Mayday purchase: Is Apple working on an AI calendar?

The approaching Apple developer conference WWDC in June is fueling speculation as to what new functions can be expected with the presentation of iOS 19 and other new versions of Apple's operating system. Just last weekend, there were reports of improvements to logging into public Wi-Fi networks. Apple's purchase of an AI calendar specialist, which has now come to light, is causing discussion online as to whether the calendar app will perhaps be enhanced with Apple intelligence functions next.

The purchase of Mayday Labs Inc. only came to light because of transparency obligations imposed by the European Union. The list discovered by the MacGeneration website contains several acquisitions made by Apple last year, including that of the former "AI scheduling co-pilot", which has since been discontinued. The Mayday app existed for Mac, iPhone and iPad and was a mixture of calendar, task management and scheduling assistant. The purchase was reportedly made on April 3, 2024, and the app was discontinued on May 1, 2024.

AI expertise for Apple's calendar?

As at least two disciplines of the app are already covered by Apple's own calendar and the Reminders app, it is reasonable to assume that the Cupertino-based company is primarily interested in the AI-supported elements and the scheduling assistant. These are both fields that have so far mainly been served by third-party apps in the App Store.

Mayday, for example, was able to determine ideal times for appointments thanks to AI, learned the user's personal preferences according to the developer and took these into account and, if necessary, also rescheduled the calendar if other priorities were set. The fact that the app was developed using Swift and SwiftUI should also be attractive to Apple – Apple's latest developer tools.

Apple's long list of acquisitions

However, it is difficult to estimate whether the time since the purchase was sufficient to incorporate the know-how into Apple's own calendar app in iOS 19. Or whether this requires more time and can therefore only be expected in iOS 20 or later. Other speculations go in the direction that perhaps not the calendar app itself could be the intended purpose, but that Apple is hoping for deeper calendar and task knowledge for its planned improvements to Siri.

There have always been acquisitions that result in new features in the operating system in the history of the iPhone. Prominent examples are the music recognition app Shazam or the weather app Dark Sky, which led to an improved weather app in iOS. Voice assistant Siri was also purchased by Apple.

(mki)