Apple’s Biggest WWDC in Years

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2026 (WWDC 2026), held June 8–12 at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, delivered one of the most significant software overhauls in the company’s history. Tim Cook, in what became his emotional farewell keynote before handing the CEO role to John Ternus in September, unveiled Siri AI, iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, and a sweeping overhaul of Apple Intelligence.

Siri AI: Powered by Google Gemini

The headline announcement was Siri AI — a completely rebuilt version of Apple’s digital assistant powered by a custom 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini LLM, for which Apple reportedly pays Google $1 billion annually. The new Siri AI supports multi-turn conversations, on-screen awareness, and can take agentic actions within apps. A dedicated Siri app makes conversation history searchable and persistent across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Users can now converse back and forth with Siri naturally, ask it about content visible on screen, and have it draft messages, edit documents, and change passwords autonomously using Apple Intelligence agents.

iOS 27 Key Highlights

• Liquid Glass UI redesign — frosted translucent design language across the whole OS.
• Siri AI with on-screen context awareness and agentic capabilities.
• Apple Intelligence 2.0 — smarter writing tools, Photo editing with Reframe, advanced summarisation.
• Password agent — Passwords app uses AI to autonomously visit websites and fix insecure passwords.
• Dynamic App Grid on watchOS 27 surfaces recently used apps automatically.
• iPhone 11 dropped from iOS 27 support — iPhone 12 and later remain supported.

macOS Golden Gate

macOS 27 (codenamed Golden Gate) brings a Liquid Glass visual redesign to the Mac, alongside deep Apple Intelligence integration. All-new AI-powered spotlight search can understand natural language queries and return results from across files, emails, and apps simultaneously.

Tim Cook’s Farewell Moment

In an emotional closing moment, Tim Cook thanked the developer community after 15 years as CEO: “I truly believe that the best is still ahead, and Apple is creating the best products in the world to deliver experiences that enrich people’s lives.” He will transition to Executive Chairman on September 1, 2026 as John Ternus takes over.

When Can You Get iOS 27?

iOS 27 Beta 1 was released for developers on June 8. Public beta expected in July 2026. Full release alongside iPhone 18 in September 2026.