This includes the future of messaging, photos, maps, and more. Bill Graham Civic Auditorium is the site of Apple's WWDC confeence (Photo: Edward C. Baig) SAN FRANCISCO -- To many of the folks keeping score, Apple was already behind rivals heading into its annual Worldwide Developers Conference here in San Francisco. In the hotbed fields of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and voice response, Apple has lagged Amazon, Google, and Facebook -- even though Apple's Siri was the first to familiarize most people with the idea of a vocal personal assistant. I'm sorry to say that Apple didn't say a peep about VR or AR (augmented reality) during what was a packed two-hour presentation. Or spend much time focused on artificial intelligence.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham and Jon Swartz offer their take on Apple's WWDC developer conference, and how it stacked up to recent Facebook and Google sessions for developers. SAN FRANCISCO -- We've been here before, crammed in a luxurious theater, music pulsating, fellow reporters tweeting, anxiously awaiting Apple's vision to match the razzle-dazzle from recent Facebook and Google events. At WWDC, Apple's annual conference for software developers, there was a fleeting flash today of what it has in story for the "it" technology of the moment: artificial intelligence. For several minutes during a two-hour presentation, Apple offered a glimpse into its immediate plans for Siri, the voice-activated agent that stands to get more relevant with better AI. Siri will be able to scan Apple TV for genre-specific movies, Apple execs said. It will book rides on Uber and Lyft, and will make payments via Square Cash and others.

Amazon's virtual helper could learn a skill that some humans have yet to master - detecting a person's irritation and apologizing for it. The e-commerce giant is believed to be using new natural-language processing techniques for Alexa that will allow it to recognize emotional tone and apologize for misunderstandings. Sources say further improvements will help Alexa better communicate by remembering previous conversations and applying this information to subsequent interactions. Amazon is rumoured to be exploring natural-language processing techniques technology for Alexa that will recognizes emotional tone and apologize for misunderstandings. Alexa is the virtual assistant inside Amazon's Echo speaker and its smaller versions, Dot and Tap.

At this morning's annual developer conference, WWDC, the company announced its newest desktop operating system: macOS Sierra, which is slated to be ready for Apple customers this Fall. Although the name Sierra is in step with Apple's naming its desktop clients after California natural landmarks, it also marks a shift in its naming convention more generally: Apple desktop OS has replaced the suffix "X" with the prefix "mac," following the naming convention of the company's other hardware operating systems: tvOS, watchOS, and iOS. Siri joins the desktop OS with this next release. The idea is that you'll be able to use Siri much like you already use Finder and Spotlight, the traditional Apple desktop search engines. You can ask Siri to search for files, switch between apps, and do quick math. It can alos query the Internet and allow you to drag and drop those results into other apps running on your desktop.

Apple's sweeping new artificial intelligence play takes a page from features introduced by rival tech companies in recent years - but adds the polished, user-friendly twist that consumers have come to expect from the electronics giant. At the company's annual developer's conference in San Francisco on Monday, Apple executives announced a raft of features in the company's soon-to-be released desktop and mobile operating systems that are powered by artificial intelligence, or the blend of powerful computing capabilities and software algorithms. Such technology can make the phone or other device appear smarter because it anticipates the types of activities people want to do. Apple also said it was opening up many applications to outside developers, including its messaging platform iMessage, Maps, and virtual assistant Siri - a departure for the company, which in the past has kept these systems tightly controlled. For Apple, more AI and more integrations with third party services will mean less fatigue for consumers, who are already overwhelmed with too many apps, too many devices, and too much data.

Apple just showed the world what's next for the company's core products during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. Less usual, this year marked an important step for Apple, as it revealed that it will let developers plug third-party apps into a handful of its products and services. Here's a look at the most important announcements Apple made June 13 during the WWDC keynote. Apple's iOS 10 update, which lands on iPhone and iPads this fall, is among its largest software revamps yet. Nearly every aspect of Apple's mobile software, from the way 3D Touch works to the look and feel of Apple's native apps, is getting an update.

As per usual, Apple's annual developer's conference followed on the heels of Google's, with the tech giants trumpeting their latest updates for both consumers and coders one after the other. On Monday, CEO Tim Cook's team repeated some of the same tropes and themes as their rivals, from making several Gold State Warriors references to announcing crowd-pleasing features that attempt to minimize taps and maximize our ability to be expressive through our texting machines. But if Google's big point was emphasizing how human-like its technology has become, Apple's was emphasizing how much the company cares about humanity itself -- even if many of the biggest cheers came in response to updates about things like triple-sized emoji. Apple can seem like a exclusive tower made of silicon and secrets, and the company knows that is part of its appeal. Thousands of developers were kept in masses behind guardrails leading up to the keynote.

Apple also introduced a new design language throughout iOS apps including Music, Photos, and News, which unifies some of the options and controls across the apps. Another major development from the developer perspective is the opening of many APIs for control of an incorporation into technologies such as Siri, Photos, Maps, Phone, and Messages. Apple's 3D Touch technology will be greatly expanded, ironically introduced to solve a problem Apple introduced with the iPhone 6s ... the dramatically faster Touch ID means that users often unlock the iPhone too quickly to read notifications. In iOS 10, notifications can respond to 3D Touch to respond to notifications entirely from the lockscreen. The lockscreen also gains a dedicated music-control pane, as well as new slide controls (left to access camera, right to access widgets).

In the summer of 1956, the Dartmouth Research Project on Artificial Intelligence would legitimise the field, turning AI from a subject of absurd fiction to a scientific pursuit that looked set to change the world. And yet, 60 years on it feels like AI is only just beginning to reveal its true potential. Recent advancements in connectivity and the IoT have triggered an explosion in the volume of data, and AI is becoming an essential tool in handling this. Just two years ago, Stephen Hawking told the Independent that creating successful AI would be "the greatest event in human history". However, he went on to say that "unfortunately, it might also be the last". Concerns about the autonomous power given to AI technology, as well as the sensitive data that it is able to access, have raised serious questions on how AI should be managed.

As expected, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced at WWDC today that it is opening access to Siri to third-party application developers, enabling them to integrate their wares with the ubiquitous personal assistant. And the move will almost surely be a big step forward for iOS. Owners of iPhones and iPads make 2 billion requests to Siri every week, said Craig Federighi, the company's vice president of software engineering, during the event in San Francisco today. With iOS 10, which is expected to be released in the next several months, Apple will offer an API (application programming interface) for developers looking to allow users to navigate their apps via Siri. "There are so many things that you can ask Siri, but now in iOS 10 you can do so much more because we're opening up Siri to developers," Federighi said.