The vibe at Apple’s 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference was like that of a spouse proudly listing off all the items on a to-do list that he or she had finally completed. Rather than introducing something exciting and new, Apple released the detailed fixes for Last year’s “Liquid Glass” design; A overhaul of its terrible search function; improvements to its Playground functionality; and so on.
Perhaps more importantly, two years after promising but failing to launch a smarter SiriApple finally introduced a revised version of its AI-powered voice assistant.
But the most telling detail wasn’t what Apple announced. This is how he chose to show certain things. Many Apple Intelligence demos featured a person standing with phone in hand, pressing buttons or using voice commands in real time, while another camera showed the phone’s response.
It wasn’t about live demos on stage, anything could go wrong; they were pre-recorded. But they looked a lot more like proof of working features than what Apple showed at WWDC 2024, when the company unveiled Apple Intelligence and a new Siri to the world through expertly produced videos which turned out to be more promises than products.
This style of demonstration was noticed, with comments on X Monday comparing today’s speech to those of 2024 called “spray» demos.
Apple said at the time that the features would be available soon for those who upgraded to iPhone 15 Pro and newer devices with M1 chips or better. But in March 2025, Apple admitted Bold Fireball that deploying the features shown via the production video “was going to take us longer than expected”. Shortly after, the Cupertino company faced trial in federal court alleging false advertising about features shown at that 2024 event – a case that carried real reputational risk for a company whose brand has long relied on the promise that its products simply work.
Last month, Apple agreed to pay a $250 million settlement on trial, without admitting any wrongdoing.
Monday’s presentation seemed designed, at least in part, to avoid a repeat. There were still plenty of fully produced feature videos, like one showing how to adjust Siri’s voice and another demonstrating better voice-to-text transcription. But many AI features have been demonstrated in this “live” format, with someone using the feature on a real device. The implicit message is that these features work on real devices and you will have them soon.
Apple also does not require users to purchase the latest iPhone to benefit from these features. The new Siri will be available via the new iOS 27 on iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max and all iPhone 16 models and later, depending on the company. The current model is the iPhone 17, which means most users who upgraded in the last couple of years won’t need to purchase new hardware to access it.
Perhaps it’s a concession that Apple won’t lock down features on new devices to create upgrade pressure when it promised two years ago that such features would be available on the iPhone 15.
Apple also said the new features will be available across its broader hardware lineup, including iPad mini (A17 Pro), iPad models with M1 or later, MacBook Neo (A18 Pro), Mac models with M1 or later, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 10 or later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, and Apple Watch SE 3 when paired with a nearby Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone.
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