Apple AAPL 0.84% introduced at least seven things at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference that could actually make your life better. After a year filled with bug fixes and heavy user criticism about everything from fragile MacBook keyboards to Siri's incompetence, Apple's focus was on improving existing things rather than introducing new ones. It didn't do enough, at least not during the keynote, to address the bugs and shortcomings of its core products. But it did show us it had some real user needs in mind with these improvements. Facebook and others have recently come under fire for tracking you online, often without you knowing.

Recent advancements in deep neural networks for graph-structured data have led to state-of-the-art performance on recommender system benchmarks. However, making these methods practical and scalable to web-scale recommendation tasks with billions of items and hundreds of millions of users remains a challenge. Here we describe a large-scale deep recommendation engine that we developed and deployed at Pinterest. We develop a data-efficient Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) algorithm PinSage, which combines efficient random walks and graph convolutions to generate embeddings of nodes (i.e., items) that incorporate both graph structure as well as node feature information. Compared to prior GCN approaches, we develop a novel method based on highly efficient random walks to structure the convolutions and design a novel training strategy that relies on harder-and-harder training examples to improve robustness and convergence of the model. We also develop an efficient MapReduce model inference algorithm to generate embeddings using a trained model. We deploy PinSage at Pinterest and train it on 7.5 billion examples on a graph with 3 billion nodes representing pins and boards, and 18 billion edges. According to offline metrics, user studies and A/B tests, PinSage generates higher-quality recommendations than comparable deep learning and graph-based alternatives. To our knowledge, this is the largest application of deep graph embeddings to date and paves the way for a new generation of web-scale recommender systems based on graph convolutional architectures.

Mary Meeker is a legend in Silicon Valley. Because every year, she comes out with what many think is the most complete and thorough analysis of the technology industry. Now, Mary and her team do impeccable work: her presentations are full of great graphs, her slides full of data…and you have to believe that her insights come from hours of researching the industry and listening to the thousands of entrepreneurs that come to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (Meeker's employer) for investments. There is one problem though. The research pack is long and dense.

Apple is tackling smartphone addiction and adding group video chats to FaceTime in the new iOS12. Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, shows new iOS12 features that allow users to see how much time they're spending on their mobile devices, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference Monday, June 4, 2018, in San Jose, Calif. Bravo, Apple is finally tackling smartphone addiction. These are the two key standout features that will be coming to the iPhone as part of an iOS 12 software upgrade that Apple unveiled Monday at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose. Such models could be as ancient as the iPhone 5s, or the same handsets supported by iOS 11.

Instead, they can just raise their wrist and talk into the watch in order to speak with Apple's digital assistant. Shortcuts for Siri are also coming to Apple Watch, which allows users to set custom Siri commands that will appear on their watch. They can also customize the way buttons appear in the Apple Watch's Control Center. Apple said more third-party apps are coming to the Apple Watch. Now, third party apps can play background audio, which means users can sync their audio books, playlists and guided meditations to their Apple Watch, and they'll play continuously in the background.

Apple wants to make it easier for you to control apps using Siri. That's the gist of a new app, called'Shortcuts,' that the iPhone maker unveiled on Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California. With a single voice command, users can build their own multi-step routines for Siri to run across a variety of apps. Apple unveiled a new'Shortcuts' app at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference that lets users create custom commands for the digital assistant. 'We want to make Siri do much more for you and we're doing that by taking advantage of the power of apps,' said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering.

Black Knight Inc., a Jacksonville-based firm with a $1 billion in annual sales analyzing mortgages for large banks, says it has agreed to purchase HeavyWater, a University City Science Center-based, two-year-old firm that is developing AIVA ("Ava,") an "artificial intelligence and machine learning" mortgage lending system to speed loan approvals, from founder Soofi Safavi. Safavi will remain in charge of the 14-person group, which he said plans to hire 5 more people by June 19. Black Knight said in a statement that it will use and improve AIVA -- the Artificial Intelligence Virtual Assistant -- to "read, comprehend and draw conclusions based on context to mimic cognitive thinking and build expertise," and that it will also make the technology available to clients as a way to speed mortgage approvals and boost accuracy in verifying income, assets and insurance coverage. "Artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural network solutions are the future," and Heavy Water will help make that happen for Black Knight clients, said that company's CEO, Anthony Jabbour, in a statement. Safavi served as chief technology officer at Radian, the Philadelphia mortgage insurer, before starting HeavyWater in September of 2015.

Attendees take pictures before the start of the opening keynote during the 2018 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference at the San Jose Convention Center on June 4, 2018 in San Jose, Calif. Apple CEO Tim Cook will kick off the WWDC that runs through June 8. SAN JOSE -- Apple unveiled new ways to limit your screen time on iPhones and other mobile gadgets at its annual developers conference here -- and at the same time unleashed new ways to spend more time on its devices. That seeming contradiction highlights the growing dilemma for Silicon Valley giants such as Apple, Facebook and Google as they pitch their ubiquitous products while acknowledging growing concerns about tech addiction and consumer privacy. Apple tackled the latter with new settings in its Safari browser that allow users to limit Facebook and others apps from following their trails around the Web -- a pointed knock against the social network, which fended off a new round of privacy breach allegations this weekend.

With today's unveilling of iOS 12 at WWDC, Apple hinted at an upgraded Siri worthy of 2018. The news: On opening day of its annual developer conference, Apple announced plans to make its AI-powered digital assistant Siri more robust in iOS 12 with a new property called "shortcuts." Users will be able to create voice commands that let Siri help more effectively with day-to-day tasks, from ordering coffee to finding lost keys. Catching up on AI: The launch of Siri in 2011 was a breakout moment for voice-activated smart assistants, but competitors like Google's Assistant and Amazon's Alexa have since caught up, if not surpassed, Apple's technology. The news in April that the firm poached Google's AI chief confirmed that it was doubling down to get back on pace.

Apple will attempt to frustrate tools used by Facebook to automatically track web users, within the next version of its iOS and Mac operating systems. "We're shutting that down," declared Apple's software chief Craig Federighi, at the firm's developers conference. He added that the web browser Safari would ask owners' permission before allowing the social network to monitor their activity. The move is likely to add to tensions between the two companies. Apple's chief executive Tim Cook had previously described Facebook's practices as being an "invasion of privacy" - an opinion Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg subsequently denounced as being "glib".