WWDC 2026 Impressions: Yeah, That's About Right

I was told to make my bed before making a hotel room video

because it makes it feel more put together...

So, all right.

I am out here in...

California because today was Apple's WWDC, their Worldwide Developer Conference 2026...

And every year this is where we expect all the announcements for all their

latest in software,

iOS, macOS, watchOS, etc.

And this year they did some of that, they did some of that,

but they actually mostly breezed through

that stuff pretty quick

and then got down to like the two... main new topics...

which were Trust and Safety for kids

and Apple Intelligence and the new Siri.

Now the breezed-through updates part I actually liked

because that was actually instead of being just like,

new feature, new feature, new feature, visual overhaul, Liquid Glass,

all this fun random new stuff,

it was actually a little bit more of a holistic like combing through some

of the... stuff that's been needing attention

that hasn't been getting it lately.

The smaller details, like a lot of the recent updates with Liquid Glass

and all these pretty visual,

dramatic updates have been, you know,

I think it would be lying

if we said they didn't feel a little sloppy sometimes.

We've all seen the stories about battery life going down

or performance degradation getting kind of weird

or just bugs here

and there with things like readability.

So through all of their operating systems, iOS 27, iPadOS 27, watchOS,

tvOS... and macOS, which the new one is now called Golden Gate.

They'll mostly look roughly the same,

but they'll have a lot of the under-the-hood stuff that's actually improved.

So things like smoothness of animations, apps opening faster,

and they dropped some other bangers like tweaked app icons and matching corner radiuses,

sidebar icons getting their color back,

and adding a slider now for how transparent

or tinted you want Liquid Glass to actually be,

they actually will let you make it even... more clear,

which I swear no one asked for.

But yeah, there's a slider there now.

But yeah, faster app launching, more smooth system animations,

more complete and thorough indexing for Spotlight, 80% faster AirDrops,

which I saw that on the slide and I was like, that sounds amazing!

As long as you can also make AirDrop work more of the time.

I think it's the attention-to-detail stuff like

that that we should see improvements with.

Some other highlights...

Vision Pro, you'll be able to use panorama shots you've taken now as environments.

So before it was just like a handful of Apple-provided ones like...

Mars, I think it was, and Yosemite and Mount Hood, etc.

Now you can have your own finally.

And my personal favorite, that they did add custom EQ for AirPods, which...

Okay, great!

Finally!

I'll take it.

It feels like this was a grab bag of things

that they kind of wanted to throw in to make sure they had some

real stuff to announce

because it was mostly the AI.

But, if that means we get EQ finally in the world's most popular earbuds...

when everyone else has had it for years,

then I'll take it.

So it's good stuff, much-needed in my opinion.

Lots of little details,

and I'm sure we'll find much more stuff

when we actually use these

that weren't announced in the keynote.

I plan on downloading these betas and getting to test them and reviewing them,

of course.

So make sure you get subscribed here to see those reviews... first

when they do come out.

So then they got to Trust and Safety.

This is a whole middle section of the keynote

and it was basically them going down this... rabbit hole,

I guess you could say,

of trying to tell people

that the best experience...

that your kids can have is with their own device

that is controlled by their parents.

You can probably see where this is going.

So they talked through a ton of child safety features.

Stuff like a dedicated child account

so that the parent account can control

which apps they can download

and which websites they're allowed to visit,

and, and who they're allowed to talk to.

Obvious stuff.

There's new, more granular Screen Time features

so you can see how they spent their day

and then use a scheduler to adjust...

when they're allowed to spend more

or less time in certain types of apps.

Like, obviously watching a movie on the weekend is cool,

but scrolling Instagram for three hours when they're supposed to be in school, well,

that's a no-go.

So the upside here is obviously much better safety

and controls for parents

that directly addresses the concerns

that they may have had about the,

the websites and the content

and the apps that their kids have had access to.

And the cynical read is also... get your kid an iPhone...

You remember, get your mom an iPhone.

Now it's also get your kid an iPhone, because... trust us,

it's the best one.

Like we've talked about this before,

we already know how dominant Apple is with... iPhones,

especially with younger people in the US

and getting them on an iPhone

as young as possible,

but makes them much more likely to have an iPhone

and use it in their adult life...

And so this is like the lowest common denominator version of that,

which is the best possible parental controls, means the youngest possible iPhone users,

which means more iPhones in the future.

Yeah, makes sense.

But the big thing we all expected them to talk about here,

which they finally got to, was the new Apple Intelligence and the new Siri,

and they did.

They got to all of that.

And I would say the new Siri is... exactly what we were expecting, like,

in terms of capability, pretty much straight down Broadway.

Like, no dramatic surprises.

Nothing that they announced that made us go, oh, my God, that's crazy...

No letdowns either, which is great.

It's about what we expected.

The basics are you'll now be able to trigger the new Siri on the

iPhone by either swiping down from the Dynamic Island

or holding down that power button

while you talk to it.

It has a slightly new animation and this general new look, plus a new,

more expressive voice...

And then it launches you into a conversational chat

that pulls from Apple's new broad world knowledge base,

cites its sources when it has some of those,

and lets you click through to that, which I tried.

That is nice.

And then it syncs your conversation history inside a new Siri app,

and that syncs across your whole ecosystem.

So your Mac, your iPad, your iPhone,

it doesn't remember every single thing you ask Siri,

but it definitely saves the more interesting conversational things

that thinks you might want to come back to.

So here's the angle.

Here's the thing, right?

We already know people have lots of other great AI models to choose from.

People have the ChatGPT app on their phone.

They have Gemini, they have Claude already.

The way that Apple, every single time,

the way Apple jumps into a new product category, which I think this is,

is they make it the best one to work with the iPhone.

So Claude and Gemini and GPT are really good at other things,

but Apple's Siri is... is gonna be the one

that can plug into... all of the knowledge of what it has on your

device,

indexing everything that's actually on your iPhone.

Now, I am planning on doing an entire separate video, like I said,

reviewing this, demoing it, showing exactly what it's capable of,

because it does have some quirks already.

Some interesting things that it is... not doing that I expected,

like showing the transcription as you're talking instead of when you're done,

little stuff like that.

Again, stay tuned for the full review.

But I think they just basically played it extremely safe.

They did the stuff that you'd expect...

Apple to do... and nothing more.

It's kind of funny

that through this whole keynote there are a ton of live demos.

Almost as if to say, yeah,

we know a lot of you are rightfully skeptical

and we learned our lesson from last time.

So here we go.

This time it's definitely working for real

and we're showing you exactly what it can do.

So, yeah, what can it do?

It can look through your messages, through your photos, your calendar,

and pull answers to questions from that stuff.

And it can take actions inside these apps, so.

So it can send messages, add stuff to your calendar, set reminders,

all the most basic stuff.

And that's why I say it's like, it's about right,

like it's straight down the middle.

It's not going all the way to doing like this insane agentic stuff

that Google was just showing on stage with Gemini just a couple weeks ago

at I/O.

Like, I had those concerns about asking Gemini to take a picture of a

concert poster and it buys tickets for you...

Like, I, I don't know, is it gonna get that right?

Is it gonna spend too much money?

Is it gonna get the right seats or the right dates?

Is it gonna hallucinate something weird?

I don't know.

But this Apple one,

it's just gonna stop short and it's just gonna add it to your calendar.

Just... do the safe thing.

But unlike the other stuff,

it has the advantage of knowing what's in your iPhone.

So if you use an iPhone, GPT can't pull from your messages,

Claude can't pull from your Apple Calendar.

Gemini doesn't see this stuff.

It's Siri... that will actually be most helpful with the context of, you know,

all the personal information that never leaves your device.

Now Siri can also pull from what's on your screen too.

And they added a new camera mode literally inside the camera app that's just

an updated version of the visual intelligence stuff we've seen.

So just definitely surfacing it to a lot more people this way.

So you know, people are going to be taking pictures of stuff

and then identifying it with visual intelligence.

You could also see how this would be particularly useful

if you were making smart glasses at some point.

But now my number one concern watching all of this was... what about third-party

apps,

right?

Like, obviously, okay, it's Siri.

Of course it should be able to pull conveniently from

that iMessage conversation that I had.

It knows my contacts.

But what about that WhatsApp conversation that I had?..

Or what about pulling from my Google Calendar instead of my Apple Calendar?

What about sending something to, I don't know,

a separate notes app that I like to use instead of Apple Notes.

What about all that?

And I plan on digging into this way more

when I actually get my hands on with the OSes.

But it's, it seems like the answer is

as long as the developer has enabled like App Intents

and the App Store knows what type of app it is,

then it can be summoned intentionally by the user.

It doesn't seem like it can be a default,

but you can decide to use other apps

if you tell it to do

that.

It's like by default if you ask it, Hey Siri,

remind me of like that podcast that Greg recommended me and play it.

It will of course if it's an iMessage conversation find it and,

and then start playing it in Apple Podcasts...

But if you don't want to you could say... play it in Spotify

or Pocket Casts and

then it would know

that that's also a podcast player

and it would do the app stuff

and do the same action... in

that app for you.

So as long as you tell it you want to use a third-party app...

you can.

But I definitely need to push this to see how far it goes.

Like is it going to be able to... do geo-fenced recurring tasks in TickTick,

my app of choice instead of Apple Reminders?

Maybe.

I don't know.

Is it gonna be able to pull from WhatsApp group chats

if it has like the same set of contacts

as iMessage...

TBD, we'll see.

But here it is.

Here's the most disappointing slide from the whole keynote.

This is the list of every device that supports the newest,

most powerful Siri on-device models.

So yeah, the only iPhones

that will run it are the iPhone Air

and 17 Pro.

It's because those are the ones with 12 gigs of RAM.

Kind of hilarious considering the iPhone 16 was built from the ground up for

Apple Intelligence and,

and is already outdated before that stuff is even coming out.

But I'm told that the only difference between the most advanced on-device models

and the ones that all the other iPhones will be getting,

like the 16, is the new Siri voice... and the updated dictation features.

Also, fun fact, in Vision Pro,

Siri is just this little floating orb in your space

and when you want to activate it,

you literally just look at the orb and start talking.

And since there's eye tracking, it knows that and responds.

Clever.

So you can ask it about, you know,

the windows you have open

or even any of the objects around you in your real space...

Reminds me a lot of Circle to Search on the Galaxy XR headset.

Remember that demo?

You could just sort of point at something and Google it in real life.

Very useful.

But then there's also some new Apple Intelligence things

that they talked about

that aren't part of the new Siri.

Like if you have a ton of Safari tabs open,

it can automatically arrange them into groups for you based on topics

and then automatically keep them sorted.

And then you can also describe a Safari extension with natural language

and it'll just build it,

which is really cool for especially things like the most ultra-niche thing

that you want your web browser to do.

Or even better, you can describe a Siri shortcut with natural language

and it will build

that Siri shortcut for you

and let you edit it after the fact with the full-on editor.

So this is a great way to make

that sort of stuff much more accessible.

Exact same thing Google just did with their Home automations.

Just describe the automation, it'll build it, then you can edit it later.

Speaking of Home, the update where those like 15 notifications you might get in

a row all get summarized

and consolidated into one updating notification from Apple Home finally...

that is long overdue

and much welcome...

Plus you can search through your footage to find clips of anything like a

package delivery...

There's also the new photo editing tools which will now not just do cleanups,

but it will also... now offer to extend the outer edges of your image

by up to 25%.

And the demos I've seen seem to work really well extending in all directions.

And it immediately makes me wonder

if I can just take

that finished image and

then extend it again

and again and again.

I don't know, how far can it go?

And then there's also spatial reframing,

which is quite literally... turning the image... using what it can figure out with

AI about depth... to work out what should be in the new background with

new perspective...

This is really the closest they've ever gotten to bending the definition of what

is a photo.

Very technically impressive party trick, but...

I think maybe still a party trick.

It's weird, I don't see people doing this a lot,

but it is crazy if it works.

This is also one of the things

that they had to mention will have limited daily use

if you want to update your total use

because this uses their more powerful cloud models.

If you want to... more usage,

then you have to update your iCloud subscription to get more.

Oh, and then maybe the most...

Apple thing ever is the new Passwords app will... be able to identify,

first of all, if you have a compromised password or a weak password,

and then the feature is it will be able to agentically go to

that website,

log in with your weak password,

go through the menus and change it to a more secure password for you,

and then save and remember that secure password.

Super, super clever...

Very convenient.

And that also basically means you're locking yourself a little bit more into

that Passwords app because that's now the one

that knows your new passwords.

In fact, that might have been the theme for this whole event.

The irony is not lost on me

that they named the newest version of macOS Golden Gate.

Because when the walls of that walled garden are golden gates, it's like,

maybe it's not so bad in there anyway, right?

Maybe it's... if you use iMessage

and Apple Calendar and Safari...

and all of their services... it's kind of nice!

Unless you're a HomePod user.

There was no mention of the HomePod for the entire keynote.

The entire event.

You remember the HomePod, that little Siri box with nice speakers in it?

Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that one Oh,

and then one more sneaky reference at the end.

So if you were still paying attention an hour in,

with like 10 minutes left in the keynote, there was a slide.

They showed some new developer tools

that would help you build your app to resize dynamically to different aspect ratios,

which is...

That's interesting.

What kind of device would have multiple aspect ratios

that you need your... your app to...

Oh...

Right...

Tell me you have a foldable coming without telling me you have a foldable

coming.

Anyway, get subscribed for those full reviews

and make sure to leave a comment below

if there's something specific

that you want to see tested...

when I get my hands on all

that beta software.

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Thank you for watching.

I'll look forward to your comments.

Catch you guys in the next one.

Peace.