Game Changer? (Premium)

Heading into today's WWDC 2025 keynote, world renowned Apple leaker Mark Gurman had escalated his bizarre tirade against Apple Intelligence amidst leaks about a cross-platform design shift called Liquid Glass that he claimed was a calculated distraction from the company's AI problems. But that's not what I saw today. Yes, Apple announced Liquid Glass. And yes, this design will be applied to every Apple platform with a display, from the Mac to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. But Apple didn't shy away from Apple Intelligence, or from conversational Siri, the one and only feature it promised last year but didn't yet deliver. Instead, it opened the keynote discussing its Apple Intelligence successes. And then it spent the rest of the keynote piling on additional Apple Intelligence features across its platforms.

As I read Gurman's increasingly unhinged criticisms of Apple Intelligence this Spring, I kept thinking that if I were somehow in charge of Apple in whatever Bizarro World timeline such a thing could happen, I would do exactly what Apple did do and just embrace its successes while expanding those capabilities. So that was gratifying, on some level. I have my criticisms of Apple, but I also felt a year ago, and still feel today, that our industry--and its customers--deserve and maybe even expect a more measured approach to AI that stands in sharp contrast to the chaos we see at Microsoft, Google, and Open AI.

I am mixed on Liquid Glass, for whatever that's worth: Objectively, it's not a major departure from the current user interface designs we see on Apple's platforms, and subjectively, I don't find it very attractive. That could change with time, but it also doesn't matter. Because for all the announcements that came out of the WWDC keynote today, there was one that stood out dramatically in its importance. It may literally be, as Apple's Craig Federighi said during the event, a "game changer."

I am referring, of course, to the collective set of updates that Apple is bringing to the iPad via the next major software update that it will ship this Fall.

If you spend any time at all on this site, you know that I have been sharply critical of Apple for purposefully holding back the iPad so that it wouldn't undercut Mac sales. As the company advanced the hardware side of the platform through ever-more advanced chips, the premium iPad Pro and Air model lines, the addition of keyboard, mouse, and touchpad support, and a family of smart covers, I kept thinking that this would be it. Maybe, Apple would finally let the iPad be as sophisticated as the Mac when it came to crucial app features related to multitasking and background processes. But it never happened. The beating heart of the iPad has long been capable and willing, even more powerful than what we see in many Macs. And the app platform has long supported professional user interfaces and capabilities. But it was the software, iPadOS, that always let it down.

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