Two years ago, at its own Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced a suite of AI features under “Apple Intelligence”. Not everyone was impressed by Genmoji, the picture playground, or the writing tools. It’s an updated and more intelligent Siri with “contextual awareness” capabilities, a technological way for the assistant to understand what’s happening on your iPhone screen, and you don’t need to search for information throughout your apps.
Apple has promised that the new Siri will launch with the iPhone 16 series in the fall. It never came.
The company delayed the Siri relaunch several times from that fall to spring. At WWDC 2025, Apple senior vice president Craig Federighi finally admitted that work on the new Siri “requires more time to reach our high bar” and that “we look forward to sharing more in the coming year.”
To address its massive disruption, Apple released Liquid Glass for all its platforms. The strategy worked; Except for the most vocal tech enthusiasts, most consumers have forgotten about the new Siri. Apple’s failure to introduce the new Assistant has had no impact on iPhone or Apple device sales.
Well, it’s been two years since it was announced and Apple still hasn’t released Siri 2.0, but it will finally be announced, Finally Happening this year. Needless to say, the WWDC 2026 spotlight will be on Assistant. How much of what was promised at WWDC 2025 will Apple deliver thanks to its new Google Gemini brain?
Finally, a Siri app
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the new Siri will have a new look. When you hold down the side button, instead of a multi-colored glow around the sides of your iPhone screen, Siri will emerge from a “dark-colored interface” and dynamic island that matches the theme of this year’s WWDC displays.
Gurman also says that Apple will introduce a Siri app that will work like other chatbot apps. You can instantly type and see responses in a chat-style conversation. Past “Chats” are stored in the app. He says Apple will open up Siri to third-party AI chatbots and allow users to choose from them for queries.
Another planned feature is said to be on the “agentic” AI side, where you’ll be able to perform multi-step tasks via voice command. Gurman also says Siri will be integrated into the camera app for visual intelligence, a computer vision feature that helps AI chatbots recognize objects and information in photos.
I’m sure there’s a lot more to Siri. It looks like Apple is betting it all on trying to prove it’s not far behind in the AI race.
Software tightens the nuts and bolts
All rumors and reports suggest that Apple’s “27” software updates for all its platforms will focus on improving performance, eliminating bugs and strengthening security.
This makes sense since Liquid Glass debuted last year, so this time Apple will reportedly focus on under-the-hood changes. Gurman reports that some platforms could see longer battery life with updates.
Any visual changes to Liquid Glass are expected to be subtle—mostly increased contrast and resolution refinements for transparent UI elements. Personally, I hope Apple provides some sort of slider so that users can determine how much liquid glass effect they have on their devices.
Don’t expect any major hardware
While Apple has announced hardware at WWDC before—notables include the infamously trashy Mac Pro in 2013 and the Cheese Greater Tower in 2019—we don’t expect Apple to drop anything new.
A foldable iPhone isn’t expected until the fall event in September, along with the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. While Vision Pro is said to be on ice, Apple is shifting its priorities to developing smart glasses — both with and without screens — to launch in 2027 and beyond.
The MacBook Pro was refreshed last fall. The MacBook Air and iPad Air were refreshed in March, debuting with the category-defining MacBook Neo.
If If there’s any new hardware, it could be an update to the Apple TV 4K and HomePod Mini. Gurman said the two are “ready to go and waiting for a new smile.” The devices will have an upgraded chip to support AI features. The Apple TV set-top box could get an “updated remote.”
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