That WWDC Glow
I am sitting in a hotel room in Cupertino, the day after the WWDC keynote. Yesterday was a pretty packed day, full of announcements, information, press releases, and podcast recordings. But it was a very satisfying one.
My last WWDC was in 2023, and I was lucky enough to be able to try the Vision Pro at the event. This time I feel lucky that I was able to attend a Tech Talk presentation hosted by Craig Federighi that went into more detail about Siri AI and the architecture that powers it.
Being able to attend WWDC at all is something I feel very fortunate to have done. It took me a long time to get to the point where I attended my first — with a couple of bumps in the road — but also having these additional opportunities available to me feels like a great reward for the work I put in every week.
I wanted to give some early thoughts on the three big areas that Apple took time to cover in the tight — but information-dense — keynote:
Platform Improvements
I cannot imagine a world where modern Apple takes a full-on Snow Leopard-style "no new features" approach. But what they presented yesterday was very much in that spirit. No flashy features, but lots and lots of under-the-hood improvements. Which is actually very similar to what Snow Leopard ended up being anyway.
I think it's a good time for Apple to have their engineers tackle the lists of things they want to take care of, and the lists of features they know their users are keen for. Clearly this year was going to be all about Apple Intelligence, so why not take that time to make every OS feel better to use every day? That kind of refinement and polish throughout their platforms will make a meaningful improvement to the interactions we're all having with our devices.
I appreciated that they made some tweaks to Liquid Glass in the places where it needed the most work, but also the decision to give users their own control over just how glassy they want things to be.
Trust and Safety
I have been hearing from listeners recently that Parental Controls needed an overhaul. I have heard that these features are starting to break for a lot of users, and maybe this is one of the reasons Apple has decided to do so much work on Child Safety this year.
Personally, I am very grateful. My daughter is nearly 18 months old, and while this area is not a concern for me yet, I am sure it will be something I need to be actively worrying about before I know it. So I am very happy that Apple is taking a long look at Screen Time and related features, to make this experience better for everyone.
The timing of this is very interesting to me. I feel like Apple is deciding to tackle these features right now to address a few cultural — and potentially legal — areas they want to cover.
Firstly, more and more governments are looking to crack down on child access to devices, apps, and content. By providing more tools to make this control easier, Apple is putting themselves in a place to defend their position. But also, the amount of time children spend on devices – as the impact social media is having on them, is becoming a bigger and bigger cultural concern.
It feels like parents today need help to have better tools and guidance to make the right decisions for their children, and Apple has decided they want to make themselves a place people can go to get that help. I think it's going to be interesting to see how this unfolds in the long term — Apple has decided to take a point of view on this and is choosing the experts they want to work with to help them do it. I am very keen to see how this unfolds.
Siri AI
Obviously Siri and Apple Intelligence were the key focus of the presentation. It seems to me at this point that Siri and Apple Intelligence are essentially one and the same. There are some areas — like photo editing tools — that do not seem to have any Siri involvement. But the vast majority of new features come from the combination of the two technologies.
From the demos I have seen — both in the keynote and live at Apple Park — I am very optimistic about Siri AI. It feels like, with the added context of the data on my device from Apple apps and third parties, I will hopefully have at my fingertips a perfect virtual memory. That seems incredibly powerful — to be able to rely on my iPhone to have any information I may need at any time, and be able to recall and then act upon it.
Furthermore, the many ways we'll be able to access Siri AI on all our devices — with the tailoring they have done for each platform — make it seem like a really great sidekick for helping me get things done.
Over my years of covering WWDC, I have observed a phenomenon that I call the "WWDC Glow". After the keynote, our minds are full of wonder and possibility about all the new things we may be able to do. In the coming days and weeks, we get to understand the reality of the features. In some cases, it results in us learning a little more about the constraints of a feature, which brings us back down to Earth.
I fully understand I may be in that WWDC Glow right now when it comes to Siri AI. I want to preface this before I say what I am about to say, which is that I imagine that after Siri AI ships later in the year, I will not have much need for any of the general-purpose chatbots like Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or others. I feel like 90% of the things I may want to use an AI assistant for can easily be covered by Siri AI, with the added (huge) benefit of it being able to access my Personal Context, see exactly what I am looking at anywhere on my devices, and take action with the apps I use.
I can still imagine wanting more business-focused tools like Claude Cowork to help me build web apps or work with documents on my computer with greater power. But for the vast majority of use cases, I expect that I will no longer need any of these apps on my iPhone. Right now, I can absolutely imagine Siri AI being good enough.
I am very keen to be able to put this through its paces later in the year.
WWDC 26 feels like a year full of possibility. It's going to be a fascinating summer getting to try out these features before they ship later in 2026. I am really keen to see what is in store for us.
As a side note, it's been so wonderful to have so many people congratulating Jason and me on the success of our Kickstarter campaign for Designed in California. We have truly been blown away by the response, and we cannot wait to get started on producing the show.
