Thursday, 19 June 2025
“This one a very long time have I watched. All his life has he appeared away — to the long run, to the horizon. By no means his thoughts on the place he was. What he was doing. Journey. Heh! Pleasure. Heh! A Jedi craves not these items. You might be reckless!”
—Yoda, The Empire Strikes Again
My largest takeaway from WWDC 2025 is that Apple seemingly took some classes to coronary heart from its unfulfilled guarantees of a 12 months in the past. This 12 months’s WWDC wasn’t merely targeted on what Apple is assured it may well ship within the subsequent 12 months, however on what they’ll ship this fall. I could be overlooking a minor exception or two, however each main characteristic introduced in the WWDC 2025 keynote was each demonstratable in product briefings, and is presently out there within the developer beta seeds. I used to be additionally informed, explicitly, by Apple executives, that Apple plans to ship every little thing proven final week within the fall.
That’s accurately, and a powerful return to type for the corporate. It takes confidence to vow solely what you understand you possibly can ship, and it takes execution to ship what you’ve promised. If there’s extra coming within the early months of 2026, announce these options once they’re prepared. It’s confirmed very efficient for Apple to unfold the debut of recent options throughout your entire calendar 12 months, with many main options not showing till the .3, .4, and even .5 OS releases. I feel it’ll show simply as efficient marketing-wise to unfold the announcement of extra options all year long as nicely.
Yr-Based mostly Model Numbers
There’s no query that it’s slightly bizarre for each one in all Apple’s platforms to have jumped to model 26. I imply, VisionOS skipped 21 model numbers. Presumably, when Apple subsequent unveils a brand new OS (HomeOS?), it’s going to begin at model 26, 27, or 28. However I’m already getting used to this, and I feel the underlying logic laid out by Craig Federighi on the outset of the keynote is true: with Apple now as much as six developer platforms (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Imaginative and prescient, TV, Watch), it had gotten onerous to maintain monitor of which model numbers corresponded to the identical 12 months. That issues not only for the comfort of figuring out, in years to return, when particular variations of every OS have been launched, but it surely additionally issues as a result of none of those platforms exist in isolation. They’re all components of a cohesive entire, a cross-device “Apple OS 26” expertise, because it have been.
One factor I haven’t seen commented on, although, is that switching to year-based model numbers establishes as de facto coverage one thing that has now been true for fairly just a few years, however which Apple has by no means formally acknowledged: that every of those platforms will get a serious model launch yearly. 20 years in the past the replace schedule for Mac OS X was fairly erratic:
| Mac OS X 10.7 Lion | July 2011 |
| Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard | August 2009 |
| Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard | October 2007 |
| Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger | April 2005 |
| Mac OS X 10.3 Panther | October 2003 |
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (which started the odd four-year run the place the Mac’s OS title didn’t comprise “Mac”) arrived in July 2012, and thereafter a brand new main model has shipped in September, October, or November (MacOS 11 Huge Sur, in 2020) each single 12 months. This rigorous annual schedule is a trademark of the Tim Prepare dinner period at Apple, and clearly displays his persona (because the erratic/idiosyncratic schedule of the mid-2000s mirrored Steve Jobs’s).
iPadOS Windowing
The pedant in me is mildly perturbed that the brand new windowing system unveiled for iPadOS 26 is essentially being mentioned beneath the time period “multitasking”. It’s windowing. One solution to perceive the distinction is that the unique Mac OS (a.ok.a. System 1) had windowing — windowing that appeared and labored loads like this — however no multitasking. The very early Mac may run only one app a time, however the working app may open a number of home windows. However, no matter. It’s all good.
One factor I discover fascinating is that whereas cut up display and Slide Over have been eradicated within the new system (reward be), Stage Supervisor continues to be a characteristic. Simply plain windowing is accurately: advert hoc. You make home windows and transfer them round and resize them nevertheless you need. Stage Supervisor is fussier — it’s a extra advanced system for customers who want to set up their home windows into one thing akin to tasks or associated duties.
So, successfully, Apple, three years in the past, jumped straight to a extra advanced, extra fiddly choice — Stage Supervisor — and solely now has added the easier, extra apparent, not fiddly in any respect choice (windowing). It’s been a bizarre journey, however I feel iPadOS has lastly arrived at a spot the place displaying a couple of app or doc at a time on-screen is what it ought to have been all alongside: simple and apparent.
Liquid Glass
Alan Dye, introducing Liquid Glass, across the 8m:20s mark within the keynote:
Software program is the center and soul of our merchandise. It brings them to
life, shapes their persona, and defines their goal. At
Apple, we’ve at all times believed it’s the deep integration of {hardware}
and software program that makes interacting with expertise intuitive,
lovely, and a pleasure to make use of. iOS 7 launched a simplified design
constructed on distinct layers, easy animations, and new colours. It
redefined our design language for years to return. Now, with the
highly effective advances in our {hardware}, silicon, and graphics
applied sciences, we’ve the chance to put the inspiration for
the subsequent chapter of our software program. At this time we’re excited to announce
our broadest design replace ever. Our purpose is an exquisite new
design that brings pleasure and delight to each consumer expertise, one
that’s extra private, and places higher focus in your content material, all
whereas nonetheless feeling immediately acquainted.And for the primary time, we’re introducing a common design
throughout our platforms. This unified design language creates a extra
harmonious expertise as you progress between merchandise, whereas
sustaining the qualities that make every distinctive. Impressed by the
physicality and richness of VisionOS, we challenged ourselves to
make one thing purely digital really feel pure and alive. From the way it
appears to be like to the way it feels because it dynamically responds to the touch. To
obtain this, we started by rethinking the basic components that
make up our software program, and it begins with a wholly new
expressive materials we name Liquid Glass. With the optical
qualities of glass and a fluidity that solely Apple can obtain, it
transforms relying in your content material and even your context, and
brings extra readability to navigation and controls. It superbly
refracts mild and dynamically reacts to your motion with
specular highlights. This materials brings a brand new stage of vitality
to each side of your expertise. From the smallest components you
work together with to bigger ones, it responds in actual time to your
content material and your enter. Making a extra vigorous expertise that we
assume you’ll discover actually pleasant.
Examine and distinction to Steve Jobs introducing Aqua at Macworld San Francisco in January 2000:
So that is the structure, besides there’s yet another factor. The
yet another factor is, we’ve been secretly for the final 18 months
designing a very new consumer interface. And that new consumer
interface builds on Apple’s legacy and carries it into the subsequent
century. And we name that new consumer interface Aqua, as a result of it’s
liquid. One of many design targets was whenever you noticed it, you wished to
lick it. […]Whenever you design a brand new consumer interface, it’s a must to begin off
humbly. You must begin off saying, what are the best
components in it? What does a button appear to be? And also you spend months
engaged on a button. That’s a button in Aqua. That is what radio
buttons appear to be. Easy issues. That is what checkboxes look
like. That is what popup lists appear to be. Once more, you’re beginning
to get the texture of this, slightly totally different. That is what sliders
can appear to be. Now, let me present you home windows. That is what the highest
of home windows appear to be. These three buttons appear to be a site visitors
sign, don’t they? Purple means shut the window. Yellow means
decrease the window. And inexperienced means maximize the window. Fairly
easy. And super match and end on this working system.
Whenever you roll over these items, you get these. You see them? And
when you find yourself not the important thing window, they go clear. So a
lot of match and end on this.Along with the match and end, we paid quite a lot of consideration to
dynamics. Not solely how do issues look, however how do they transfer, how
do they behave. And our purpose on this consumer interface was twofold.
One, we wished to offer a way more highly effective consumer interface to our
professional clients. However two, at the exact same time, we wished to make
this the dream consumer interface for any person who’s by no means even
touched a pc earlier than. And that’s actually onerous to do. It’s like
after we do movies at Pixar. It’s very easy, it’s loads simpler, to
make a movie that appeals to five-year-olds and beneath. But it surely’s
very troublesome to make one movie that five-year-olds love and that
their dad and mom additionally love. And that was the purpose of this consumer
interface. To make it span the vary so that individuals turning on
their iMac for the primary time have been enchanted with it, and it was
tremendous simple to make use of, and but, our professional clients additionally felt, My God,
this takes me to locations I believed I may by no means get to. And
that’s what we tried to do.
Re-watching Jobs’s introduction of Aqua for the umpteenth time, I nonetheless discover it enthralling. I discovered Alan Dye’s introduction of Liquid Glass to be soporific, if not downright horseshitty.
However the work itself, Liquid Glass because it launched final week, may be very harking back to Aqua 1 / 4 century (!) in the past. It’s thrilling, it’s contemporary, it essentially appears to be like and feels very cool on the whole — and however in apply fairly just a few facets of it really feel a bit over-the-top and/or half-baked. Identical to with Aqua, it’ll certainly get dialed in. Legibility issues will likely be addressed.
Liquid Glass has been within the works for a very long time, however what we see at this time has come collectively in a short time. For these utilizing inner builds inside Apple, what Apple unveiled final week is successfully the third model of Liquid Glass. Just some weeks previous to WWDC, just a few sources informed me that inner builds have been such a whole mess that they questioned if it might come collectively in time for WWDC developer betas. However come collectively it has. I count on a lot of visible adjustments over the course of the summer season, and vital evolutionary tweaks within the subsequent few years. Throughout Apple’s personal apps, there are quite a lot of locations the place issues haven’t but been glassed up in any respect. That’s how these items work.
As for why, it needs to be sufficient to justify Liquid Glass merely for the sake of trying cool. I opened this piece with a quote from an ideal fictional thinker. I’ll shut it with a quote from an ideal actual one:
“The check of a murals is, in the long run, our affection for it, not our means to elucidate why it’s good.”
—Stanley Kubrick
