Apple’s big Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) happened last night. Don’t feel bad that you missed it. This year’s event was a low-key one, with Apple foregoing the opportunity to debut any new hardware. Instead, Tim Cook and friends spent an hour and a half of our time patting themselves on the back, before introducing a swathe of ‘new’ features, including a fresh design language that’ll unify the entire Walled Garden.
While Apple Intelligence, the Big Fruit Company’s take on AI, did feature prominently, it appears as though Apple is still scrambling behind the scenes to deliver. Sure, we’ve got some new features to fiddle with, like the ability to search anything on your screen with Visual Intelligence, but you’ll have to wait for more to come. With Apple opening up the AI API to developers, expect more useful features to come from them, rather than Apple, soon.
26 is the new 19
It seems the rumours were true. Apple didn’t waste any time in officially unveiling the future of iOS — iOS 26 — rather than continuing with the old naming scheme. The same goes for the rest of Apple’s software suite, officially ushering in iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26… you get the idea. They’re set for release later this year (probably alongside the new iPhone sometime in September), but developers already have access.
“iOS 26 shines with the gorgeous new design and meaningful improvements to the features users rely on every day, making iPhone even more helpful,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. “Experiences are more expressive and personal, from the Lock Screen and Home Screen, to new capabilities across Phone and Messages that help users focus on the connections that matter most.”
A heart of Liquid Glass
Heavily inspired by the glassy, transparent look that Apple introduced alongside the Apple Vision Pro (and Microsoft used for Windows Vista) and specifically visionOS, the rest of the family seems to have adopted this new design language. Known as ‘Liquid Glass‘, this new look is headed to Apple’s entire software suite, meaning iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and CarPlay. Don’t worry, this is still the Apple OS you’re all familiar with.
We’ve yet to try out Liquid Glass for ourselves, but considering Apple featured it so prominently during WWDC, we’re not exactly sure we want to. Everything has an almost 3D look about it, delivering a slightly more unsightly finish overall, with a glaring lack of colour to boot. It’s not exactly hideous, but the more rounded corners and layers upon layers bring a sense of clutching at straws from Apple we aren’t used to seeing.
It’s not just all about looks, either. We’re willing to believe there are people out there who like the redesign (some in the Stuff office even admitted it out loud), but there’s no denying it makes everything harder to read. With visionOS in mind, it’s easy to see where Apple was coming from, where transparency was a necessity rather than a feature. But on a regular display, it just doesn’t pop like it does elsewhere, creating a messier look we’re hoping is refined, and soon.
Not so Apple Intelligence
It might be simpler to talk about the Apple Intelligence features not coming to Apple’s devices than to mention the ones that are. We’ve already said that Apple is opening up its AI API to developers, allowing them to put on-device AI to better use, and to seamlessly integrate their own apps without the need to call up any cloud services. There’s no idea what those will look like just yet, however.
“Last year, we took the first steps on a journey to bring users intelligence that’s helpful, relevant, easy to use, and right where users need it, all while protecting their privacy. Now, the models that power Apple Intelligence are becoming more capable and efficient, and we’re integrating features in even more places across each of our operating systems,” said Craig Federighi.
We got a look at live translations coming to Messages, FaceTime, and Phone — all utilising the user’s on-device AI models to ensure the translations happen in real-time. Genmoji is getting an upgrade, too, allowing users to take existing emojis and combine them to create something wholly new. It’s… as lame as it sounds.
If you’re wondering about those personalised Siri upgrades Apple promised back in 2024, join the club. Apple admitted that the Siri AI overhaul was still not ready for rollout, and wouldn’t be until 2026 at the earliest. Instead, we’re left with, uh, new emojis and smarter text correction in this new era for Apple.
