On this week's special episode of The MacRumors Show, we talk through all of the major announcements Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026, including Siri AI, new Apple Intelligence features in apps, and system-wide performance and design improvements.


Apple framed the keynote around three areas: platform improvements, Trust and Safety, and a sweeping overhaul of ‌Apple Intelligence‌ and ‌Siri‌. Developer betas of all six operating systems are available now, with a public beta expected in July and a general release in September.

Liquid Glass received a series of improvements in response to user feedback, with Apple reworking the foundations of how the translucent design language is constructed to deliver more uniform refraction and improved contrast. A new system-wide opacity slider lets users dial transparency anywhere from completely clear to fully tinted. App icons also gain sharper definition with additional layering. macOS Golden Gate receives the same Liquid Glass refinements with particular attention to the transparency and shadow issues most pronounced on the Mac.

A significant chunk of the keynote was devoted to performance improvements across all platforms. iPhone and iPad apps launch up to 30% faster, new photos appear in iCloud Photos up to 70% faster after capture, AirDropped photos transfer up to 80% faster, and file transfers in Files are up to 50% faster. A redesigned CPU scheduler reportedly makes older iPhones feel more meaningfully responsive, and iOS 27 supports every iPhone compatible with iOS 26, going back to the iPhone 11.

The search index has been rearchitected to be more stable and comprehensive, with new content indexed almost immediately and a new ranking system in Mail to surface more relevant results. iCloud Shared Albums also gain support for contributions from Android and Windows users.

Apple announced an expanded set of parental controls and Screen Time tools, giving parents more granular ability to monitor and approve what children are doing on-device and within apps, with changes the company said are grounded in expert research.

The centerpiece of the keynote was Siri AI, a ground-up rebuild of Apple's personal assistant built on new Foundation Models co-developed with Google using Gemini technologies. Apple described the result as a profoundly more capable assistant supporting natural back-and-forth conversation, personal context understanding across all on-device content, onscreen awareness, image understanding, and broad world knowledge via web access.

‌Siri‌ now has a dedicated app for browsing and continuing conversations, which sync across devices via ‌iCloud‌. On the iPhone, ‌Siri‌ is embedded in the Dynamic Island and on the Mac it lives inside Spotlight. A new customizable voice model is available at setup. ‌Siri‌ AI extends to CarPlay and AirPods as well.

Visual Intelligence has been folded into a dedicated ‌Siri‌ mode in the Camera app, with new capabilities including nutritional information from a photo of food and bill-splitting from a receipt snap. ‌Siri‌ can now write anywhere text input is available, generate first drafts from natural language descriptions, give feedback on existing writing, and ‌Apple Intelligence‌ adds automatic proofreading system-wide.

Apple said ‌Siri‌ AI uses on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, with cloud processing running on Apple's servers using Google's infrastructure, but handled such that data remains inaccessible to Apple or third parties. ‌Siri‌ AI is free, with some features such as image generation carrying daily usage limits and expanded access available through most ‌iCloud‌+ plans.

Users must join a waitlist to access the new ‌Siri‌. ‌Siri‌ AI will not be available in the EU or China at launch and launches in English only.

Safari gains tab grouping, with ‌Apple Intelligence‌ analyzing pages and organizing open tabs without manual intervention, and a new webpage monitoring feature that notifies users when a page is updated. Safari will also let users describe what they want a browser extension to do in natural language, with ‌Apple Intelligence‌ generating one accordingly, and can automatically change compromised passwords, updating them in the Passwords app.

Shortcuts gains natural language creation, so users can describe a workflow and have ‌Apple Intelligence‌ build it automatically. Messages and Mail both gain contextual one-tap suggestions for actions such as creating a reminder or inserting a photo. Calendar adds natural language event creation and can automatically update recurring events when their pattern changes.
 
Photos gains an improved Clean Up tool with more realistic infill, a new Extend tool that adds breathing room around images or straightens a crooked horizon without cropping, and Reframe, which uses on-device spatial models to adjust perspective. Image Playground is updated with a new generative model capable of photorealistic output, support for editing existing photos, and the ability to circle specific areas for targeted changes.
 
The Home app now aggregates notifications to reduce noise, and uses ‌Apple Intelligence‌ to generate summaries of recorded footage, linking content from multiple cameras together. Maps Flyover has been overhauled with significantly more detail, combining aerial imagery with vision intelligence models.

CarPlay gains new features including video app support, AirPods gain custom EQ settings, Apple Vision Pro gains the ability to turn panorama photos into spatial scenes, and the Health app adds perimenopause and menopause tracking. watchOS 27 brings a dynamic app grid, new gesture controls, and a ‌Siri‌ app to the Apple Watch.

Developer betas of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, watchOS 27, tvOS 27, and visionOS 27 are available now, with a public beta to follow in July. All of the updates are expected to release to the public in September alongside the new iPhone lineup. The MacRumors Show has its own YouTube channel, so make sure you're subscribed to keep up with new episodes and clips.



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If you haven't already listened to the previous episode of The MacRumors Show, catch up to hear our discussion about all of the major rumors surrounding Apple's announcements at WWDC 2026.

Subscribe to ‌The MacRumors Show‌ for new episodes every week, where we discuss some of the topical news breaking here on MacRumors, often joined by interesting guests such as Kayci Lacob, Kevin Nether, John Gruber, Mark Gurman, Jon Prosser, Luke Miani, Matthew Cassinelli, Brian Tong, Quinn Nelson, Jared Nelson, Eli Hodapp, Mike Bell, Sara Dietschy, iJustine, Jon Rettinger, Andru Edwards, Arnold Kim, Ben Sullins, Marcus Kane, Christopher Lawley, Frank McShan, David Lewis, Tyler Stalman, Sam Kohl, Federico Viticci, Thomas Frank, Jonathan Morrison, Ross Young, Ian Zelbo, and Rene Ritchie.

‌The MacRumors Show‌ is on X @MacRumorsShow, so be sure to give us a follow to keep up with the podcast. You can also email us at podcast@macrumors.com or head over to The MacRumors Show forum thread. Remember to rate and review the podcast, and let us know what subjects and guests you would like to see in the future.
This article, "The MacRumors Show: Siri AI, Apple Intelligence in Apps, and More at WWDC 2026" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple this week detailed a broad set of improvements to Liquid Glass, the translucent design language it introduced last year, spanning readability, personalization, sidebar behavior, and app icons.


Announced at the WWDC 2026 keynote and elaborated on further at the Platforms State of the Union, the changes address feedback that followed last year's rollout by making adjustments to the underlying foundations of how Liquid Glass is constructed.

At the core of the updates is a tuning of how the material handles content behind it. Apple has adjusted Liquid Glass so it more effectively diffuses complex content, improving readability throughout the system. To add greater depth and visual separation, Apple has also introduced a darkened edge around Liquid Glass elements, along with brighter specular highlights.

The headline change for users is a new transparency slider in Settings, which allows the look of Liquid Glass to be adjusted anywhere from ultra clear to fully tinted. The control goes considerably further than a binary toggle, giving users granular control over how much the glass effect appears across the system.

Apps already using Liquid Glass will gain many of these improvements automatically when running on iOS 27, without needing to be recompiled. Liquid Glass also adapts to accessibility settings such as Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast.

Apple has also addressed behavior when content scrolls under floating bars. A uniform toolbar now appears across the top in these situations, keeping text legible while improving contrast. The effect is applied automatically for standard toolbars and can be further adjusted using the existing scroll edge effect APIs.

Icon rendering has been updated substantially. Apple says icons will now appear sharper and more defined, with new refraction features that can be selectively applied for added character. On macOS and iPadOS, developers also now have access to an API to surface icons for key app actions in menus, which are hidden by default.

Icon Composer, Apple's dedicated tool for designing app icons, has been updated to support building icons from multiple layers of Liquid Glass. New annotation features allow developers to add refraction or dial in content effects, while an interactive preview shows how a designed icon will look on earlier operating system releases.

Apple has also made a number of changes specific to macOS 27 Golden Gate, including further sidebar refinements and window corner radius updates. For a full breakdown of how Liquid Glass is evolving on the Mac, see our dedicated article.
This article, "Here's How Liquid Glass Is Changing in iOS 27" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple appears to be quietly discontinuing the Vision Pro Travel Case in international markets, with the $199 accessory removed from storefronts across much of the world.


MacRumors can confirm that the Apple Vision Pro Travel Case is no longer listed on Apple's online storefronts around the world, including the UK, Japan, Germany, France, Ireland, and Hong Kong. The Apple Vision Pro accessories page in these countries no longer list the Travel Case at all, and the product web pages that once contained it have been completely removed, which would indicate discontinuation with no plans to revive the product, at least in these countries.

In China and Australia, the listings remain live and visible but the product is grayed out and unavailable to purchase. The case continues to be sold as usual in the U.S., Canada, and the UAE. It is unclear when the changes were made, but they appear to have taken place recently.

The Belkin Travel Bag for Apple Vision Pro remains available for customers in international markets as an alternative. Apple has not announced any changes to the original product's availability.

The move comes as Apple appears to have scaled back its Vision Pro ambitions. The headset's October 2025 M5 refresh reportedly failed to revive meaningful consumer interest, with the $3,499 price tag remaining unchanged despite the chip upgrade. Apple is believed to have sold around 600,000 Vision Pro units in total, and sources have noted an unusually high rate of returns compared to any other recent Apple product.

Following the M5 model's weak reception, the Vision Pro team was reportedly disbanded and its members redistributed across other projects. Vision Products Group chief Mike Rockwell has been leading Apple's Siri team since March 2025. Plans for a cheaper, lighter "Vision Air" were reportedly scrapped in October 2025, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that if a new headset does eventually materialize, he would not expect it for "around two more years at least," given that the bulk of Apple's mixed-reality hardware talent have been moved to other projects.

Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported this month that incoming Apple CEO John Ternus signed off on canceling both a second Vision Pro and the Vision Air, with Apple's focus now shifted to smart glasses. Kuo says two products remain in development: AI-equipped glasses to rival Meta's Ray-Bans, expected in 2027, and a display-equipped set of AR glasses unlikely to arrive before 2029. Gurman separately indicated that a slimmer, cheaper Vision Pro remains a possibility in the long term, but is unlikely to arrive before late 2028 or 2029 at the earliest.

Whether it signals a complete discontinuation or simply a quiet inventory wind-down, it is difficult to not see the apparent phasing out of the Vision Pro Travel Case as part of the device's uncertain future.

Thanks, Ben!
This article, "Apple Seemingly Discontinuing Vision Pro Travel Case Around the World" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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macOS 27 Golden Gate is the final version of macOS to feature full Rosetta 2 support, meaning the translation layer that keeps Intel-built apps running on Apple silicon Macs is set to disappear entirely with next year's major macOS release.


Golden Gate is the first macOS release limited to Apple silicon Macs and marks the end of the road for Intel-based hardware, but the implications reach Apple silicon owners too.

Rosetta 2 is the dynamic binary translator Apple introduced alongside the M1 chip in late 2020. It currently allows Intel-compiled apps to continue running on Apple silicon without modification. Apple first confirmed this timeline at its Platforms State of the Union during WWDC 2025:

Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases — through macOS 27 — as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.

With macOS 27 Golden Gate now in beta testing, that commitment has reached its final stage. Apple silicon Mac owners running Intel-only apps have one macOS release left before those apps stop working.

Apple began warning users ahead of the cutoff. With macOS 26.4 and 26.5, a system alert surfaces whenever a user launches an Intel-only app, flagging that support will end in a future macOS release. The notifications are designed to give both end users and developers time to find or build native Apple silicon alternatives before the deadline arrives.

Most widely used apps have been updated with native Apple silicon support in the six years since the transition was announced in 2020. Developers and organizations still dependent on Intel-only software, however, will need to find replacements or push for updated builds before macOS 28 ships, or simply remain on macOS 27.

Golden Gate also automatically uninstalls Rosetta 2 if you had it installed in macOS 26 Tahoe, so those who need to continue using it will have to reinstall the feature.

macOS 27 Golden Gate is currently in beta for developers, with a public beta coming next month and launch expected in September.
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Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi has explained why the company launched a standalone Siri app in iOS 27, after previously characterizing a dedicated chatbot as contrary to its Apple Intelligence strategy.


The new ‌Siri‌ app, announced at WWDC earlier this week, gives users a centralized place to manage and revisit their conversations with ‌Siri‌ AI. Federighi addressed the apparent about-face during a post-keynote discussion for the media at Apple Park this week, responding directly to a question about Apple's prior public stance.

Following WWDC 2025, Federighi and senior vice president of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak went on a media tour in which they described Apple's approach as weaving ‌Siri‌ into the user's existing workflow rather than offering "a bolt-on chatbot on the side."

Federighi this week said the decision came down to a practical user need to return to and continue past ‌Siri‌ conversations. Apple determined that a home screen app was the most natural affordance on its platform for that purpose, and framed the ‌Siri‌ app as an extension of the system experience rather than a standalone product:

We see Siri not as a separate chatbot, just an unintegrated place you go and chit-chat, but rather as an integral, conversational tool that you use in the moment, deeply integrated into your experience.

Understanding what's on screen, able to interface, not in some separate world, but directly in the document that you're editing and that you want help proofreading, that you want tips on. And so all these experiences are conversational. They are really an extension of your system experience, deeply integrated into your flow.

Now, we did go back and forth on what's the best way, if you want to get back to such a chat that you had, because you want to continue it, you want to reference it, and quite honestly, in our platform, the most natural affordance for any user to go find something like that is to have an app that they can manage on their home screen, launch, and get back to. And so we have a Siri app, and that Siri app just re-embodies those capabilities of that core system experience.

The ‌iOS 27‌ developer beta is available now, though access to the new ‌Siri‌ requires joining a waitlist in Settings, with a public beta expected in July.
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Apple has quietly removed the Walkie-Talkie app from Apple Watch in the first developer beta of watchOS 27, with the app vanishing from both the app list and Control Center.


Walkie-Talkie launched with watchOS 5 in 2018 and allowed Apple Watch users to send push-to-talk voice messages to one another over Wi-Fi or cellular using FaceTime infrastructure. Unlike traditional walkie-talkies, it worked over any distance, making it a novel way to communicate without picking up an iPhone. Despite the promise of the feature at launch, however, Apple gave it very little attention in the years that followed, with no meaningful updates across eight major watchOS releases.

Shortly after its debut, Apple was forced to temporarily disable Walkie-Talkie following the discovery of a security vulnerability that could allow a user to listen through another person's microphone without their knowledge. Apple resolved the issue with a watchOS 5.3 update, but the episode did little to build lasting enthusiasm for the feature.

The app's removal has not been officially confirmed by Apple, but users running the first ‌watchOS 27‌ beta observe that the app is nowhere to be found, with no option to reinstall it.

‌watchOS 27‌ is still in very early beta testing and there remains a slim possibility Apple could reintroduce the app before the software reaches a public release later this year. Given how little attention the feature has received over the years, however, its removal looks more like a quiet retirement than an accidental omission.

A public beta of ‌watchOS 27‌ is set to arrive next month, followed by launch in the fall, likely alongside new Apple Watch models.
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