we need to plug our commerce apps into it, whether it’s for smarter product search, AI-guided shopping assistants, or automated customer service chats.

Apple’s iOS 18 (coming Fall 2024) brings a host of user-facing changes that, while not solely commerce-focused, will influence how customers interact with all apps. For example, iPhone users will finally be able to rearrange app icons and widgets freely on the Home Screen instead of the rigid grid. They can also customize Lock Screen buttons and see more controls in Control Center. These tweaks give users more control over their iPhone experience – and a more personalized phone means people might curate their screens with their favorite shopping or wallet widgets for quick access. We should ensure our app’s Home Screen widgets are compelling and useful (e.g. an order tracker, daily deal, or loyalty points widget), because iOS 18’s flexibility lets users feature them more prominently.

Spotlight Search is getting smarter in iOS 18, which is great news for product discovery. Until now, if a user searched their iPhone for something, results from within apps required exact matches. iOS 18 adds “semantic search” capabilities to Spotlight, meaning users can search in natural language and still find relevant in-app content. For instance, a user could type “red running shoes” and Spotlight could surface results from a retail app even if the product title is “Crimson Sneakers” – as long as the app indexes its content. To take advantage, we should continue to use Apple’s Core Spotlight API to index products, and perhaps expand keywords, knowing that iOS will do a better job connecting the dots for the user. Easier discovery via system search can increase engagement and re-engagement with our app’s catalog.

iCloud Mail in iOS 18 automatically categorizes emails (like receipts or promotions) into sections such as Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. This means customer order confirmations or shipping notices will show up in a “Transactions” inbox for easier access.

Apple is also upgrading core apps in ways that complement the shopping experience. The Mail app, for example, will now auto-sort emails into categories: Personal, Transactions (for things like order receipts), Updates, and Promotions. This Gmail-style organization means customers are less likely to miss order confirmations or shipping notifications – an indirect but welcome boost for e-commerce communications. (Our marketing teams may also be interested that Promotions emails get their own bucket, possibly improving open rates for promotional campaigns that would otherwise get lost in a general inbox.) Additionally, Messages gains the ability to send Live Activities via satellite for emergencies and some fun new expressive features, though not directly retail-related.

Another subtle iOS 18 enhancement: Safari’s new “Highlight” feature can surface key info from webpages. For example, when viewing an article, Safari might pull up a restaurant’s location mentioned or a song to play. In a shopping context, if Safari’s AI can detect a product or review on a page, it might highlight related info (though Apple’s example was music and maps). It’s a sign that even web browsing on iOS is becoming more context-aware. If your storefront has a web presence, consider adding proper metadata to product pages – it could be utilized by these kinds of features to give users at-a-glance info.

Finally, security and privacy continue to tighten in ways affecting apps: iOS 18 will crack down on apps that request full access to the photo library or contacts without justification, offering more granular permission options. Apps that simply need to upload a photo, for example, can be granted access to just that photo instead of the whole library. For retail apps, if you have features like profile photo upload or sharing contact referrals, you’ll need to adopt these new APIs to stay user-friendly and compliant.

While iOS leads in consumer-facing features, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia (macOS 15) got updates that could benefit retail operations and power users. iPadOS 18 notably (at long last) adds a native Calculator app with Math Notes – users can handwrite equations and have them solved on the fly. It sounds minor, but think of store managers or small business owners using an iPad: they can do quick margin calculations or tax estimates with Apple Pencil scribbles. The Notes app on iPad also gains Smart Script for handwriting, making handwritten notes more searchable and tidy. If your retail staff or clients use iPads for jotting down ideas (floor plans, inventory notes, etc.), these built-in tools make the iPad a more powerful digital notebook.

macOS Sequoia brings Continuity improvements that further blur lines between Mac and iPhone. The headline feature is iPhone Mirroring, which lets you view and fully control your iPhone screen from a Mac. For instance, a store employee could respond to a customer query in an iPhone-only app via their Mac, or demo the company’s iPhone app in a meeting by projecting it to a Mac. For developers and testers, iPhone Mirroring might speed up debugging by allowing device interactions on a big screen. It’s also a hint that Apple is moving toward greater cross-device synergy – our commerce apps should feel consistent across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, because users will seamlessly flow between them.

On macOS’s browser, Safari gets that Highlights feature (same as iOS) for easy information discovery. And interestingly for Mac users, Apple is finally separating out a Passwords app (previously part of Keychain in Safari), making password and 2FA code management a standalone experience (good for user security hygiene, which benefits everyone shopping online). While not directly tied to retail apps, anything that improves account security and convenience – like easier retrieval of one-time passcodes or stored passwords – is a boon to reducing friction at login or checkout.

For Mac retail apps or web admins, Apple’s AI enhancements carry over: macOS Sequoia supports Apple Intelligence’s writing tools on every Mac with an M-series chip. That means features like text autocompletion, proofreading, or even image generation (the new Image Playground app was announced for creating images via AI) are available on Mac. A marketing manager could use a Mac to quickly draft a product description and have the system suggest improvements or summarize a lengthy report. These AI-assisted productivity boosts can streamline content creation and communication for e-commerce teams.

WWDC24 wasn’t only about phones and computers – Apple also announced visionOS 2, the software for the upcoming Apple Vision Pro spatial computer. VisionOS 2 introduces more intuitive hand gestures and the ability to capture “spatial photos,” among other features. It’s early days for AR/VR in commerce, but Apple is clearly investing in this area. In fact, they revealed that the Vision Pro hardware will start shipping to more countries (beyond the U.S.) in late 2024, meaning the audience for visionOS apps will grow.

For e-commerce brands and app developers, now is the time to envision AR-driven shopping experiences. Apple’s tools like RealityKit and ARKit got updates to make building cross-platform AR apps easier – new RealityKit APIs are cross-platform for iOS, macOS, and visionOS, simplifying development of 3D or AR experiences that work on an iPhone in AR or fully immersive on Vision Pro. Apple even introduced frameworks like TabletopKit for spatial content and brought in partners (Canon’s pro camera for VR) to enrich the ecosystem. In practical terms, this could allow a retailer to create a virtual showroom: on iPhone or iPad, a user might use AR to place a virtual piece of furniture in their living room; on Vision Pro, they could walk around a full 3D model of that furniture at true scale.

While Vision Pro is a high-end device, many AR features also enhance iPhones and iPads. For example, Apple’s RoomPlan API (introduced earlier) lets apps create 3D floor plans using the LiDAR scanner, which is perfect for home goods retailers – customers can scan their room and an app can recommend products or see if a couch fits. Such capabilities align with WWDC’s theme of seamless tech – they help “engage customers” and “streamline workflows” in contexts like real estate or e-commerce by bringing the user’s real environment into the shopping experience. visionOS 2 will amplify this by allowing even richer spatial interactions. For stakeholders, the takeaway is that spatial computing is coming of age – maybe not mainstream in 2024, but close on the horizon. Forward-thinking retail apps should start experimenting with ARKit (for example, integrating a 3D product viewer or AR try-on feature) so you’re ready to support Vision Pro and beyond.

Perhaps the most immediately actionable WWDC24 updates for commerce apps came in the payments realm. Apple is making it even easier for customers to pay – and for developers to integrate those features – through enhancements to Apple Pay and Wallet in iOS 18.

Apple Pay in iOS 18 lets customers redeem credit card rewards or split purchases into installments directly at checkout. This new UI (shown above) indicates an installment plan for a $95 purchase and the option to apply card rewards, illustrating how Apple Pay integrates loyalty and “buy now, pay later” features natively.

A huge change is that Apple Pay will work in any desktop web browser, not just Safari. Currently, online shoppers using Chrome or Firefox on a PC can’t use Apple Pay at checkout – they’d have to switch to an Apple device. With the new system, if a website supports Apple Pay, users on Chrome/Edge/Firefox can checkout via a QR-code-like handoff: the browser shows a code that you scan with your iPhone, which then completes the payment via Apple Pay. The computer can even be a Windows PC. This is a big win for online retailers – it broadens Apple Pay’s reach to virtually all web users without extra work (just implement the latest Apple Pay JS). We can expect higher Apple Pay usage on our web storefronts, meaning faster, more secure checkouts for a larger audience. Technical teams should test this once iOS 18 is out – ensuring the QR code flow works smoothly with our pages.

Apple Pay is also gaining built-in support for credit card rewards and installment plans (BNPL) at checkout. Starting in iOS 18, if a user’s credit/debit card offers loyalty rewards or an installment (“buy now, pay later”) option, they can apply those right in the Apple Pay sheet during a purchase. For example, a shopper with a rewards card could redeem points for a discount, or split a $300 purchase into 3 monthly payments if their bank supports it – all without leaving the app or juggling separate apps. At launch, Apple highlighted partners like Discover and HSBC for rewards and installments in various countries, with Affirm available in the U.S. as a direct loan option in the Apple Pay flow. For developers, there’s nothing new to code – it’s handled by Apple Pay and the card issuer – but it’s a major selling point to encourage customers to use Apple Pay in our apps. Essentially, Apple Pay becomes a one-stop wallet that can tap into whatever financing options the user has, which can boost conversion for big-ticket items (users might be more willing to check out if they see a painless installment plan or the ability to use points). Our job will be to communicate to users that these options exist and ensure the latest Apple Pay APIs are integrated.

Other Wallet updates add convenience: Tap to Add Cards (Tap to Provision) will let users add a new credit card to Apple Wallet just by tapping it on their iPhone. This reduces friction in getting users set up with Apple Pay. There’s also Tap to Cash – a peer-to-peer Apple Cash transfer by tapping two iPhones. While Tap to Cash is more for casual payments (e.g. splitting a bill), it hints at Apple’s continued investment in NFC capabilities. Notably, Tap to Pay on iPhone (introduced in 2022), which allows merchants to accept contactless payments on an iPhone, wasn’t explicitly updated at WWDC24, but the ecosystem of tapping phones to do business is clearly growing.

Apple Wallet itself got a big boost for event tickets and passes, which isn’t directly e-commerce, but shares technology with retail loyalty cards and coupons. In iOS 18, Wallet tickets have rich visuals, maps, and even Live Activities that show your event info on the Lock Screen. For retailers that use passes (like membership cards, store credit, or even event-style experiences in-store), these improvements signal that Wallet is becoming more interactive. It might be worth exploring Wallet passes for loyalty programs, since customers will get a slicker experience (including things like location-based info and real-time updates on the pass). Plus, Apple announced a FinanceKit API now open to all developers, which allows finance apps (budgeting, etc.) to read Apple Card and Apple Cash data with user permission. For a retail app, this is less applicable unless you’re integrating financial services, but it underlines Apple’s push to integrate Wallet data with third-party apps in a secure way.

Speaking of secure identity, one update of interest: Apple has been expanding its IDs in Wallet program (digital driver’s licenses and IDs). At WWDC, Apple mentioned a new Verify with Wallet API that apps can use to request age or identity verification via a user’s stored ID (with Face ID confirmation). For example, a wine delivery app could verify a customer’s age by having them tap a button instead of uploading a photo of their ID. This particular API was highlighted in Apple’s developer materials and though it depends on states/countries adopting digital IDs, it’s a space to watch for any retailer dealing with age-restricted goods or needing ID for purchases/pickups. Reducing verification friction can improve conversion while maintaining compliance.

Apple didn’t forget about the developers (us!) who operate on the App Store and monetize via in-app purchases. WWDC24 brought a series of quality-of-life updates to App Store Connect and StoreKit that, collectively, can help us market and sell our apps more effectively.

First, Apple is clearly encouraging everyone to move to StoreKit 2 (the modern in-app purchase framework). They officially deprecated the old “StoreKit 1” APIs – they’ll still work for now, but no new features. It’s time to fully transition to StoreKit 2 to leverage the latest capabilities. And there are new capabilities: Apple introduced win-back offers for subscriptions, a way to entice lapsed subscribers with special pricing or free trials. Much like introductory offers, these win-back offers can be configured in App Store Connect with eligibility rules (e.g. offer this deal to users who were subscribed at least 6 months ago and have been lapsed for 3 months). The App Store will even prominently display these offers to eligible users – on the app’s product page, and even via editorial features if your offer is compelling. Importantly for conversion, Apple now allows streamlined purchase for these offers: an eligible user can resubscribe directly on the App Store page with one tap, without needing to relaunch the app. If your retail app has a subscription component (for example, a premium membership or loyalty club with monthly fees), win-back offers give you a native, Apple-sanctioned way to re-engage churned users. It may reduce the need for custom win-back campaigns, since Apple is providing the mechanism (though you’ll still want to market the value of coming back).

StoreKit itself got some UI improvements and new APIs. StoreKit Views (the native subscription purchase screens introduced in iOS 17) now support grouping and new styles for a cleaner look. You can present subscription tiers in a tabbed format, for instance, instead of a long list, which can make paywalls less overwhelming. There are also three new paywall styles (Compact Picker, Paged Picker, etc.) and even the ability to create custom styles by composing the building blocks Apple provides. A nicer paywall could mean better conversion, so we should experiment with these templates instead of fully custom paywalls – Apple’s designs might simply work better, and they’ll automatically stay up to date with App Store guidelines.

On the App Store marketing and analytics side, WWDC24 delivered goodies too. App Store Connect now allows “featuring nominations” – we can inform Apple’s editorial team about big updates or launches ahead of time, increasing our chances of being featured on the Today tab. Essentially, you can nominate your app’s event (new version, major content drop, etc.) directly, so Apple knows when to potentially spotlight it. We also got relief in the form of reduced screenshot requirements: only one set of screenshots per device type is needed, rather than every single screen size. That’s a big time saver when updating the app listing. Additionally, a new “Promote Your App” feature in App Store Connect helps generate polished marketing assets (images, videos) for social media, based on your App Store listing. This is a nice perk for smaller teams without a full design department – you can quickly get graphics to announce your app’s feature or sale.

Other notable App Store changes include: Custom product page deep linking – now if you have multiple custom product pages (for different campaigns or audiences), you’ll get a referrer URL indicating which page led to an install, accessible on first app launch. This means better attribution for your campaigns: if someone installed from your “Holiday Sale” custom App Store page, the app can know and perhaps show a matching welcome promo. TestFlight got an upgrade too: you can attach screenshots to TestFlight beta invites and set criteria for external testers (like requiring a certain device or OS). And once users are in the beta, the install page looks more like the App Store, with the app description and imagery, which sets clearer expectations. All these tweaks help streamline the testing and onboarding of users, which ultimately lead to better apps.

From an analytics and acquisition perspective, Apple introduced two major things: an App Store Analytics API (allowing third-party tools to pull anonymized performance data with hundreds of new metrics, partly to comply with EU’s DMA requirements), and a new AdAttributionKit framework. AdAttributionKit is essentially the successor to SKAdNetwork for measuring ad campaign effectiveness, but with more flexibility and data points while still preserving privacy. Crucially, it supports attribution for re-engagement ads (not just first-time installs) and works with third-party app stores as well. This latter point is forward-looking: if alternate app stores or sideloading become common on iOS (as regulatory pressures might dictate), Apple’s providing a way to track installs from those sources too. AdAttributionKit also lets you attribute at the level of specific ad creatives and provides more timely conversion data than SKAdNetwork did. For a retail brand that runs user acquisition campaigns, this means better insight into which ads are bringing in users and if those users later come back (re-engagement). Marketing teams can refine spend with these insights, and developers will need to integrate the new framework (which Apple assures has testing tools in Xcode to simulate various scenarios). In summary, Apple is giving us developers and marketers more data to work with, but in a way that continues to prioritize user privacy.

In addition to Apple Intelligence, WWDC24 highlighted other machine learning improvements that app developers can harness. Apple’s Core ML tools and Create ML are steadily evolving to handle more complex models efficiently on-device. While not a flashy consumer feature, Apple did mention updates to help optimize and deploy machine learning models on Apple Silicon with new workflows. For example, if your mobile shopping app uses an ML model to recommend products or detect fraud, iOS 18 and the latest Core ML might run those models faster and more power-efficiently than before. Apple chips (A17, M2, etc.) are extremely ML-capable, and Apple keeps improving frameworks to utilize the Neural Engine. One practical development: with iOS 18, developers can now use Transformers and large language models more easily on-device (Apple hinted at these capabilities as part of their AI push). This could mean we integrate a smaller-scale recommendation GPT into our app that runs locally, suggesting products based on user behavior without sending data to a server. It’s an exciting prospect for personalization that respects privacy.

Another relevant API is the Translation API updates that Apple introduced. They added features like Simple Overlay and Flexible Translations, which let apps translate text on the fly and even overlay translated text in the UI. If your e-commerce app serves a multilingual user base, these APIs can help you provide real-time translations or localized content more seamlessly. For instance, product reviews written in one language could be machine-translated client-side for users who prefer another language, just by tapping a “Translate” button. Or a support chat within the app could leverage on-device translation to help an English-speaking agent and a Spanish-speaking customer communicate. Apple’s emphasis on on-device processing extends here too – keeping translations local improves speed and privacy.

Lastly, Apple is also bringing AI assistance to developers themselves with tools like Swift 6’s Swift Assist, which is like GitHub Copilot built into Xcode. While this is more about our productivity than user features, it means our development cycles could get faster. We can leverage AI suggestions for code, potentially reducing bugs and freeing up time to focus on business logic and app quality. Faster development and iteration ultimately benefit our business stakeholders with quicker feature releases and improvements.

WWDC 2024 delivered a clear message: Apple is weaving intelligence and seamless experience into every corner of its ecosystem. For those of us in retail tech, these platform updates aren’t just shiny new toys – they’re enablers for richer customer experiences and more efficient development of our commerce solutions.

To recap the most impactful changes: iOS 18’s user personalization and smarter search will help customers find and engage with content in our apps more easily. Apple Intelligence and the Siri overhaul pave the way for voice- or AI-driven shopping assistance and support, leveraging user context in a privacy-friendly way. The expansions in Apple Pay and Wallet (from multi-browser support to integrated BNPL and rewards) remove friction from checkout and could boost conversion rates for mobile and web commerce. Meanwhile, visionOS and ARKit signal that immersive commerce – whether AR try-ons or virtual stores – is around the corner, and we should be prototyping these experiences now. On the backend side, Apple’s improvements to StoreKit, App Store Connect, and ad attribution give us better tools to monetize and market our apps, from re-engaging lapsed subscribers with win-back offers to accurately measuring user acquisition in a privacy-first way.

As technical decision-makers and product leaders, our next steps should include reviewing our roadmap against these updates. Can we adopt App Intents to make sure Siri can access key features of our app (like checking order status or product info)? Should we integrate the new Apple Pay button on our website to capture that broader browser audience? Are we ready to update our in-app purchase logic to StoreKit 2 and consider offering promotional offers like win-backs? It’s also time to brainstorm how AI can enhance our app’s personalization – perhaps using on-device ML for recommendations or implementing the new translation overlays for international users.

WWDC is always a whirlwind of innovation, but this year’s focus on AI, user experience, and developer empowerment aligns perfectly with the needs of modern commerce apps: customers expect smarter, smoother, and more secure shopping experiences, and Apple is providing the building blocks to deliver exactly that. By capitalizing on these announcements – from Apple Intelligence to Apple Pay enhancements – Gravity Engineering and other retail tech teams can drive the next generation of mobile shopping, where the experience is as intelligent and frictionless as the technology behind it.