“Tim Cook wiped a tear. Siri finally works. And SiriKit just got a deprecation notice. Welcome to WWDC 2026.”
I watched the whole keynote.
And I’ll be honest — I didn’t expect it to hit the way it did.
Not because the tech was surprising. Most of it was rumored. But watching Tim Cook walk onto that stage for the last time as Apple CEO, knowing September 1 is the handoff date to John Ternus — that made the whole thing feel weightier than any WWDC I’ve watched before.
Craig Federighi opened with the actual agenda. Three focus areas this year:
“Platform improvements, trust and safety, and a big leap forward for Apple Intelligence.”
Let’s go through all of it.
🧠 Siri AI — The Rebuild Apple Promised Two Years Ago
This was the headline. Everything else was supporting cast.
Siri AI is rebuilt from the ground up with deep, system-wide understanding of personal context and on-screen awareness. Not a chatbot bolted onto the side of your iPhone. Genuinely integrated into your flow — it knows what’s on your screen, what’s in your apps, what you were doing before you asked.
The rebuilt Siri runs on a custom 1.2-trillion-parameter Google Gemini model that Apple licensed for a reported ~$1 billion per year. Complex queries route to Nvidia Blackwell B200 chips on Google Cloud, with hardware-based confidential computing enabled, and Apple’s contract bars Google from training future Gemini models on Siri queries.
Apple — the company famous for owning every layer of the stack — is paying Google a billion dollars a year to make Siri work. That’s how far behind it had fallen.
On iPhone, Siri AI responses can appear through the Dynamic Island. Mac users can type Siri queries through Spotlight. Vision Pro users can interact with a floating Siri orb just by looking at it — no “Hey Siri” required.
There’s also a dedicated Siri app now. All of your chats in the Siri app sync across your devices — phone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, even your watch.
The demo they showed was genuinely impressive. They looked up the FIFA 2026 World Cup schedule, then asked Siri to help plan a party around a specific match and recommend dishes from both countries. Cross-app. Contextual. Actually useful.
The catch — and there are a few:
Apple Intelligence and Siri AI require an iPhone 16 model or later, or an iPhone 15 Pro or 15 Pro Max.
The full version — specifically features like expressive voices and more advanced dictation — requires an iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, or an iPhone Air.
Siri AI will not be available in the European Union due to the Digital Markets Act, and it won’t ship in China at launch either.
Siri AI will launch as a beta in September 2026 in English, with more languages following.
So: if you’re on an iPhone 15 or older, not EU/China — you’re waiting. Everyone else, September beta.
🪟 Liquid Glass — Finally Fixed
Last year’s Liquid Glass launch was rough. Beautiful in demos. Unreadable in actual sunlight.
This year Apple is changing the default look of Liquid Glass and adding an opacity slider so users can decide how transparent they want it to be.
The company is making design changes to macOS as well — a more uniform toolbar across apps, sidebars that stretch to the edges of the screen to minimize distractions, tighter corner radius on all windows, and refreshed app icons.
The opacity slider is the thing I’ve wanted since day one. Good.
⚡ Performance — The Numbers Apple Promised
Apple is promising speed boosts of up to 80% for AirDrop transfers, messages loading in Mail, and playback starting in Apple Music. Apps will launch up to 30% faster, and photos will appear in your camera roll up to 70% faster.
Apple modified the CPU scheduler to help older devices feel faster, with iOS 27 supporting all models that supported iOS 26.
Apple also rebuilt the foundation of search that powers Spotlight, Mail, and Photos, saying it will start indexing new files and data “almost immediately.”
If these numbers are close to real in production — and Apple’s performance claims usually are — this is a genuinely strong update even for users who don’t get Siri AI.
🖥️ macOS Golden Gate
The name is confirmed. macOS Golden Gate is macOS 27.
The bigger story: macOS Golden Gate drops Intel support entirely. Mac App Store developers will no longer be required to provide Intel-compatible versions of their apps and games.
The Intel era is officially over.
macOS 27 might also be preparing the software for a touchscreen laptop — a major hardware reversal Apple has been resisting for over a decade. No hardware was announced, but the layout APIs are landing now.
📱 iOS 27 Compatibility — Who Gets What
iOS 27 will support devices dating back to the iPhone 12, finally cutting off the iPhone 11 and the 2020 iPhone SE.
Here’s the breakdown:
Feature Minimum Device iOS 27 (base) iPhone 12 Apple Intelligence + Siri AI iPhone 15 Pro / any iPhone 16+ Full Siri AI (expressive voice, advanced dictation) iPhone 17 Pro / Air Siri AI availability Not EU, not China at launch
Check your analytics before September. If you have significant iPhone 11 or SE (2020) users, that’s the conversation to have with your product team now.
🔧 Developer Stuff — The Part Most Articles Skip
This is what I actually care about most.
SiriKit is deprecated. Apple gave SiriKit a formal deprecation notice at WWDC 2026 and made the expanded App Intents framework the only way Siri can call into a third-party app. SiriKit apps keep working for now but will show compile-time deprecation warnings, and Apple has signaled a roughly two-to-three-year support window.
If your app has SiriKit integrations — start the App Intents migration now. Not “eventually.” Now.
Xcode 27 ships with AI coding agents. Xcode 27 brings coding agents from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI into the workflow, and developers can build on models like Claude and Gemini alongside Apple’s own.
Claude. In Xcode. Natively. That’s wild to type.
App Store changes. Apple announced several changes designed to give developers more flexibility on the App Store. Details on this are still emerging from the developer sessions this week.
Foundation Models framework. Apple introduced the next generation of Apple Intelligence built on a new architecture that integrates Apple Foundation Models directly into its platforms, using on-device processing alongside Private Cloud Compute when needed.
For Flutter developers specifically — Foundation Models means on-device inference with a native Apple API. No MediaPipe. No third-party wrapper needed on iOS. Expect a Flutter plugin within weeks of the beta dropping.
👨👩👧 Parental Controls — Actually Substantial
I wasn’t expecting this to be a big part of the keynote. It was.
Parents will be able to determine who their child can call, what apps and websites they can access, with Apple making suggestions about how those restrictions can change over time.
By default, “Ask to Browse” limiting web access and “Ask to Buy” for App Store and in-app purchases will be set as default for devices set up for children younger than 13.
Communication safety features have also been updated to detect and prevent exposure to sensitive or harmful content.
If you’re building apps for kids or families — these new API surfaces will matter.
🥽 visionOS 27 + watchOS 27
Not the headline, but worth noting.
Siri AI is also coming to visionOS, where there is a new 3D visualization — an orb you can talk to just by looking at it, rather than having to say “Hey Siri.” Control Center got a redesign too.
watchOS 27 improved Apple Watch’s AI features, though some felt a Siri AI health coach would have been a stronger move to rival Google Fitbit Air.
visionOS still needs a pricing story more than software updates. But the orb is cool.
📸 The Other Stuff Worth Knowing
- Messages is getting AI-powered reply suggestions, while the Phone app can now pull context from other apps like Mail and Messages mid-call.
- The Passwords app will use Apple Intelligence and Safari to agentically take action on your behalf — going to each individual website to change and fix insecure passwords automatically.
- “Reframe” is a new Photos feature that lets you take an existing photo and shift the perspective to create something almost entirely new.
- VoiceOver will offer richer descriptions of images, and users can press the Action Button to ask questions about what the camera is seeing.
- iCloud shared albums now work with full-resolution photos, supported on Android and Windows as well.
- AirPods are getting a custom equalizer.
- Even the hidden watermark Apple applies to AI-generated images in iOS 27 is Google’s SynthID. Apple’s AI stack is more Google than Apple will publicly admit.
🏁 Tim Cook’s Last Words
Tim Cook ended the keynote with a short, personal message: “On a personal note, some of the greatest highlights of my time as CEO have been events like this. Sharing powerful tools with all of you and then seeing what you create with them has been a constant reminder that imagination has no limits. And with the incredible capabilities we introduced today and so many more still to come, I truly believe the best is still ahead.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook wiped a tear during his closing remarks.
Fifteen years. That’s how long he’s been walking onto that stage.
John Ternus takes over September 1. He wasn’t featured during the keynote at all. The handoff is quiet for now.
🗓️ What Happens Next
Date What Today (June 8) Developer beta 1 drops for all platforms June 8–12 100+ developer sessions, labs, workshops July 2026 Public beta September 2026 iOS 27 stable + John Ternus becomes CEO September 2026 iPhone 18 launch (expected)
I’m installing the developer beta today. If anything breaks or surprises me — I’ll write about it.
Tags: WWDC 2026, iOS 27, Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, macOS Golden Gate, Flutter, Mobile Development, Apple
WWDC 2026 Recap: Everything Apple Actually Announced 🍎 was originally published in Mac O’Clock on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.