The vibe of Apple’s 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference felt like a spouse proudly writing off all the items on a to-do list. Instead of showing something exciting and new, Apple presented a keynote detailing the refinement of last year’s “Liquid Glass” design; correction of its poor search function; development of its Playground feature, and more.
Perhaps most importantly, two years after promising but failing to introduce the intelligent Siri, Apple has finally unveiled a modified version of its powerful AI voice assistant.
But the most important details weren’t what Apple announced. It was the way he chose to display other things. Many Apple Intelligence demos feature someone standing, phone in hand, pressing buttons or using voice commands in real time, while another camera shows the answer to the call.
These weren’t live demos on stage, or anything—it could have gone wrong; they were pre-recorded. But they looked more like proof of features that worked than what Apple showed at WWDC 2024, when the company first unveiled Apple Intelligence and the new Siri to the world with professionally produced videos that ended up promising more than the product.
This style of presentation has been noted, with comments on X on Monday comparing today’s previews to those demos of 2024 called “vaporware”.
Apple said at the time that the features would soon be available to those who upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro and newer devices with M1 chips or better. But in March 2025, Apple admitted to Daring Fireball that rolling out the features shown in the production video “will take us longer than we thought to deliver.” Not long after, the Cupertino company faced a lawsuit in federal court alleging false advertising of the features shown at that 2024 event – a case that carried the real risk of a company whose name was built on the promise that its products would simply work.
Last month, Apple agreed to pay $250 million in the suit, without admitting wrongdoing.
Monday’s presentation appeared designed, at least in part, to avoid a repeat. There were still plenty of fully produced feature videos, such as one showing how to customize Siri’s voice and another showing advanced voice-to-text transcription. But many AI features are demonstrated in this “live-like” format, rather than 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 buy the latest iPhone to get these features. The new Siri will be available with the new iOS 27 on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max and all iPhone 16 models and later, according to the company. The current model is the iPhone 17, which means most users who have upgraded in the past few years won’t need to buy new hardware to gain access.
It is a concession, perhaps, that Apple will not lock features behind new devices to create pressure for development 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 entire 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 an iPhone with Apple Intelligence.
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