The atmosphere at Apple’s 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference felt like a spouse proudly listing off every item on a honey-do list they’ve finally completed. Rather than introducing something exciting and new, Apple started the keynote detailing modifications to last year’s “liquid glass” design. Overhauling the terrible search function. Improved playground functionality. and so on.
Perhaps most importantly, two years after promising and failing to launch a smarter Siri, Apple has finally unveiled a radically improved version of its AI-powered voice assistant.
But the most important detail wasn’t what Apple announced. That’s how we choose to flaunt some things. Many of the Apple Intelligence demos showed someone standing with a phone in their hands, pressing buttons or using voice commands in real time, while another camera showed the phone’s reactions.
These weren’t live demos on stage, they were demos where anything could happen. They were pre-recorded. But they looked like proof of capabilities that worked much better than what Apple showed at WWDC 2024. At WWDC 2024, the company announced Apple Intelligence and the new Siri to the world through a well-crafted video that turned out to be more promise than product.
The style of the demo caught attention, with comments on Monday’s X comparing today’s keynote to the so-called “vaporware” demos of 2024.
Apple said at the time that the feature would soon be available to users who upgraded to a new device with an M1 or higher chip starting with the iPhone 15 Pro. However, by March 2025, Apple admitted to Daring Fireball that the rollout of the features shown in the product video was “taking longer than expected to be available.” Shortly thereafter, the Cupertino company faced a lawsuit in federal court alleging false advertising over features unveiled at the 2024 event. This case poses real reputational risk for a company that has long built its brand on the promise that its products will work properly.
Last month, Apple agreed to pay a $250 million settlement in the case without admitting wrongdoing.
Monday’s presentation seemed designed, at least in part, to avoid repetition. There were still plenty of fully produced videos showcasing the feature, including a video showing how to adjust Siri’s voice and a video showing improvements to audio-to-text transcription. But a lot of the AI functionality was presented in this “live-like” format, where someone was using the functionality on a real device. The implicit message is that these features also work on real devices and will be available soon.
Additionally, Apple does not require users to purchase the latest iPhone to take advantage of these features. The company says the new Siri will be available through the new iOS 27 on iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 and later models. The current model is iPhone 17. This means most users who have upgraded in the past few years won’t need to purchase new hardware to gain access.
This is likely a concession that Apple doesn’t intend to lock features behind new devices to create upgrade pressure when it promised such features would be available on the iPhone 15 two years ago.
Apple also said the new features will be available across its extensive hardware lineup, including the 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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