The inaugural presentation took place in the presence of hundreds of engineers and journalists on the group's campus in Silicon Valley for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Various product managers marched to unveil, among other things, a new home-made electronic chip, a customizable iPhone guard screen, a new payment system for merchants, the possibility of correcting or deleting messages, sophisticated tools based on artificial intelligence, a complete update of its operating system for cars (CarPlay) and a new MacBook Air.

Once is not custom, "Apple responds to the shopping list of users," noted Carolina Milanesi, analyst at Creative Strategies.

"They're listening to what consumers are saying and they're making changes. They've taken a lot of friction out of their operating system," she says, a "critical issue when we spend more time online to work, we distract, go shopping etc since the health crisis“.

Some features feel like a catch-up, especially on Apple Maps, the mapping app that has long lagged behind the hugely popular Google Maps.

Apple boss Tim Cook at the annual developer conference in Cupertino, California, June 6, 2022 Chris Tuite AFP

But for the expert, the star of the show is the M2 chip.

At the end of 2020, the group launched a new range of laptops equipped with its own chip, the M1, instead of those of Intel, marking the start of a two-year transition.

"They mentioned a lot of things they couldn't do before...like really high quality video games," she noted.

Not a word, however, about so-called "mixed" realities (augmented and virtual), pillars of the metaverse, this future of the internet that many digital companies have undertaken to build, from Meta (Facebook, Instagram) to Fortnite and Roblox on the side of video games.

Rumors have swelled for months around an Apple VR headset that would be in preparation for this year.

At the end of January, boss Tim Cook said he saw "a lot of potential in this space" and that he was "investing in it accordingly".

Apple also did not mention the App Store, its essential platform for downloading applications, which arouses the anger of many of its Californian neighbors because of its strict rules on confidentiality and payment of commissions.

© 2022 AFP