Apple Tries to Hide AI Under Liquid Glass
If the year was 2022, this would have been a pretty solid WWDC keynote from Apple. Unfortunately, it's 2025.
Ever since the rise of Android to challenge the iPhone all those years ago, Apple and Google have stood atop the tech landscape when it comes to their big developer-focused events. And their temporal proximity to each other each calendar year have always highlighted the key similarities and differences. But never have they been more different than they were this year. Google I/O was AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI. Apple's WWDC was UI, UI, UI, UI, UI, UI.1
One felt like a company flexing. The other felt like a company hiding.
To be fair to Apple, I did think the event was about as good as could have reasonably been expected. But that's because expectations were so low given everything that has gone on since last year's WWDC, where the company famously over-promised on the AI front and woefully under-delivered. Subsequent reporting make it quite clear that there's turmoil inside Apple that hasn't been seen in quite some time and it stems from a poor strategy and decisions made years ago.
Which is to say, Apple set up this year's WWDC to fail long before this year's WWDC. And they did the best they could to wrap it in something to conceal the scars. That included, notably, a fresh coat of paint across all of their OS surfaces, which is always a good way to distract from what's going on underneath.
Unfortunately, it looks like Wall Street isn't buying it, quite literally. And more importantly for Apple, it's not clear that developers are either. Again, that's the whole point of WWDC. And Apple spent just as much time talking about an update to their Phone app as they did about the current state of Apple Intelligence.
But again, what else were they going to do? We all know that the entire team and project has been shaken up behind-the-scenes, so aside from the one brief mention that last year's promised updates to Siri "needed even more time to meet our high quality bar and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year" – the absolute bare-minimum that needed to be said, which was just a rehash of the statement on the matter already given weeks ago – there wasn't much Apple could say on the topic of AI. Certainly, they weren't going to showcase a bunch of future projects and features that were in early development after last year.
I suppose they could have said something like, "Hey, we fucked up last year and honestly, we've been fucking up for the past few years with regard to AI. This is on us and we own it. We've taken the steps needed to get better and we're working as fast as we can to earn back your trust in this vital space. Stay tuned." But come on, they weren't going to do that on stage. I'd like to think Steve Jobs may have had a "Thoughts on AI" ready to roll on the website, but well, that was a different era.
We didn't even get a peep about the other complete and utter shitshow currently engulfing Apple: the App Store fiasco. Not one word, let alone an olive branch extended or a policy changed. Not even a mention of the policy that was forced to be changed by the courts. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Instead what Apple tried to do yesterday was obfuscate their AI situation by constantly mentioning it in small, subtle ways, implying that it's just another thing working behind those scenes for you. And sure, there's some level of truth to that, but again, it's not really what anyone wanted to hear.
And the one potentially exciting announcement on the AI front, the opening up of Apple's models for developers to use with the Foundation Models Framework, leaked well ahead of time, so it was expected. And while the on-device element of those models should be interesting, they'll also undoubtedly be quite underpowered relative to what developers are used to with the current state of the art in AI.
Speaking of, as an aside, it's sort of crazy that Apple hasn't yet been able to snuff out who is leaking everything announced well ahead of time. Obviously, Mark Gurman, as always, got most of it, from the naming schemes on down, but there were several others, notably 9to5Mac, that got a bunch of smaller features too. This has been going on for years now and no stone was left unleaked this year. And this was the year where any element of surprise and delight would have mattered to combat the AI situation. Can you imagine if the new "Liquid Glass" UI hadn't leaked ahead of time, for example? Or even the silly new naming scheme? These would have been big, topical stories that could have helped Apple distract from what is going on internally with AI. I'm not saying I feel badly that this is happening to them, I'm just saying it's wild that they have not been able to stop it. And such a leaky boat is never a good sign of overall company health, of course.
Back to the event itself, a few other notes:
The actual biggest surprise may have been the fact that Apple seems to be doubling and tripling down with OpenAI. ChatGPT got specific shout-outs as a part of Image Playgrounds (albeit in a comically restrictive and very Apple way), as a part of Visual Intelligence (it was already a part of this tool, but the new screen scanning element brings extended functionality), in Shortcuts, and most notably now as a part of Xcode. This was a particular surprise since the rumors had suggested that Anthropic's Claude coding assistant might be the partnership Apple would pursue here. Perhaps they couldn't get a deal done in time, or maybe Apple does just want to test it more internally. Still, it's a big win for OpenAI's coding capabilities, obviously.
The new Visual Intelligence features overall do seem interesting and useful, but is also a lot of what Google has been doing for a while now. That was a pretty constant theme here as well. And that's long been the case, but seems more acute now given Google's clear lead in AI.
Having now seen how they're framing the new Games app, I think I feel even more confident in my idea a few weeks back that they might use this space to eventually split gaming apps – and importantly, their revenue cuts – away from the actual App Store. They're not doing that now, but I think the groundwork is being laid right before our eyes. We'll see.
The updates to Spotlight in macOS 26 – "Tahoe" the only OS that gets to have an additional name for legacy reasons, I guess – seem like a big deal for power users. And yes, will likely Sherlock tools such as Raycast. But for "regular" users, they shouldn't matter much. Still, it's a nice step towards consolidating everything into one overlay. Eventually, hopefully Siri – or whatever the newly rebuilt Apple Assistant AI is called – resides here as well. One text box to rule them all.
Speaking of, might this be the last time we see Mike Rockwell on stage in his Vision Pro capacity instead of his new AI capacity, perhaps next year? Some of the updates to visionOS were interesting – spatial widgets and a spatial web! – but would be far more so if matched with a device that people actually used at scale. And I don't think allowing two people in the same room to use two Vision Pros is the ticket. Somewhere, Jony Ive was probably screaming though. Perhaps into his new OpenAI device...
At least 'Personas' look a lot better. But perhaps because of the aforementioned overpromising and under-delivering last year, I'm more than a bit worried these won't be as good as they were showed in the demo video. Of course, I'm not sure how much that really matters again, until more people start actually buying and using the device. Apple clearly – clearly – has a plan to offload some of that usage (and cost) to the enterprise in the meantime.
Apple saved the biggest update for last: iPadOS basically morphing into macOS. This is what many of us have been clamoring for over the years – or a variation of it – and Craig Federeghi seemed to knowingly nod to this evolution in thinking for Apple driven by demand. Windows, pointy cursors, and menu bars, oh my. I'm still worried that Safari on the iPad will be too tablet-fied for a lot of workflows still, but we'll see. I immediately downloaded the developer beta on a backup iPad and I'll have some initial thoughts soon. But overall, it's a promising step.
Federighi ended where he began: talking in the most general ways possible about Apple Intelligence. Again, this was all part of the sleight of hand. Apple can say they were talking about AI the whole time, but they weren't really talking about the AI that everyone else wanted them to talk about. Because they have nothing to talk about in that regard right now. Hopefully next year.
One more thing: Apple clearly made the right call in keeping the event nice and tight at 90 minutes. They probably could have shaved it down to an hour – again, we talked about the Phone app for about 3 minutes – but that may have seemed too sad for a flagship event. They sucked it up and powered through this year, ending with a nice little ditty too, "Six Out of Five Stars".
Overall, I'd probably give this WWDC two out of five stars. But it easily could have been a zero due to their mistakes of the past.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Oh, and a dash of F1. Sort of weird to have WWDC be a full-on cross-promotion. Then again, if I needed the movie to be a hit, as Apple does after a string of mediocre-to-bad films, and an absolute shitshow – you get a sense Apple has a lot of these of late? – also involving Brad Pitt, I'd probably pull out all the stops too. All I'm saying is that there is a lot riding on it. Okay, I'll end the racing puns. It looks good!