Apple redesigns its operating systems and seeks to boost its AI

The Cupertino company has unveiled a major revamp of its operating systems, including the name, bringing it closer to the aesthetics of VisionPro glasses.

Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) yesterday with an interesting leap forward in its device software and some new AI developments.

At its annual event to introduce developers to its new operating systems for the iPhone, Mac, and iPad, the company with the bitten apple decided to unify the design and nomenclature of all this software.

The current iOS 18 will not be followed by iOS 19, but Apple has decided to call it iOS 26 , adding a year to its release date. The same goes for the rest of the operating systems (except for Macs), which when they launch next September will be called iPadOS 26, TvOS 26, WatchOS 26, and VisionOS 26.

This change is in an attempt by Cupertino to unify the design of its software, inspired by its augmented reality glasses, the Vision Pro. To this end, it announced Liquid Glass, a new aesthetic that all operating systems will share, where transparency will be the predominant feature.

As the company defines it, this new design reflects and refracts the elements around it and dynamically transforms to give more prominence to the content and bring even greater dynamism to the controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and more.

This is the first time Apple has applied the same design to all of its platforms.

But the new features in its operating systems, apart from the redesign, were not enough this year.

Following Apple's 2024 announcement of Intelligence and its lag in most of its AI suite's features compared to the competition, this conference's focus was primarily on developments in artificial intelligence.

The Cupertino company announced the Foundation Models framework, which will allow developers to use Apple Intelligence on their computers offline , through free AI inference.

Apple is changing its strategy and will allow millions of app developers to access its artificial intelligence models for the first time, seeking to gain an edge over its competitors.

Thanks to the Foundation Models framework, Apple ensures that, for example, an educational app could use the device's built-in model to generate a test from a user's notes, without needing to use a cloud API. Or an outdoor activities app could add natural language search capabilities available even when the user is offline.

And for users, the company announced live translation features for phone calls, messages, and FaceTime, along with new features for AI-powered visual search and images created by Apple Intelligence.

And Siri? No mention of Apple's voice assistant was made during the presentation, and according to The Wall Street Journal, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said an improved version of the voice assistant wasn't yet available because Apple needs "more time to meet our high quality standards."

Initially, the news didn't seem to convince investors, with the company down 1.2% at the close of trading. The delay in launching its AI innovations and specific problems with some tools like Siri are putting Apple on the ropes as the competition rapidly advances.