Thoughts ahead of WWDC 2026

June 7, 2026

I’ve been following Apple news and rumours since the year 2000, and I don’t think I’ve ever been less excited for WWDC. Apple’s software story is in rough shape, and I worry that this year’s event won’t do much to help. Perhaps it’ll be the beginning of an upswing, but we’ve got quite a way to go.

Before looking forward, let’s look back. WWDC 2024 focused on a number of “Apple Intelligence” features that never materialized. Which is probably for the best because the features that did ship that year were annoying at best and awful at worst. WWDC 2025 introduced a new redesign that I was initially looking forward to… until I saw it in practice.

This year, the scuttlebutt is that WWDC will once again be about LLM-based features. Many of those features sound like re-announcements of the ones from 2024. I wasn’t excited about them then, and I’m still not now.

If there are Apple Intelligence features announced on Monday, I hope they’re actually useful and not just shoehorned in. It’s reasonable for Apple to do something to improve Siri, but it’s been terrible for so long that I’ve found much better alternatives. I also worry that Apple risks overloading people with “AI” features. Microsoft only recently started learning their lesson about this, and it would be a real shame if Apple wasn’t taking notice. Given Apple’s recent track record, I’m not optimistic.

I wish Apple would be content with its excellent place as a platform for machine learning and LLM-based work. I truly believe that local LLM use is the future, and it’s a future with far fewer downsides. I would love for Apple to focus on this, as it’s something they’re already doing well. None of the rumours have hinted at local LLM improvements, but it’s more developer- than user-focused. Maybe there will be more news at the State of the Union event after the keynote. My guess is that most AI features announced will still be sent to a server farm, and will likely involve subscription fees.

There’s also been talk about tweaks to the Liquid Glass design language. I’m somewhat more hopeful about this, but still concerned. Apple’s head of design changed late last year, but that’s not much lead time. If there are changes, they won’t be drastic. Apple spent a lot of time re-architecting parts of the system to support Liquid Glass, and then asked developers to update their apps to support those changes. There’s no easy way to revert things, and we’d be in for another rough year of software quality if they tried. Instead, we’ll get minor tweaks. Here’s hoping for more design concerns to be addressed.

The other thing I’ve heard is that this could be another “Snow Leopard” year. That is, Apple may have spent the last year fixing bugs and optimizing things. I’d be very happy if this was the case, but it is a bit at odds with all the AI rumours. Even if Apple has been doing a lot of polishing, it’s a difficult thing to market. Maybe Apple could brag about the number of bugs they’ve squashed? That would make me very happy, which tells you the sort of person I am. It’s definitely not exciting, but it’s the thing I’m most looking forward to.

I’ve been worried about the direction of Apple’s software quality for a while. Their hardware game has never been more on-point, so it’s potentially hopeful that the head of hardware will soon be the new CEO. But this change, like the change of design lead, isn’t happening in time to affect this year’s WWDC. Maybe I’m wrong to worry. Maybe Apple will surprise me tomorrow. Sitting here today, I’m much more interested in what WWDC 2027 might look like.