WWDC 2026 Event Recap

Every June, Apple will host its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at its headquarters in Cupertino, California. There are two major reasons why Apple does this: to showcase new software features that will be in users’ hands in the coming fall, and to allow Apple developers to interact with Apple designers and engineers.

It might not have the pomp of an iPhone launch, but WWDC is a bigger deal than others think. They give deep insight about what’s going on in Apple’s mind and many product launches here, such as the Swift language and Liquid Glass, has multi-year impact across Apple and the industry.

Hardware

Traditionally, WWDC focuses on the software part of the Apple ecosystem; however, it is not uncommon to have new hardware updated and introduced, although such an event is getting rarer and rarer.

This year’s WWDC, there are no hardware updates announced before the keynote speech.

Major Departure in Presenting

One major change in this keynote is that they didn’t go through the changes by platform, but instead gave an overview of the changes and features that will be available platform-wide. Finally. I’ve been saying this for years, but Apple is not selling a single product anymore; they are selling an ecosystem, and each product is a gateway to that ecosystem. They are finally embracing the fact that their users are interacting with the ecosystem, not just a single product.

The presentation is presented in three major themes: Platform Improvements (general stuff), Safety & Trust (kids stuff), and Intelligence (Siri mostly).

Platform Improvements

In last years WWDC, Apple introduced a brand new UI called Liquid Glass. Reviewers mocked it as Liquid Ass almost immediately. This year, Apple has made improvements on their UI based on users and developers input.

You can now adjust how much tinting your background you want to be.

You can now fine tune how much background tinting you want on your apps, from almost clear glass to opaque. The toolbar has been redesigned, and the sidebar got back it colors because users can’t differentiate between an active window and an inactive one. You can now design your icons to have a glass surface to complement the theme.

Another major departure in this WWDC keynote is the emphasis on improvements instead of introducing new features. Apple claimed that the next versions of iOS and iPadOS will have performance improvements, such as 30% faster app launch time on iPadOS and iOS. Photos are synchronized faster. Even the CPU scheduler, something a normal user doesn’t think about, has been optimized to be more efficient.

Another feature that Apple is investing in is inclusion, aka Android integration. Shared photo albums can now be used by Windows and Android users. They can see and upload photos to the shared Album.

Search Index, which forms the backbone of Spotlight, has now been redesigned. They are also integrated with Siri AI, which will be explained later in this article.

Apps has general improvements like Safari now can organize your tabs based on topics, you can automatically update your passwords to a stronger one in the Passwords app, and create an event in Calender by describing it to Siri.

Trust and Safety

Apple has a few child safety features on their ecosystem. This year, Apple added new features that enhance child safety, backed by experts and statistics. Apple also encourages their users to create child accounts for their children and use the features available.

We know there’s screen time before limiting how much screen time that you want your kids can use on their devices. Apple can improve this feature by adding time allowances, fine tune how much time they can spent on the web, gaming, or others.

Communication safety is also something that Apple thought about. A parent selects who a child can communicate with on their devices, and the child has to ask their parents permission if they want to talk to someone outside of their circle. Content control is also another thing that they added. Apple will automatically blur offensive images when using Messages or Safari. Even during a live FaceTime.

Developers now has new APIs and libraries like permissionKit and Declared Age Range API to take advantage of these new features.

Intelligence

Long before WWDC, there were rumors flying around that Apple was working with Google to use Google’s Gemini AI model to help improve Siri. In the keynote, Apple did not explicitly say Gemini, but they did mention that they work with Google to create a customized model to fit their needs. This new Siri will be called Siri AI (Siri + Apple Intelligence).

For context, Siri is the sick man of Apple. Apple is the first company to release a digital assistant, but it quickly fumbled the ball. Competitors quickly create their own versions of digital assistant and improved by a few factors of magnitude. Now, we AI models, Apple is further left behind in the race, and instead of trying to spend hundreds of billions making a better model, they just use someone else (Google in this case) to improve Siri. Hopefully, this strategy will work for Apple.

A few features that Apple shown in this demo, such as on-screen awareness, iamge understanding, on-device model, language detection, and other has actually been demoed on previous WWDC. However, like the famous interview with an ex-WSJ (WSJ journalist at that time), it is nowhere to be seen, even today. Hopefully, now that they have figured things out, this version of Siri will actually exist.

Apple demoed a few features of the upcoming Siri AI. One example is to find out what is the upcoming World Cup matches. And then you have an idea to make a watch party during the Brazil vs Morocco match. You would ask Siri to create some party bites out of the cuisine from each country. And also ask Siri something about the cookies that your daughter make. Finally, ask Siri to message your friends and organize a watch party at your place. Today’s Siri will choke and ask you to use either ChatGPT or go to Google for help.

Another feature that Apple demoed is improving your photos. Features like using AI to extend the background, perspective correction, image manipultion and others have not only been shown by competitors, but also been shown by Apple in their “improved” Siri. We only hope that this time, Apple actually delivers on what is demoed.

Siri now has a dedicated app so you can keep and review your conversations. For visionOS, they actually have this cool Siri orb, which you can put anywhere in the virtual world and activate it just by looking at it and ask questions. It is good to know that the Vision Pro is not forgotten by Apple.

Spotlight now works as an alternative input to Siri AI as Apple has redesigned the Search Index to be more integrated with Siri AI. From Spotlight, you can ask Siri about a certain photo, and it will know how to find the photo that you are talking about. At least that’s the theory.

One of the cool features that was mentioned is that you can use Siri AI to create a Safari extension or a new shortcut by describing it to Siri AI. Let’s hope it is as good as they say.

Here are some caveats that are mentioned about Siri AI during the presentation. Siri AI will not be available in the EU and China during the global launch as they try to sort through the regulations of those entities. Apparently, there are a few models that can run on-device. The most powerful of them can only run on Macs that are M3 or better, iPads that have M4 or better, and iPhone 17 Pro or better. Using private compute has a daily limit for users, as they claim that the servers are expensive. I bet in the future, if Siri AI becomes popular, they will charge for this as a service.

Grab Bag

Here are a few announcements that were made on WWDC that didn’t fit in the main truss of the show.

macOS 27 is called Golden Gate as their hippie marketing theme got that name after a night being high.

iOS supports iPhone 11 onwards.

You can use the Panorama that you create as an immersive environment instead of relying on what Apple gives you.

Conclusion

Overall, it is a solid presentation with noticeable changes in style. One that is noticeable is the people who are not in the presentation: Jon Ternus, which will be the next CEO in September. Granted, Mr Ternus is in charge of hardware, and this is mostly a software presentation, but it is noticeable that he’s not there.

Since this will be the last time Tim Cook appears as the CEO of Apple in a major presentation, he spent around 5 minutes saying his goodbyes. He will stay on at Apple as chairman of the board, but we will miss him saying “Good morning!”

Plus

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Other Ecosystem Items

• Apple TV (Amazon) / Apple TV 4K (Amazon)
• AirTags (Amazon)
• HomePod Mini (Amazon)