At Apple’s annual WWDC keynote, the highest-level topic is at all times the way forward for its software program platforms. And the massive information in that division often stares us proper within the face. In 2023, for instance, it was the debut of Apple Vision Pro, the corporate’s entry into the headset market and its first all-new expertise for the reason that Apple Watch. Last year introduced Apple Intelligence, its branded tackle what AI ought to seem like as a core component of computing experiences.
After which there was Monday morning’s WWDC 2025 keynote, as streamed on-line to tens of millions and screened to a choose viewers of in-person attendees at Apple Park. After Apple’s embarrassing inability to ship the AI-infused update to Siri it confirmed off at WWDC 2024, it was hardly surprising that this 12 months’s occasion didn’t guess every thing on whipping up an additional AI frenzy. That alone set it aside from final month’s Google I/O keynote, whose subjects consisted of AI, AI, and extra AI, with some AI drizzled on prime.
Apple did introduce some new AI through the keynote—quite a bit of it. Total, although, the occasion felt like an act of counterprogramming. As a substitute of positioning itself as a pacesetter in AI—or a minimum of quashing fears that it’s a laggard—the corporate appeared joyful being itself. From the unified new design to outdated options (cellphone calls!) turning up in new locations (the Mac!), it targeted on giving customers much more causes to personal and use as lots of its merchandise as attainable.
Herewith just a few of the impressions I took away from my morning at Apple Park:
Liquid Glass is basic Apple, within the Steve Jobs sense. In 2012, one in all Tim Cook dinner’s first dramatic strikes after succeeding Jobs as CEO was to oust software chief Scott Forstall. That led to a reorganization that put Jony Ive in control of design for software program in addition to {hardware}. Ive’s affect was seen within the iPhone’s iOS 7 improve the corporate shipped the next 12 months. It ditched the luxurious skeuomorphism of the iPhone’s software program up till that point for a far flatter look, bringing to thoughts the understated, Dieter Rams-like really feel of an Ive MacBook, manifested in pixels moderately than aluminum. Ive left in 2019, however the rules he instilled have knowledgeable Apple software program ever since.
However now there’s Liquid Glass, a brand new aesthetic Apple is rolling out throughout its portfolio of platforms. It’s shiny, dimensional, pseudorealistic, and animated—a dramatic departure from iOS 7-era restraint, however paying homage to each earlier iOS releases and likewise older Apple software program all the way in which again to the primary model of the Mac’s OS X in 2000. That was the one with buttons that Jobs mentioned individuals would wish to lick—a memorable design crucial that’s immediately related once more.
As my colleague Mark Wilson writes, Liquid Glass isn’t about including new performance to Apple gadgets. It may not even be about making them simpler to make use of—in reality, when an interface introduces transparency results and different visible prospers, legibility is in danger. It does, nonetheless, look cool in a means that’s classically Apple, and which the Apple of latest years had deemphasized.
The iPad has left limbo . . . for Macland. For years, Apple appeared to have reached a mental standstill with the iPad. The corporate clearly wished its pill to be one thing distinct from a Mac, but it surely additionally seemed to be quick on concepts that had been completely different than the Mac, particularly when it got here to constructing out iPadOS as a productiveness platform. Finish outcome: The platform has foundered moderately than matured.
With iPadOS 26, the iPad will lastly see a variety of significant change abruptly, and most of it’s distinctly Maclike. It’s getting a menu bar. Home windows that float and overlap. A extra full-featured Information app and, for the primary time, a Preview app. Even the quirky round cursor provides approach to a extra typical pointy one.
As an unabashed iPad diehard, I admit to my fair proportion of trepidation about all this. The iPad’s abandonment of interface cruft in favor of thought of minimalism is a big purpose why I’ve been utilizing one as my major laptop since 2011: I don’t like to wrangle home windows or scour menus for the options I would like, hidden amongst these I don’t. Possibly Apple has found out easy methods to retain what’s nice in regards to the iPad even because it provides in to the temptation to borrow from the Mac. However I’m alarmed by the apparent disappearance of the iPad’s foundational multitasking features within the first iPadOS 26 beta, and hope they’ll return earlier than the software program ships this fall.
VisionOS remains to be evolving, and that’s good. It’s been two years since Apple unveiled the Imaginative and prescient Professional and 17 months because it shipped. Rumors aside, we nonetheless aren’t any nearer to readability on how the $3,500 headset may result in a product that caters to a bigger viewers than, effectively, individuals who can pay $3,500 for a headset. Even Tim Cook dinner says it isn’t a mass-market product.
Nonetheless, Apple’s enthusiasm for spatial computing doesn’t appear to be flagging. As previewed during the WWDC keynote, VisionOS 26 appears to be like downright meaty, with extra realistic-looking avatars to be used in video calls, options for watching motion pictures and enjoying video games with Imaginative and prescient Professional-wearing pals, widgets you’ll be able to stick on a wall or place on a mantel in the actual world, AI-powered 3D results for 2D photographs, partnerships with corporations reminiscent of GoPro and Sony, and extra.
None of those additions will immediate radically extra individuals to spring for a Imaginative and prescient Professional in its present kind. However assuming that the headset doesn’t change into a useless finish, Apple’s present funding might assist a future, extra reasonably priced model supply compelling experiences from day one.
It’s nonetheless unclear whether or not ChatGPT is a function or a stopgap. Apple’s personal AI assistant, Siri, was acknowledged solely firstly of the keynote, when Craig Federighi, senior VP of software program engineering, talked about final 12 months’s bulletins and the choice to delay the newly AI-savvy model till it meets Apple’s “high-quality bar.” One other AI helper did pop up a number of instances through the presentation, although: ChatGPT. For instance, it powers a brand new Visible Intelligence function that can let customers ask questions in regards to the stuff on-screen in any app. The keynote’s instance: Upon seeing a picture of a mandolin in a social submit, you’ll be able to ask, “Which rock songs is that this instrument featured in?”
On condition that the brand new Siri options Apple revealed a 12 months in the past stay unfinished, including a splash of ChatGPT right here and there may be an expedient approach to preserve some AI momentum. However does the corporate see integrating the world’s highest-profile LLM-based assistant as a sexy consumer profit in itself—or only a placeholder till it could actually supply comparable know-how that’s fully below its personal management? I’m nonetheless unsure. At WWDC 2024, Federighi additionally talked about incorporating other AI models, reminiscent of Google’s Gemini, however no information has emerged on that entrance since.
Even throughout a pivotal, unpredictable time for the tech business, one of many WWDC keynote’s functions stays easy. Apple must get customers excited for the software program it would ship within the fall, which isn’t essentially synonymous with blowing them away by sheer power of AI breakthroughs. In a Bluesky dialog, one commenter advised to me that people aren’t actually clamoring for AI at all—a take that has a whiff of reality to it even when it isn’t the entire story. Finally, customers need nice merchandise that assist them get stuff finished, whether or not in a private context, a piece setting, or someplace in between.
After final 12 months’s WWDC, assuming Apple will ship every thing it brags about—a minimum of in a well timed style—is harmful. Nevertheless it’s simpler to ascertain the assured vibe of this 12 months’s keynote paying off, as a result of a lot of it concerned the corporate enjoying in its consolation zone.
