Apple's World Wide Developer Conference is an event unto itself every year. Today I woke up at 4:30am so I could catch up on work and watch the event live so I could add the commentary you've all been dying for. If you want to watch it while reading this, you can find the entire thing on YouTube here.

Craig Federighi once again makes everybody fall in love with him due to his filmed-intro, screaming around the top of the Apple Park building in an F1 car to promote their new movie F1 (original title!) with Brad Pitt. And heeeeere's Tim Cook... to introduce more Craig!

To read all the gory details of Apple's keynote and my random thoughts about what they announced, you can find it in an extended entry, because it's rather long (I type fast and think a lot of things!)...

And off we go.

• Apple "Intelligence"
  
  • Past History: Lord. Pretty ballsy to open the conference with Apple's biggest failure. Which is why Craig is just running through all the stuff they've already done instead of talking about the stuff they promised and never delivered.
  • Nothing Burger: And THERE IT IS... nothing new to announce. Just a shitty excuse that they're waiting to roll out the rest of the crap they promised LAST YEAR due to making sure the "quality" is up to Apple standards. LOL. If it wasn't ready, then why the fuck did they sell me a new iPhone based on what was coming? LAST YEAR.
• Liquid Glass
  
  • Newy GUI: The new visual "look" of how you interact with Apple devices is pretty great. Everything looks alive and responsive... and modern. I like it quite a lot. The processing power required to make all this happen seems like it would be a lot!
  • Consistency GUI: You'd think that this would have been a design direction from the very beginning... to make all Apple Devices look and act the same.
  • Glassy GUI: I gotta say... looking at the Apple Design Lab and how they physically crafted the design elements in real glass to see how they act when placed on top of different visuals is dang cool.
  • Bouncy GUI: While I love the "bounce" that accompanies interaction with the GUI (Graphic User Interface), I wonder if it's tame enough while using it. Meaning that it could get annoying to be trying to do stuff and having everything bouncing all the time if it's too much.
  • The Year of 26: Having all the various Apple OS's get consistent naming is something that people have been asking for for a long while. If Apple is releasing a new OS update every year, why not just use the year as the version number? Yet another thing that makes you wonder why Apple took so long to implement.
• iOS 26
  
  • Crystal Clear: So... I guess app creators now have to add a third "app icon mode" to the "light" and "dark" themes that Apple already require. I guess the "clear" theme looks good... but not sure it's for me, because the colors on the app icon is my primary way of finding the app I'm looking for.
  • Dynamic Text: If you know the challenges of font design, having the "San Francisco" font reconfigure to fill a space while still looking great is not an easy task. Apple designers did a terrific job on this.
  • Glass for Your Ass: Those glass notifications on the lock screen look a bit difficult to read... especially for older people whose eyesight is rough (like me!).
  • 3D Lock Screen: Assuming that your photo is "3D-ified" perfectly, this is darn cool. 3D kangaroo coming at you!
  • Camera: The camera app has been a frickin' disaster forever. The settings are all over the place, and you have to bounce between the top and bottom of the screen in a nonsensical way. This new interface looks like a nice improvement, but until I actually use it, I can't say for sure. I'm hopeful.
  • Photos: Looks like Apple might actually eating their own dog food now and realizes what a mess Photos has been to use. What I'm not seeing is if they addressed the need to constantly go between the top and bottom of the screen for many tasks. I doubt it. Which is insane. Bottom: EDIT. Bottom: CROP TOOL. Top: ASPECT RATIO. Bottom: ASPECT RATIO CHOICE. Top: DONE. I mean what the fuck?!? Just put all the crap at the bottom so I'm not feeling psychotic bouncing back and forth and back and forth! I am baffled by the way this works... and even more baffled that this is the way Apple decided to do it.
  • Safari: Applying the "Dynamic Island" approach to Safari is kinda genius.
  • CarPlay: I love having CarPlay available while driving. But it pisses me off that you have to have a big display to use so many of the interface features. The display in my car is under 10-inches (or whatever that threshold is) so I can't use widgets. Maybe that's changed now? I sure as fuck hope so. All I do know is that I can only wish that I was able to use "CarPlay Ultra" because the configuration customization is amazing.
  • Phone: Nice that Apple is finally doing something to change the schizophrenic segmentation of the different aspects of the phone app. They blazed through it fairly quickly, so I can't see exactly how all that is going to work... but, yeah, happy that something at Apple is looking into the messes they have saddled their users with for so long. AND CALL SCREENING TOO?!?? Wow. About fucking time that spam is being looked at. And then... THEN... "Hold Assist" is ever-so-lovely. That's the future I want.
  • Messages: Ugh. Those backgrounds are annoying and distracting. Why? Just why? Who thinks this is a good idea? Those glass bubbles don't make things easy to read on busy backgrounds. Apple is tossing so many of their design fundamentals out the window here.
  • Messages... DIE SPAMMERS DIE!! I will take ANYTHING that helps get rid of these fucking spammer assholes. Problem is... these features don't go far enough. Still too difficult to block/report spam/delete, it looks like.
  • Live Translation: This is hugely important in today's global world. However... I have found that so many times the translations are not accurate. But still... something is better than nothing. Hopefully people using the feature will keep in mind that it's not going to always be 100% accurate and act accordingly.
  • Apple Music: LYRIC TRANSLATION IS SO COOOOOL! I listen to a lot of music in different languages, and I love this. Beats doing it manually! And I guess we're at the point where club DJs are out of a job? Just plug in an iPhone and turn on "AutoMix."
  • Maps: Thanks to CarPlay, I've been using Apple Maps more and more. That Apple is adding nifty features to their mapping app is nice. Probably not a lot of people will actually use these features, but I know I will!
  • Digital Driver's Licenses: The fact that Washington State won't GET OFF THEIR FUCKING ASSES and give us a digital driver's license like such forward-thinking states as Mississippi and US territories like Puerto Rico, is infuriating. I hope to God that they stop dicking around and just embrace the future... but they're too damn busy finding new ways to tax us, so I'm not hopeful.
  • Digital IDs: Well, at least the US Government is doing better than Washington State by allowing passport holders to get a digital ID... but will Washigton State support it? Probably not. Hell, our lawmakers force you to get an "enhanced" Driver's License in order to be RealID compliant instead of just making it standard. Because Washington State is fucking lazy and stupid like that. Anybody thinking that we're tech-forward in this backwater state needs to seriously reconsider.
  • Travel: Back when I was traveling a lot, I would have really liked to have had these cool new features. Especially the gate map for all the various airports around the world. How nice is that?
  • ApplePay: I love love love ApplePay, and the real problem is not the feature-set, but the fact that way too many businesses aren't using it. Every time I shop at Home Depot, I'm like What the fuck?!? because I have to take out my card and insert it. And yet the little mini mart in town and the little grocery store here does have it? Lord.
  • Gaming: I don't do much gaming on my iPhone because it's just not a big enough screen for anything but puzzle games or whatever. But when I do play on my phone, it's nice that we've got cool features going on. I especially like "Challenges" which seems like a fun way to share gaming with friends.
  • Visual Intelligence: While I've ranted many times on Blogography about Apple crapping AI all over everything and how it usually makes things worse, the exception is "Visual Intelligence" which, when it works, is quite handy. I've used it for identifying plants, finding things I want to buy, and searching for places where photos were taken. It ain't perfect by a longshot, but it shows a lot of promise.
• watchOS 26
  
  • Liquid Glass: If there's one place that I wish Apple wasn't using their "Liquid Glass" it's on the teeny-tiny Apple Watch display. This is clearly putting looks over functionality. Bummer.
  • Yo, Buddy: Okay I like the idea of having a "Workout Buddy" but, to me, this would be annoying as hell. But, then again, I loathe exercise, so that's probably just me. I would be screaming "SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP." the entire time "Buddy" was talking. AppleWatch: "Good job, and have a nice day!" Me: "Go fuck yourself!" Dang I'm an asshole.
  • Deliver Quietly: Okay... listening to ambient sound and adjusting the alert chime accordingly is pretty sweet.
  • Notes: Okay, adding Notes to watchOS is pretty great. No more reaching for my phone to jot something down. I will 100% use this.
• tvOS 26
  
  • Liquid Glass: Looks nice. I guess.
  • New/Returning Shows Apple does a great job curating content, so I fully expect that they'll continue to bring good shows to their service.
  • Karaoke Party: Okay, this is all really cool. Though I have to be exceedingly drunk to (badly) sing in front of people, so maybe it's not?
  • FUCK! FUCK! FUUUUUUCK!!! The fact that Apple doesn't have an alphabet navigation bar for your library is beyond fucking stupid. Apple PUNISHES you for buying a lot of shows by making it shitty and impossible to navigate your titles quickly. Want to watch Zoolander? Guess you get to scroll (slowly!) through every other fucking title in your entire fucking library. God I fucking hate Apple for stupid shit like this. EVERY. OTHER. MEDIA. PLAYER. HAS. EFFICIENT. NAVIGATION. Why the FUCK can't Apple do the same? AppleTV OS will continue to be shit until we get this, and pouring "liquid glass" over the same old thing isn't going to change a FUCKING THING. I hope that they actually added a quick navigation feature and just didn't talk about it.
• macOS 26 Tahoe
  
  • LOL Craig: I swear, this guy needs his own AppleTV+ show because he's always so dang entertaining and seems game for anything. "Bodacious"... sure, Craig!
  • Liquid Glass: It's all very nice. Except when it isn't. I remain unsure about readability. Not having a background to the menu bar seems like it could be an issue. Being able to quickly read menus without distraction seems like a huge problem. But maybe not? I guess we'll see. I sure like the third-party app I use which hides the notch at the top of the screen "DeNotchifier" I think? Maybe it will be updated to work with Tahoe so I can choose.
  • Continuity: This delightful Apple Ecosystem feature is so ingrained in me now that I don't even think about it. I am always going from iPhone to iMac to iPad to MacBook... cutting and pasting between them and mousing from one screen to the other without even thinking about it. The fact that Apple is taking the idea further is phenomenal. I love that the Phone app will be on my MacBook now! One less thing! Beautiful.
  • Shortcuts: I don't use Shortcuts nearly enough. Sounds like it'll be time to take another look, because this new version is making things too easy to ignore.
  • Spotlight: Apple's search functionality is lost on me. It just seems like it's getting in the way a lot of the time. But it looks like Apple is making their service way too handy and convenient to ignore. The "Quick Keys" and freaky-cool integration alone will have me taking a look at Spotlight once Tahoe drops. Because daaaang. This demo is fire.
  • Search History: FINALLY. I've been using 3rd party clipboard tools forever because clipboard history is essential when you're working on design. They've always been okay, but a little janky. Now I can get to my clip history easily and efficiently.
  • Gaming/MetalFX: Wow are game graphics getting scary-real. In that inZOI game it looks like you're playing The Sims with real people!

• visionOS 26
  
  • Blah blah blah: Until this gets to be an affordable experience, only a few people will actually give a shit about any of this. Although those weather/clock apps that can be put on the wall are awesome. And those "personas" and eerie... this is what the future looks like!
  • Pano: Being able to view movies that were shot in panovision is pretty sweet. But... again... how can normal people afford to experience this?
• iPad OS 26
  
  • Windowing: Unreal. Apple finally managed to provide a true multitasking windowing environment on iPad. What in the name of God took them so fucking long? I seriously want to know. When Craig introduced them, he even said that "you've all been waiting for"... and it's like... YEAH, WE HAVE! Not entirely sure the method they used is the best, but I don't even care. I'm just thrilled windows are there. "Who would have thought?" indeed.
  • Files/Preview: It looks like iPad is on a collision course with MacOS now that windowing and file management is here. I wonder how long until they all run the same OS?
  • Audio: Welp. Using an iPad as a DJ media device just became a reality. I think.

Annnnd... that's a wrap. Absolutely no mention of HomeKit. Which is disappointing, but hardly surprising. This shitty fucking pile of garbage is clearly not important to Apple because they've got to keep throwing developer hours at pumping more AI all over everything. Though if there's one place that could use some intelligence... any intelligence at all... that would be HomeKit.