Some thoughts on WWDC 2026.
There is unfinished business in the air at Apple Park. Siri had high hopes to live up to, and Apple failed us once. This time, they were ready, and they unleashed a slew of new AI features that would normally make people more irritated with AI, but in this case, they were trying to fulfill a promise many people were counting on for 2 years.
The world of AI has advanced exponentially over those 2 years, and people have Lou Bega’ed here and there with many different AI models:
A little bit of Gemini in my life
A little bit of ChatGPT by my side
A little bit of Grok is all I need
A little bit of Claude is what I see
A little bit of Deepseek in the sun
A little bit of Perplexity all night long
A little bit of Siri here I am??
Apple was getting dunked on repeatedly for lackluster performance and speed of execution (Clean Up in Photos comes to mind), but now they have made up a lot of ground. At least that’s my opinion.
There were two prevailing types of people going into this WWDC:
The hopeful fanboy - will Apple finally deliver on its promise of an advanced AI model that can meet Apple’s previously high expectations of a contextual Siri?
The snarky skeptic - will Apple finally deliver on its promise of an advanced AI model that can meet Apple’s previously high expectations of a contextual Siri?
The same sentiment, but with different intentions. You could even argue some hopeful fanboys are also the biggest snarky skeptics. As it always is, each side has “won” because you will always find advances to praise, and glitches and bugs to criticize.
Let’s not forget about the format of the event either. I finally realized about half an hour into the show that, “wait a minute, I don’t think Apple is going to segment the show based on platform.” Instead, they decided to segment the show based on features, and their tentpoles this time were:
Platform improvements
Trust and Safety
Apple Intelligence and Siri
Considering this was dubbed as a “Snow Leopard” year, this new format around features that work on all platforms makes sense, but it also hints at the seamless blending of operating systems. How much more will the lines blur between Mac, iPad, and iPhone? With rumors of touchscreen Macs and iPhones that fold, we’re only getting started.