At WWDC 26 Apple today announced new operating systems all ending in OS27. (The numbering thing drives me nuts.) The entire keynote felt different to me from recent years. Almost as if Apple felt a bit humbled. Almost as if Apple is in a we’re in a thinking different mode these days. I may be reading more into that than is real, but I’m usually pretty good at sniffing these things out.
Apple chose the name Golden Gate for its macOS 27 version this year, and it looks like the folks in Cupertino heard the criticisms about Liquid Glass and have taken some steps to correct what I and many other consider design flaws. Although I’ve seen as many negative as positive reactions to the design changes, so we’ll see how that goes throughout the summer.
There was also quite a bit of time devoted to Parental Controls. Given the political heat big tech in general is taking politically here in the US and elsewhere that’s probably a smart move. The announcement stirred up a bit of controversy from folks not in favor of efforts like age verification. The devil will be in the details.
The big push though is all about Apple Intelligence and the New Siri, now called Siri AI. Trying to play catch up and recover from the mistakes of two years ago, Apple showed off some live demos in a separate meeting from the keynote. You can read about that on The Verge. So you have to consider showing live demos a plus over two years ago, although it was still in a protected environment. I’ll be looking for users to do the same as the betas roll out, even if it appears that there’s a waiting list for the New Siri. So, we’ll see how that goes.
Note that Siri AI, announced to roll out this fall, will be delayed in the European Union and China.
You can check out the entire keynote reduced to 26 minutes, also from The Verge here. And Jonny Evans has a nice collection of the headline announcements from the keynote here.
And this Mastodon post from Dwight Silverman sums up my some of my early thoughts as well.
To further sum it up my early thoughts, I’ll just say this. It’s going to be an interesting summer watching folks hammer on the betas, the first of what was released to developers today. The public betas will roll out in July. But we’ll have some early indications later in the week as developers begin working with the betas.
So, I’m still in wait and see mode. As should most of us be.
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