Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday began with an implicit apology. Rather than jumping straight into news about a revamped AI-powered Siri, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, spent the first part of the keynote listing repairs.
For the past two years, Apple has scrambled to catch up in AI while frustrations with its core software piled up. Users had complained about a design overhaul they disliked, a search function that barely worked, a file-sharing feature that frequently failed, and a Health app that ignored a large portion of its user base. Apple did not openly acknowledge those problems on Monday. But the structure of its WWDC keynote made the point clear. The company led with fixes before features, presenting a better Siri as one item on a long list of improvements rather than the main event. The sequence suggests Apple believes the foundation needs repair before it can credibly ask users to trust it with something as important as AI.
"Instead of just introducing a host of new features, we're also taking the features you already rely on and making them even better, because we believe the best operating systems aren't just built on big breakthroughs, they're built on sweating the details," Federighi said. That kind of statement would be unremarkable from most companies, but from Apple it was as close to an admission of fault as the company ever gives. Sweating the details is exactly what critics said Apple had stopped doing.
Liquid Glass design gets a dial-back
Federighi didn't have to wait long to prove the point. The first item on the list was the controversial Liquid Glass design language that debuted in iOS 26 and triggered consumer backlash over readability and usability.
While visually impressive, Liquid Glass's glass-like aesthetic made certain on-screen elements harder to see. Users pointed out numerous ways the update felt incomplete, especially on the Mac, and asked Apple for tools to restore a more frosted appearance. The company approached the moment carefully, saying it "really appreciates" the user feedback it received over the past year.
"While we think this is a great new default look, we also know that some users would like Liquid Glass to be even more clear, and others prefer a more tinted appearance," said Apple's director of human interface design, Shubham Kedia, during the keynote. (Nobody, for the record, is asking for it to be even clearer.) Apple had already tweaked the design before today, but now allows users to dial it back entirely with a new slider that goes all the way to "fully tinted."
Performance fixes and long-overdue health tracking
Other small but telling updates followed. Apple showed a "more uniform" toolbar in macOS meant to better distinguish controls and text from the content beneath them. App icons received additional Liquid Glass refinements to make them "sharper and more defined," even when set to clear mode.
Then came performance improvements. iPhone and iPad apps now launch 30% faster, new photos appear up to 70% faster in your library, and files are transferred up to 80% faster when using AirDrop, a notoriously flaky file-sharing system. In a subtle acknowledgment that people are holding onto their phones longer, Apple said it extended performance improvements to all models back to the iPhone 11, a phone released in 2019.
Apple also addressed several longstanding friction points. Smoother transitions between Wi-Fi and cellular, a new indicator that lets you know when your messages are taking longer to go through, and a rebuilt search experience that the company describes as "more stable, more efficient, and more comprehensive of content." New content will be indexed almost immediately, and a new ranking system in Mail will surface the most relevant results first. The fact that this needed fixing at all says something about how far Apple's search had fallen behind.
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Apple's Health app, which had gone years without meaningfully supporting half its user base, added support for perimenopause and menopause tracking. It's a long-overdue move that arrives as the menopause care market hits its stride. Earlier this year, menopause telehealth startup Midi Health crossed a $1 billion valuation, and dedicated investment in the category topped $294 million between 2022 and last year.
iCloud shared photo albums can now accept contributions from Android and Windows users, making the feature far more useful for shared trips and group events. Apple also rolled out improved screen time controls for parents before turning to the main event: the announcement of the AI-enhanced Siri.
AI features arrive, but with caveats
The sequencing was intentional. By stacking a long list of smaller improvements up front, Apple reframed its Siri update as one piece of a broader effort, rather than the make-or-break AI moment the industry had been watching for.
That framing is probably smart. Siri is launching into "beta" for consumers later this year, but not in the EU or China, where Apple still has regulatory hurdles to clear. For a feature that was supposed to define Apple's AI strategy, "beta, coming later, not everywhere" is a pretty noteworthy hedge.
Apple outlined other smaller AI advances. Apple Intelligence will organize your webpages' tabs, analyze webpages for information, check pages for updates, and more. You can even generate a custom Safari extension on the fly using AI. Passwords and Safari can now work together to suggest and apply stronger passwords automatically. Apple Intelligence is adding reply suggestions in Messages based on conversation context. For instance, if someone asks you for photos, Apple's AI can point you to the right ones. Calendar can now create events from natural language commands, something third-party apps like Fantastical have offered for years, making this a catch-up feature. AI will also surface key information when you make a phone call, like a confirmation code when calling an airline.
The Home app will use AI to summarize events, catching up with companies like Amazon and Google, which have moved on to more advanced territory including fire detection and facial recognition. The article notes that Apple staying away from facial recognition may be a positive.
Image Playground, Apple's AI image generation tools app, appears to have finally crossed the threshold from novelty to useful. Earlier versions produced kitschy images that were hard to apply practically. The updated model can generate something as functional as a business flyer or a cleanly edited photo. Apple also announced it will open image generation to developers via an API, turning a consumer feature into a potential platform.
AI can now edit photos more substantively, removing distracting items from a scene or expanding edges using generative models, similar to what Google Photos offers. The standout is Spatial Reframing, which lets you adjust a photo's composition after the fact using Apple's on-device spatial models. It even works retroactively on photos already in your library, meaning years of existing images are now fair game.
Related on Neura Market
- Browse the AI Models category for more coverage of AI assistant updates.
- Explore Apple's ecosystem tools in our mobile software directory.
- See how other AI assistants compare in our voice assistant comparison.