Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Key takeaways
- Different than previous times
- Area 1: refinements
- Area 2: Safety & security
- Area 3: New Siri & Apple Intelligence
- Wrap up
Introduction
I have completely reconstructed my WWDC consumption workflow. What follows is the fruit of that reconstruction. I don’t try to compete with the giants, such as the guys from 9to5 Mac, or Macrumors, or anyone else. I am a mere free wolf, a humble servant of the society, a little bit too arrogant, wanting to discuss what happened at the keynote today.
Key takeaways
Just so we don’t waste time, here are things which, in my opinion are the most important. If you are interested in short, bullet point list that’s it, read, comment and go on with your day
- Apple LISTENED! The 27 releases seem to be much like the Snow
Leopard release from back in the day. A few new features, many
improvements and fixes. - Apple took great care to add new features to Screen Time and
related parental control features. It is now possible to create
schedules, which allow your kiddos to have a bit more freedom on
weekends, for example, or maybe disable phone completely during
school days. I’m sad and crying for you my young friends. - Still no Polish Siri, no new Siri in the EU: we all know how is the
EU, no need to comment more. For those of you who were hyped, great
disappointment. I couldn’t care less. - New macOS is called “Golden Gate””. I love that name as its
hopefully a gate to a better era. - This is the last WWDC hosted by Tim. Again, I hope for a better
tomorrow.
Different than previous times
For many previous years, the keynote was clearly divided between iOS, iPadOS, macOS, VisionOS and possibly other announcements such as gaming. This year was different, general areas first, with platform-specific features as a side note. I didn’t quite like it but I fully understand why it is like so. The 27 releases of the Apple OS seem to be mainly bug fixes, with some features sprinkled here and there. I am very happy with it, aside from omnipresent AI.
Area 1: refinements
Last year was massive in terms of systems redesign. The new Liquid Glass UI, loved by a small group, hated by many. This year is big for Liquid glass, as new customizations have been added, effectively making it possible to completely disable liquid glass, aka. make the system completely opaque. Moreover they brought back color for app icons, removed floating sidebars and fixed other annoying things. Keep in mind this paragraph is written by a completely blind person, thus my info can be inaccurate. Let me know how much I’ve fucked up. Liquid glass is not the only piece though, as Apple claims to have improved the performance by a notable margin. Whether they have delivered its hard to tell as of yet but here are some quasi-facts to hopefully get y’all excited.
- As much as 30% increased app startup time.
- 5X transfer speeds on iPadOS.
- All new CPU scheduler which should improve performance on older devices.
- Improved memory consumption.
- Improved battery efficiency on Apple Watch.
It seems that Apple wants to fix the foundations and many issues which have been reported by users throughout the 26 life cycle. From the very brief time I have spent with the beta releases, its indeed a rather bug-free experience as of now. Let’s pray for the best.
Area 2: Safety & security
This part of the keynote was focused on parental controls and safety of kids. Its heartwarming to see a company which at least pretends to care about such important things. All in all the features listed are numerous, how they work in practice remains to be seen but here we go.
new allowance system
This system allows parents to divide their kids’ smartphone time between different categories, such as communication, gaming or the dreadful social media. So imagine the child has 2 hours of phone use, of which only 40 minutes can be spent on say, YouTube or Tiktok. Depending on how its implemented and how easily it can be bypassed this can be a very good and beneficial option to control toxic habits, while allowing the child to explore other possibilities given to them by technology.
Expanded permission system
In earlier versions the kid could ask the parent for downloading (purchasing) an app and that was basically it. Now the system includes “ask to browse” which allows the parent to whitelist certain websites once the young one asks for it. The system is also extended so that parents can approve certain media, like movies or music, or the IAP.
Improved content filtering
The apple operating systems could previously detect nudity and other sexually-inclined content in apps like Messages or Face time. The system has been expanded so that gore is also filtered. No more severed limbs doing somersaults amits skull shrapnels and the brain, which is good in my opinion. Kids have enough of this in the current time.
Rebuilt Screen time UI
The Screen Time UI has been rebuilt to support quick adjustments and better understanding of data. Now it is possible to quickly add time with a dedicated slider.
Area 3: New Siri & Apple Intelligence
Easily the largest part of the Keynote was about AI (Artificial stupidity in my book). Before we start I’d like to say that Apple is the first company who managed to impress me with their AI. Even the previous version which was considered a flop by many was something I sometimes used. Subtle,. unobtrusive, and fast – the opposite of all other AI companies I had to deal with. This year APple really doubled down on this and reworked the foundations of Siri as well as introduced new frameworks to make the AI magic in 3rd party apps. Here are the most notable changes.
new Siri AI app
With the introduction of the APple Intelligence-powered “Siri Apple had also created the all new Siri AI app which aggregates all your conversations, allowing you to start More complex conversations with the chat bot, as well as perform actions such as attaching a file or copying the conversation for later use.
Rebuilt Visual Intelligence
Visual Intelligence was Apple’s take on the popular “Describe what I see” tools. The previous version was heavily limited and available through a dedicated mode. This year, Apple doubled down on Visual Intelligence and integrated it with Camera and the new Siri to provide it with world knowledge, app actions capabilities and more! Even VoiceOver users like myself can benefit from this, as Visual Intelligence is now integrated with VO’s image exploration mode which I will describe in detail in a later article.
Safari super powers
Have you ever dreamed of making a Safari extension but you were too busy or too lazy to learn the required skills? Well wonder no more as Apple Intelligence allows you to create simple extensions by just writing a prompt. think about it; forms auto filling, specialized data extraction… Possibilities seem to be endless now.
Shortcuts in natural language
It is also possible to create Shortcuts in natural language. I have tested this function briefly and I must say I am pretty impressed with it so far. I didn’t take any care to write a good prompt, I just wrote what I want to achieve and the model created a more or less working shortcut. Of course as with all such tools, the more experience you have with traditional tools, the easier it will be for you to describe your desires for a model.
No Polish Siri, no Siri AI in the EU!
You heard that right. The new Siri has no new languages, including my native Polish, but what’s even worse it is not possible to use all of this on an EU iPhone. Fortunately however Mac is too little market share to be a concern, so we can use all of those features on our Mac, assuming we set it to English.
Wrap up
This year seems to be something that us, the Apple fans were waiting for a long time now. Pause and reflect on what works and what doesn’t, improve on what already exists instead of piling up features on broken foundations. Can we call 2026 the year of Snow Leopard? This remains to be seen, but the foundations for this privilege are very solid.