Tim Cook has opened the 2025 edition of WWDC from Apple Park by welcoming the global developer community. The introduction was distinguished by a film sequence around the film F1produced by Apple Original Films. Combining motor racing fiction and technological demonstration, the scene posed an atmosphere of speed and performance. An ode at speed, even though Apple seems to have lost velocity in the field of generative AI, leaving it to others to define the technological standards of the decade.
TL; DR – An ambitious WWDC 2025, but Apple remains under pressure against Google, Xiaomi and others
👥 For whom is it important?
- Productions produced according to the evolution of interfaces and on -board AI
- IOS developers faced with new integrated AI frameworks
- Tech investors comparing the innovation dynamics between Apple, Google, Xiaomi and Microsoft
- B2B actors analyzing the maturity of Apple side offers
💡 Why is it strategic?
- Apple formalizes its response to Gemini (Google) and Copilot (Microsoft) with a private, local and integrated AI, it is in the Apple line, but testifies to a strong delay with its competitors.
- No equivalent to the multimodal conversational agent announced by Google, nor an ia centered bone as Xiaomi hyperos
- Apple favors control and experience at speed, but the delay in language models is only too visible
- The visual redesign partially masks the absence of a strong ad on Siri or the pro 2 vision
- Apple retains a UX advantage but seems to have missed the wave of generative AI, will the Cupertino firm can take the next?
🔧 What it changes concretely
- New Liquid Glass interface on all Apple OS: visual consistency, smart widgets, adaptability. And as a new interface is very successful.
- Visual Intelligence (visual recognition, image actions) accessible offline, but without multimodal vision
- No Siri update or Assistant IA global as at Google or Xiaomi
- No vision pro 2 or noticeable advanced helmet for professional computing computing
- Apple APIs are local and confidential, but still limited to LLM Open Cloud
A local, integrated AI, but still incomplete
Apple between fully in the era of generative models with Apple Intelligence, a set of IA features distributed on iPhone, Mac, iPad, Watch and Vision Pro. The approach is distinguished by its hybrid structure where the models are carried out on the device or via a private cloud designed by Apple (Private Cloud Compute). Personal data never leave the user environment.
Craig Federighi explains that interactions are designed to “be useful and relevant” while respecting confidentiality requirements. Apple Intelligence is embodied in cases of very concrete uses such as the generation of images (Genmoji), email summaries, live translation in FaceTime, or contextual actions on visual content.
But the absence of a real unified conversational assistant has aroused questions. Siri has still not received the overhaul announced in 2023. “This work requires more time to reach our level of requirement,” said Federighi, the Cupertino firm does not want to disappoint but will she be able to catch up?. In the meantime, Apple offers an optional integration of Chatgpt, revealing the technical limits of its own models.
A global visual overhaul
More than a decade after iOS 7, Apple introduces a new transverse design language, based on digital material Liquid Glass. Translucent, reactive to light, adaptive to contexts, it is deployed on iOS 26, MacOS Tahoe, iPados 26, Watchos 26, TVOS 26 and Visionos 26. The objective is to unify the aesthetics of interfaces while strengthening their personalization.
All the elements, icons, navigation bars, widgets, menus, were redesigned in this logic of fluid integration with hardware. A very successful aesthetic work but which seems to have taken precedence over Apple’s IA ambitions, and unfortunately gives the whole a more cosmetic than technological look.
iOS 26: Between refinement, concrete uses and dead angles
The new version of the mobile system introduces an animated locked screen with adaptive clock, 3D effects, and customizable icons. Visual Intelligence allows you to search for objects on the screen or convert an image to event in the calendar. Simultaneous translation is active in messages, Facetime and Phone.
Carplay Ultra also appears, integrating navigation, media control, air conditioning and widgets in a unified interface. On the other hand, few new products concern Siri, Apple’s search engine, or the App Store, left on the outskirts of Keynote.
MacOS Tahoe: productivity oriented, but without real breakup
The new macOS inherits from Liquid Glass and introduces substantial improvements to Spotlight: contextual research, rapid actions, history of the clipboard. The phone application arrives on Mac, synchronized with the iPhone.
Apple also relies on developers thus XCode integrates Swift Assist, capable of generating, explaining or correcting code via chatgpt…
Ipados 26: Reinforced multitasking and creation
Window management becomes native, resizing, tiling, menu bar and exposed mode transform the experience. The iPad also gains in relevance for creators with local capture for video recording, choice of microphone, executions in the background and app preview to edit images and PDF.
But here again, real -time collaboration functions, cloud synchronization or IA tools for content creation remain limited, compared to what Microsoft or Adobe offer in their ecosystems.
Visionos 26 and Watchos 26: Spatialization and personalization
Visionos improves personas for calls, introduces space widgets, supports PSVR2 controllers and the native reading of immersive videos. On Apple Watch, the AI ​​feeds Workout Buddy, a vocal coach adapted to your sports history.
However, no announcement on a new version of the vision pro helmet has been made, nor on large-scale professional uses, leaving the company largely under-exploited.
What analysts say
The reactions are nuanced, if user experience and visual consistency are praised, many note Apple’s “assumed delay” on AI. Wired underlines the absence of a point model. Bloomberg talks about an existential risk if the company is slow to deploy a real AI strategy.
For Carolina Milanesi (Creative Strategies), Apple’s force remains in the global experience “users do not seek a visible AI, but fluid and useful assistance”.
The market remains skeptical, Apple action has sold up to 2.5 % during Keynote. Some observers see it as a sign that the bet of private and distributed AI is still not readable.
Conclusion
This edition of WWDC is marked by a desire to lay the foundations of a new software ecosystem, unified, aesthetic and more intelligent (well, soon). The fact remains that if Apple takes a position on a useful, local and private AI, its proposal is without real technological rupture. The coming months will say if this strategy is tenable in the face of the acceleration of its competitors. Apple has an interest in having them under the hood if it wishes to be in the top trio of a race at AI already well committed.
