Apple’s annual developers conference WWDC returns for 2026 next week, and the company has teased the event with a new “All systems glow” tagline.
“We’re keeping Liquid Glass, you weiners”
Apple has shared a wallpaper, playlist, and a “Get Ready” video ahead of the event.
I’ve been Sherlocked.
I’ve been attending Apple’s WWDC since sometime in the 90s, which is… a long time. But this year’s event promises to be one of the most interesting ones yet, mostly because Apple really stepped in it in 2024, promising a bunch of features it didn’t deliver. Last year was a bit of an apology tour, but it didn’t directly address what had been promised the previous year.
Which means that Apple has really piled two years of promises on the agenda of WWDC 2026. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Here’s what I’ll be watching for at this year’s event, especially when it comes to its AI do-over.
For me, 2 big questions for WWDC:
Will there be enough actual, proper working Siri/AI features to keep people from migrating to other platforms?
And will there be enough AI privacy gains to pull people from other platforms?
The annual live audience episode of The Talk Show during the week of WWDC.
The 12th annual Swiftjective-C pregame quiz is here!
Has Apple eliminated one-on-one labs with engineers this year at WWDC?
That was the best part. What a bummer.
Apple has announced the winners of its annual Apple Design Awards.
Apple’s page doesn’t have a permalink.
These days, I’m getting emails pitching me for an endless stream of new Mac apps. It’s quite remarkable because there was a period five or ten years ago when it seemed like all app development on Apple’s platforms was focused on iOS. Even more interesting, these are all indie Mac apps that seem to be built using native Mac frameworks, not the product of big corporations that are just rolling their cross-platform development system out everywhere. These apps seem to have a point of view and are focused on the Mac.
Of course, it’s happening because of AI.
[…]
And, yes, a couple of weeks ago, I made a Mac app of my own [Double Ender], using Claude Code. I can’t say that I wrote it, because I didn’t write a line of Swift code. It would be more accurate to say that I envisioned it, or produced it, or product-managed it. I knew what I wanted, described it in detail to an AI assistant, iterated a whole lot, and ultimately got something that basically does everything I imagined it would do.
[…]
The Xcode learning curve is just too high. Either there needs to be a novice mode for Xcode, or Swift Playground needs to be given a boost, or a new tool needs to be built for the task.
It is time for us on the Cult of Mac podcast to lay out our predictions for Apple’s WWDC26 Keynote.
In just a few days, Apple will kick off WWDC with their keynote and introduce Vaporized Glass, a design language centered around hiding UI. You can’t complain about illegible controls if users can’t find them in the first place.
Previously:
Update (2026-06-05): Basic Apple Guy:
It’s nearly time for WWDC26, which means it’s time to make my annual bingo board of predictions, prognostications, and presentation ponderings ahead of this year’s keynote.
The two biggest issues facing Apple right now:
A software operation in shambles. The macOS desktop has forgotten what it is, cosplaying as a mismash of borrowed attributes from other OSes, that look the way they do because they serve different form factors and different needs. And software quality has gone down the tubes.
Borderline open warfare between its own desire for control (and possibly money, through the proxy of “maintained margins”) and the needs of its developers.
Update (2026-06-08): Juli Clover:
We’ll see how Apple is going to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the months to come with an AI version of Siri and new AI features for its apps.
Step one starts today. Or rather, step two that’s a do-over of step one. A mulligan.
Apple is making an enormous bet on AI — but their bet is that they don’t need to spend hundreds of billions per year on AI infrastructure (most of it fattening Nvidia’s bottom line) to reap the benefits. If Apple’s right we should start seeing it come together tomorrow.
The software tech releases in the past WWDC’s have turned out to be rather bad. One after another, a constant stream of not cool. So I’m not entirely sure what they could announce that would make me interested. Admit that Swift or Concurrency was a mistake? Unlikely.
John Gruber (Mastodon, 2):
There’s something really wrong with SwiftUI. Amongst the apps I use, the best example is Apple Journal. Basic stuff that’s worked reliably for decades — some things that heretofore had worked forever — are dangerously broken. If you’re running MacOS 26 Tahoe, open Journal and make a new dummy entry. Type something like “The quick brown fox.” Then double-click on the word “brown” and delete it. Now invoke Undo.
[…]
I actually use the Journal app and I’ve lost entire sentences of text to this incompetent implementation of Undo. Editing text in Journal is dangerous because SwiftUI is so bad at something as fundamental as text editing.
[…]
So while the world is largely focused on Apple’s AI-related announcements at WWDC tomorrow, I’ve got SwiftUI (on all platforms) and Mac-assed Mac development high on my list. Apple’s developer message used to be that it was not just easy to develop apps for their platforms, but that it was easy to develop good idiomatically native apps. You got the correct complex behavior — for things like Undo/Redo — out of the box. That’s still true for AppKit and UIKit, but it’s never been true for SwiftUI, and SwiftUI is now seven years old. That’s too long for any excuses to hold water.
At todays Apple’s WWDC, when they talk about SwiftUI, pretend it is 2021.
While most of the improvements will be yawning for a seven year old framework, they will be great for a two year old framework.
WWDC used to be something to look forward to. Fun features, new frameworks, expanded horizons.
For the past ten years or so, it’s been a mix of dread and hope. I hope they don’t screw things up even more. I hope they don’t lock down even more.
[…]
And, if you insist on particulars that illustrate the problem, think back to when sessions used to present the Apple thinking of only very slowly and deliberately building on what was there, because they knew it would have to last forever, and contrast it with the buffet of half-cocked answers to reactive dataflow or asynchronous programming.
[…]
Plan for the future, rather than just jumping from lily pad to lily pad on a sprint or annual schedule, hoping the next jump will finally do what the previous jumps didn’t.
I am genuinely distressed that we are up to the eve of WWDC 26 and all the versions of OS26 still behave like betas. Everyday I struggle with regressions, stupid usability bugs, HIG violations and sheer unreadability.
My expectations are low, this WWDC: all I want is a WWDC that re-energizes me, and gets me back in the mood to work on all the stuff I want to work on.
Just hours away from WWDC’s opening keynote, some developers have been sharing the contents of their conference swag bags on social media.
[…]
There are four pins in the bag, including the Apple skull and crossbones, an Apple 50 pin, Clarius the Dogcow, and Little Finder Guy – the tiny anthropomorphized version of the Mac Finder icon that went viral after appearing in Apple’s recent online marketing campaign for the MacBook Neo.
Previously:
Update (2026-06-09): Marcin Wichary:
I couldn’t believe it, but I reproduced [the Journal undo bug] myself just now on my phone (my backup Tahoe-running Mac is in a closet not responding to pings, I am now assuming out of embarrassment)
Apple Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Datacide Double Ender Google Gemini/Bard iOS iOS 27 Journal Liquid Glass Mac macOS 27 Golden Gate Programming Siri SwiftUI visionOS Wallpaper watchOS watchOS 27 WWDC
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