Category: Apple Insider

Sort out your summer viewing with this deal from Paramount Plus, netting you two months at just $0.99 per month. But only if you’re quick.

The summer is upon us, and while we should all be going outside and enjoying the sunshine, it’s also a great opportunity to catch up on TV. Thanks to one deal from Paramount Plus, you can do that without spending much money at all.

New and eligible former subscribers can sign up for Paramount Plus for $0.99 per month for their first two months of service. That means being able to watch everything on the service from sports to original dramas.

Get Paramount+ for $0.99 for 2 months

You can also choose the plan you want, except for live TV and trailers.

Once the two-month promo period is up, it will auto-renew at the normal rate for your chosen plan. If you go for the cheapest option, that would be $8.99 per month.

The offer is open until June 25, 2026, meaning you have only a small window to grab it. It’s available to people aged 18 or over, and other terms and conditions also apply.

Get 50% off Apple TV too

While the Paramount Plus deal is great, you can also get another Apple-related deal. Select Amazon accounts are able to sign up for Apple TV streaming with Amazon Prime at half the usual price for two months.

This is an account-specific offer, so not everyone will gain access to it. Your mileage may vary, but it’s worth a try.

Arriving one day after the rest of the second wave of developer betas, watchOS 27 beta 2 is finally available for most of the compatible Apple Watch lineup.

On Monday, Apple released the second round of developer betas for iOS 27, macOS 27, and the rest of the lineup. That is, except for watchOS 27.

That has changed, as Apple has rolled out the second developer beta of watchOS 27 on Tuesday. The reason behind the delay isn’t known.

This beta is currently not available for the Apple Watch Ultra 3. It does, however, seem to be available for the rest of the lineup.

The build number is 24R5305g, up from the first beta’s 24R5289n.

Beware the early betas

While AppleInsider and Apple itself usually recommend that people trying out beta software should do so on secondary, spare hardware instead of their mission-critical or daily driver devices, it’s a warning that matters more this time around.

That is because this is Apple’s early developer betas for an operating system that is still actively under development. Therefore, there’s a higher chance of buggy, broken, and potentially harmful elements.

It’s a build intended to help developers learn about the operating system changes before its release later in 2026. It’s not intended to be used by the average user.

When it comes to the WWDC developer betas, unless you have a vested interest in using them, such as app development, don’t install the early betas.

Apple Intelligence is once again helping photographers add to their images in Photos for iOS 27. So long as you’re fine with it guessing what you didn’t include in the original shot.

The Photos app has been the beneficiary of a number of generative AI-based tools that use Apple Intelligence. All to try and make your photographs look great.

It all started with Clean Up, which let you eliminate unwanted and unsightly elements from your images, and then intelligently fill in the missing pixels. This is also part of Spatial Reframe, which adds elements when you move the camera and show things that were not originally caught.

In another new AI-based tool, Extend, Apple uses the same concept but thinks bigger. It’s now generating elements that are outside of the frame.

Extending the crop

Editors working on images have a few choices when it comes to changing the composition of the shot. At its most basic level, this can be a simple crop of the image.

That is, lopping off edges from the shot so that a smaller part of the overall frame occupies more of the finished picture. Think of trimming the side of a photograph to get a thumb or an annoying bit of the photo off-frame.

However, if you felt that the image needed to be wider than what you actually shot, it’s a different type of problem. You could create a composite, using imagery from elsewhere to fill in the newly created and blank space.

Extend in Photos is the same concept. It’s just that it comes up with the imagery that fills that blank space.

Apple Intelligence looks at the surrounding pixels and the rest of the image to determine what goes into the empty space. It then creates its best guess and fills the void, using its knowledge base.

Educated AI guesses

The main point of extending the frame is to create something aesthetically pleasing to the user. It has to work out what could be there and create some form of realistic element to fit into the space that could plausibly exist.

This is not the same as generating pixels showing something that does actually exist in that space. Without looking at other reference material, no AI will be able to accomplish that without a high amount of luck.

Handily, most people who would use this will look for generations that are good enough to work. Not necessarily absolute reality.

In a test image of a cat on a windowsill, it neatly created an extra curtain to one side, more dead plants to the other. It even made more window above the cat’s head, complete with condensation.

However, I know full well that the painted window frame on the left of the shot is completely incorrect. It should be plastic frames, but instead, it’s deteriorating painted wood.

This certainly doesn’t mean the resulting expansion of the image is ugly. Far from it.

Another shot of a street corner and a castle late at night is decently enlarged too. Bollards, poles, and other traffic are all generated well, and most of it fits the scene.

That said, a visible back of a road sign seems off, in part because it seems like a slightly incorrect shape. The pole’s placement also doesn’t quite line up with the road layout either.

A shot of a real Apple Store staircase in Rome was used to try and compare the AI’s guesswork with reality. The resulting expansion simply added more stairs and glass to the shot, which again looked appropriate.

In reality, there were doors and no extra steps, but Photos didn’t know about that.

Hallucinations are possible

Don’t misunderstand the testing here. We are more interested in Extend coming up with a plausible way to add extra scenery and objects to a photograph.

Plausible and looking good without errors is the game here. And overall, it does quite well.

But even so, it is still susceptible to the occasional misstep.

In one shot of an airport in Rome, the initial result seems plausible. The buildings extend sensibly into the background, and at first glance, everything seems plausible.

That is, until you check out the yellow and red vehicle on the right-hand side. It appears that the AI decided that the weird tire and metal siding of something was an oddly short truck.

It would’ve been a good guess, had it not been rendered to be floating about a foot off the ground.

Searching for other shots from the time reveals it is a movable conveyor used to load luggage on and off aircraft.

To be fair to it, the original image only had a small section of a vehicle showing, and it does look like the back of a truck if you ignore the shadows. It does have to generate based on what information it has available, no matter how small the item fragment is.

This does mean that, if you have unusual elements sticking in from the sides of your original shot, you may want to fix that first. You could use Clean Up to get rid of the oddity before extending the frame, otherwise you’re leaving it all up to chance.

Overall, Extend is a logical continuation of the generative AI tool that Apple had before, and one that works reasonably well.

It has the potential to go wrong, just like the nightmare fuel generated by Spatial Reframe if you’re not careful. So long as you aren’t expecting perfect reality and just want the elements to be “good enough,” then Extend is up to the task.

John Ternus has been talking about focusing on Apple’s core strength of design once he takes over as CEO, and a now a questionable report extrapolates that this means he’ll shake up the design team.

John Ternus is now best known for taking over as Apple CEO from Tim Cook, but as recently as January 2026, he took control of the firm’s design team. Now according to Bloomberg, far from leaving that because of other CEO duties, he is planning to continue working on Apple’s whole design philosophy.

Reportedly, Ternus told staff that under him, Apple will “keep focusing on design, because design is core to what we do in Apple.”

He said that Apple has brought “truly incredible design” to customers, and done so more than any other firm. Ternus claims that the best-designed item that most customers have, is an Apple product.

“We’re going to make sure that stays the case,” he said.

There are no further details, although the report echoes claims from January 2026 that Ternus plans a shakeup of the design teams. What is clear, though, is that this is going to mark a clear difference between Ternus and his predecessor, Tim Cook.

Cook was once criticized by Steve Jobs for not being a product person, in the way that Jobs or Jony Ive would obsess over them. It’s repeatedly been reported that Cook did not often visit the design teams, and now it’s said that Ternus has already devoted a lot of his time to the design division.

The first products to come out under Ternus’s aegis will be the iPhone 18 range in September 2026, the month he officially takes over. It’s said that Apple is aiming to mark the 20th anniversary of the original iPhone with a series of new devices, including a new iPhone Fold, and AirPods with cameras, in 2027.

Even those, though, are already at the testing stage. So while Ternus has been involved with them, it could take a couple of years before Apple releases a device that was made entirely on his watch.

Alogic is bringing more touch and stylus input options to Mac with a new desktop monitor and portable displays, expanding a lineup that adds a feature Apple doesn’t offer on its own hardware yet.

The company unveiled the Aspekt Touch 27 and Folio portable displays at InfoComm 2026, expanding its lineup of touch-enabled hardware for Mac users. Both products let users interact directly with apps, documents, presentations, and creative projects through touch and stylus input.

Alogic is one of the few monitor makers offering touchscreen hardware for Macs. The company uses its own software to enable touch gestures, navigation, annotation, and drawing on macOS.

The Aspekt Touch 27 adds touchscreen input to a desktop monitor

The Aspekt Touch 27 is a smaller version of Alogic’s existing 32-inch model. The new display combines a 27-inch 4K IPS touchscreen with a 60Hz refresh rate, 600 nits of brightness, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, and support for 97% of the DCI-P3 color space, 93% Adobe RGB, and 100% sRGB.

Alogic pairs the display with its Active Stylus, which offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. The monitor supports 10-point multitouch input and MPP 2.0 styluses, while a magnetic holder wirelessly charges the stylus between uses.

The monitor also functions as a docking station with HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, USB-C, Gigabit Ethernet, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Three USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, dual 5W speakers, and up to 150W of total charging output are built into the display, including up to 90W of USB-C power delivery for a connected laptop.

The Aspekt Touch 27 is available in Silver and Space Black, and buyers can choose from a Raise Stand, a Fold Stand, or an Omni Fold Stand. The Fold Stand lowers the display into a drafting position for stylus use, while the Omni Fold Stand includes an integrated mount for an M4 Mac mini.

Folio targets portable Mac and iPad workflows

Alogic also introduced the Folio and Folio Duo portable touchscreen displays for users who need a secondary screen away from a desk. The standard Folio features a 16-inch QHD IPS touchscreen, while the Folio Duo combines two 16-inch panels into a folding design that can be used side by side or stacked vertically.

A fabric cover doubles as a stand and allows the displays to fold flat for travel.

Both models deliver 400 nits of brightness, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, and 100% sRGB color coverage. The displays support 10-point multitouch interaction, stylus input, and full gesture controls on both Mac and Windows.

The portable displays operate over a single USB-C connection and support up to 45W of passthrough charging. A magnetic attachment point wirelessly charges the Active Stylus. The Folio weighs about 1 kilogram, while the dual-screen Folio Duo weighs about 1.2 kilograms.

Alogic says the Folio lineup is the first portable display series to bring full gesture controls and 10-point multitouch support to both Mac and Windows. The company says users can draw, annotate, and edit content directly on screen without moving projects between a computer and tablet.

Alogic has spent years targeting users who want touch and stylus input on macOS. The Aspekt Touch 27 and Folio lineup expand those options with both desktop and portable designs.

The Aspekt Touch 27 starts at $1,799 and will be available beginning in July. The Folio is priced at $899, while the Folio Duo costs $1,299. Both portable displays are expected to launch around September.

CarPlay is seeing one of its biggest updates in years thanks to the upcoming release of iOS 27. Here are all the new features, including Siri AI and Apple TV apps.

At WWDC 2026, Apple officially unveiled its next version of iOS. The update, iOS 27, will be released in the fall of 2026 and is packed full of useful new features.

CarPlay, Apple’s in-car UI, is powered by iOS, so this new software will bring a bunch of enhancements to your car. This year, at least one major feature will require some serious automaker support.

Siri AI in CarPlay

Apple Intelligence seemed to occupy almost half of Apple’s WWDC keynote. A lot is going on, and a good portion of that is reflected in the car.

On phones that support Apple Intelligence, Siri will become Siri AI. That means Siri will be more capable and get a new look.

When you invoke Siri AI, it now has a dark, glassy orb at the bottom of your car’s display. It mimics the look of the new UI that lives in the Dynamic Island on iPhone.

Siri is more conversational now, going back and forth with you as you ask questions and follow-ups. Apple’s digital assistant has more personal context, too.

While testing it, I could ask more complicated questions with multiple action items. As I left the house, I asked Siri to turn off the lights in the studio, get me directions to my son’s school, and text my wife my ETA.

All of your Siri conversations are saved in the new Siri app. It has the same icon as on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and allows you to go back to the previous conversation you’ve had.

Those conversations also sync across your platforms via iCloud. So if I start a conversation in the car, I can pick it up on my iPad when I get to where I’m going.

Along with the new Siri AI, Apple is allowing any app to offer up a conversation mode. This was previously limited to AI apps like ChatGPT or Perplexity.

The idea is that those apps could possibly tap into Apple Intelligence models and offer you the ability to chat, rather than use physical taps within the app.

If you had a pizza app, you could open it, tell the app what you wanted with your voice, which could build your order, give you a total, and submit it with an estimated pickup time. There’s a new UI element for this that hovers over the app’s contents.

Both first-party and third-party media apps will get upgrades thanks to iOS 27. This includes the Apple Music and Apple Podcasts apps.

Apple Music looks more organized and has a richer layout thanks to added media graphics. The big change, though, is the addition of the mini player.

The new mini player sits in the top-right corner of the display when you have something playing. It minimizes, showing the album art and a play/pause button.

That way, while something is playing, you can browse the rest of the app while still retaining quick control of the current media.

Before, it would be two taps to get to the media if you weren’t on the “now playing” screen. You would have to tap the play icon in the top-right corner, then hit pause, which isn’t ideal if you’re driving.

A similar refresh comes to the Apple Podcasts app. It has a streamlined UI and a mini player.

That mini player is a new UI element that isn’t going to be exclusive to Apple apps. Apple has made it available to anyone who is creating media apps for CarPlay, and you can expect many of the popular streaming apps to adopt it.

Apple TV and video support for CarPlay

Another major change is video support. This is much more robust than what was previously included in iOS 26.

As part of iOS 26, Apple allowed apps to stream their content on a car’s infotainment system via AirPlay. It was only on supported cars that had to get approved through Apple’s MFi Program.

Now, Apple is allowing full, native video streaming applications as a new app category with iOS 27. AirPlay is still an option, but now you can browse and select content from the car’s interface, too.

I was able to test this out for myself using Apple’s new CarPlay simulator in Xcode. Apple is offering up initial support with the inclusion of the Apple TV app inside of CarPlay.

There are several asterisks here. Automakers themselves still have to enable this, which means that we most likely will be waiting for that to happen.

When a vehicle does add support, it must be in park for any videos to play. That counts whether the content is started via AirPlay or a native video player.

One neat trick is that if you are watching a video and you move the car from park to drive, your video will automatically fall back to audio-only. That’s great for things like sports when you still want to follow along, even if you can’t watch it.

Other small changes for CarPlay in iOS 27

Aside from the big new features, there are a lot of other changes, tweaks, and optimizations Apple is rolling out to its in-car solution.

Wireless connection is now said to be more stable than before. Hopefully, that reduces the audio lag that can sometimes be present.

Navigation apps are now able to communicate with the car’s system. The idea behind this is that the car can see your route and suggest any changes.

The most obvious use case here is for EVs. If you put in a route, and your car realizes you only have so much battery remaining, it may propose the ideal charging station to add to the trip.

This whole back and forth is permission-based, so you must OK it before the communication happens, and you must OK any changes to the route. Otherwise, no information or route is shared with your car.

There are a few new icons with iOS 27. In Wi-Fi settings, if you use wireless CarPlay, there is a new CarPlay icon on the network to help identify it, and there is an updated battery icon system-wide.

Finally, there are new wallpapers. Apple added 12 wallpapers for CarPlay in iOS 27, and they all have a similar swirl, like with the iOS 27 ones for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

By going into the settings app, users can choose one of the new wallpapers that come in various colors.

CarPlay will be updated automatically when iOS 27 is released to the public.

Security researchers have published a new unpatchable SecureROM exploit for Apple’s A12 and A13 chips, extending public BootROM exploitation beyond the devices affected by checkm8.

Security firm Paradigm Shift disclosed the unpatched exploit, called usbliter8, on June 18. It achieves code execution through a flaw in Apple’s USB boot process.

The vulnerability affects devices powered by Apple’s A12 and A13 chips, including the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, and iPhone 11 lineup. Several iPad models and Apple Watch devices powered by S4 and S5 chips are affected as well.

• 11-inch iPad Pro (1st generation)
• 11-inch iPad Pro (2nd generation)
• 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation)
• 12.9-inch iPad Pro (4th generation)
• Apple Watch Series 4
• Apple Watch Series 5
• iPad (8th generation)
• iPad Air (3rd generation)
• iPad mini (5th generation)
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone SE (2nd generation)
• iPhone XR
• iPhone XS
• iPhone XS Max

Usbliter8 combines a hardware flaw in a USB controller with the way security protections are configured on affected devices. The attack works through Device Firmware Update mode, better known as DFU mode.

Successful exploitation gives researchers control before iOS even starts loading. The exploit also enables boot-chain compromise and custom USB request handling.

The exploit can boot modified iPhone software that wouldn’t normally be allowed to run. Paradigm Shift’s reporting is serious because the vulnerability exists in SecureROM, the first code that runs when an iPhone starts up.

SecureROM verifies Apple’s software before the rest of the operating system loads and serves as the foundation of the device’s security model. Apple can patch flaws in iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS through software updates.

The code is built into the chip itself and can’t be replaced after manufacturing. Affected devices will remain vulnerable unless users replace them with newer hardware.

Usbliter8 doesn’t affect A14 chips or newer generations because later versions of SecureROM appear to configure hardware protections differently. A11-based devices also avoided the vulnerability because their USB driver resets memory addresses in a way that prevents the attack.

Why the exploit matters

Apple’s security architecture checks each stage of the startup process before handing control to the next one. A successful SecureROM exploit can bypass some of those checks and gain access at the earliest stage of device startup.

SecureROM code can’t be updated after manufacturing, so access gained through usbliter8 can survive software updates, device restores, and firmware revisions. Persistent access at the SecureROM level separates usbliter8 from a typical software vulnerability.

The exploit doesn’t give attackers unrestricted access to user data. Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor remains separate from the vulnerability and provides an additional security boundary.

Usbliter8 doesn’t directly compromise the Secure Enclave. The exploit could still expand the range of attacks available against other parts of Apple’s platform.

The exploit also faces practical limitations. Researchers must have physical access to a device and use USB connectivity and DFU mode to carry out the attack.

A new chapter after checkm8

The disclosure draws comparisons to checkm8, the SecureROM exploit that affected Apple devices powered by A5 through A11 chips. Checkm8 became one of the most influential iPhone exploits because it targeted immutable BootROM code and can’t be patched through software updates.

Like checkm8, usbliter8 targets the earliest stages of Apple’s boot process. The exploit also can’t be fully fixed through software updates.

Apple hasn’t faced a public BootROM exploit affecting A12 and A13 devices since checkm8 targeted earlier hardware generations. Usbliter8 changes that with a working exploit for both chip families.

Much of the technical paper focuses on techniques used to bypass security protections on newer Apple hardware. Those efforts ultimately led to successful code execution on supported devices.

Public SecureROM exploits affecting A12 and A13 devices have been rare, making usbliter8 a notable addition to Apple’s security history.

Paradigm Shift disclosed the findings to Apple Product Security before publication and coordinated the release with Apple. Apple hadn’t publicly commented on the research at the time of publication.

How to stay safe

The practical risk from usbliter8 remains limited because the exploit requires physical access to a device and the use of DFU mode over USB. Most users are unlikely to encounter that threat model during normal use.

Installing security updates, using a strong passcode, and avoiding unattended devices won’t patch the SecureROM vulnerability. The measures can still make it harder for an attacker to gain the physical access required to exploit usbliter8.

Users concerned about long-term exposure can reduce their risk by upgrading to hardware powered by Apple’s A14 chip or newer. The exploit described in the research does not affect those devices.

WebKit has met its match, as the prototype Blink schools Apple’s well-worn browser engine and hints at the future of web browsing on iOS.

WebKit, Apple’s well-used browser rendering engine, has not had to deal with alternatives for quite some time. Even after the EU’s Digital Markets Act changed the game and forced Apple to allow others to be used on iOS, via BrowserEngineKit.

However, a LinkedIn post from Microsoft Edge Web Platform Group Product Manager Kyle Pflug on June 15 indicates that a change is in progress. All based on a Chromium project using the Blink browser engine that dates back to February 2023.

In the post, Pflug explains that the Edge web platform team has helped contribute to Chromium to create the Blink-based prototype. It’s the same rendering engine that the Edge browser uses on other platforms.

A development build of the prototype browser was tried out against a number of browser benchmarks, and put against Safari. All were based on an average of three runs, all on an iPhone 17 Pro Max running iOS 26.5.1.

In Speedometer 3.1’s Web Responsiveness test, Blink managed a score of 49.27 versus 38.3 for WebKit, a 28.6% difference. For Jetstream 3’s JavaScript and Wasm throughput testing, the gap was narrower at 306.35 for Blink and 270.9 for WebKit.

Lastly, Motionmark 1.3.1’s graphics rendering test of canvas graphics saw a score of 4,773.52 for Blink, 4,673.68 for WebKit. This, too, was a very narrow victory for the Chromium project.

Curious to see how fast it was, Pflug went to an Apple Store to try Speedometer on an M5 iPad Pro running Safari. On that hardware, he still saw a slower score of 45.7.

Beyond speed, but also not public

While the benchmarks are a good way to check the prototype, other tests were carried out to check against so-called pain points. This list, on a “Top Developer Needs dashboard, includes elements such as corner-shape, handling squircles and notches properly in CSS.

Interpolate-size() and calc-size() is the automatic animating to height in CSS, while Temporal is referred to as “sane data & time handling” in JavaScript.

Pflug concludes the post by pointing out that this is still a research prototype and tests based on his personal device, not lab results. It’s also not a product announcement, with no hint as to when a browser using Blink would ever emerge from development.

He goes on to say that the tests do at least show the prototype offers some real competition to the established WebKit when it comes to performance.

This is not the only Chromium-related drumbeat to have occurred this month. On June 4, a Chromium blog post declared that it had set new records in browser benchmarks thanks to Chrome optimizations.

In both cases, they are warning shots in the direction of WebKit. While Safari still dominates on iPhone, it’s possible for Chrome or even Microsoft’s Edge browser to take some of the mobile browser market by providing a faster and better browsing experience.

It would require a lot more than just that to pull away brand-loyal consumers from Safari. But at the very least, it would show that browser makers have options, instead of just using WebKit like everybody else.

A new report claims that Apple is preparing multiple new releases for late 2027, including a 20th-anniversary iPhone, and AirPods with cameras. Though, there’s enough hedging here to be skeptical.

It’s long been presumed that Apple will release an iPhone 20 to mark the anniversary of the original iPhone, and that it may have a bezel-free display. Similarly, a second generation folding iPhone, and AirPods with cameras have been repeatedly rumored before.

But now Bloomberg claims that all of these are being prepared for a late 2027 launch. Unspecified sources say that Apple intends to launch its greatest number of products yet.

The report also claims that each of these devices is already being tested, alongside the more predictable testing of iOS 28.

AI AirPods

As previously rumored, the report suggests that the purpose of cameras in AirPods is not to take photos or replace users’ iPhones. Instead, the example quoted again here is that via their AirPods, a user could ask Siri to suggest a meal based on what is in their fridge.

For all that it is repeatedly cited, that’s not a very clear example. A user could presumably verbally tell Siri what’s left in the fridge, for example.

There are now Apple Intelligence tools that recognize food types. So it could be that the AirPods cameras would do that too.

The new report claims that the cameras will be in the stems, so it’s possible that they will be forward-facing. Otherwise, a user would have to take the AirPods out to point the cameras, and that seems no benefit over pulling out an iPhone.

Reportedly these AirPods were intended to be released in 2026. It appears that they were held up as Apple worked on developing Apple Intelligence models that could identify objects.

It’s previously been reported that these AirPods are in Apple’s design validation testing (DVT), which should mean they are close to being released. This new report adds that the cameras will include lights to show when they are active.

Bloomberg does seem to be the main source for claims regarding AirPods with cameras, but there have been others. In June 2024, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo surmised that they would come as an accessory for the Apple Vision Pro.

Then in February 2026, there was a sketchy leak that claimed that cameras would not add to the cost of future AirPods.

As well as being the latest in a series of rumors regarding AirPods with cameras, this report also follows the granting of a patent for the technology.

While the report tries to blame the AirPods with cameras release window on the new Siri release, the reality of the situation isn’t clear. No reliable previous reporting provided a release window, and this report today even says they’re still in validation testing.

While the new Siri AI is important to the product, its release in 2026 likely has nothing to do with products arriving in 2027. The publication’s need to drive some kind of negative angle with everything Apple is on clear display here.

New iPhones

It’s not a stretch to imagine that Apple will mark the 20th anniversary of the original iPhone with a new model. That’s what it did in 2017 with the iPhone X, and Tim Cook said at the time that this design would define the next ten years of smartphones.

What’s perhaps less certain, despite Bloomberg‘s insistence, is that there will be a second-generation folding iPhone. At present, despite multiple leaks claiming the first iPhone Fold will be announced in September 2026, various reports say that there are delays.

A lot will depend on how September goes for Apple. If the first-generation iPhone Fold is truly ready to be revealed and launched in 2026, a second-generation could arrive in 2027.

The report, of course, suggests that all rumors provided today are subject to change and are merely goals Apple has internally. Even with that hedge to cover the publication’s reputation in case of incorrect rumors, it’ll no doubt be happy to call any internal delay yet another failure.

After spending several days at Apple’s campus for WWDC, developers seem to feel energized by everything Apple has announced. Here’s my early impression of what Apple has coming.

WWDC is one of my favorite times of the year. I appreciate seeing the features coming to existing hardware and connecting with the developers building the apps.

While most users and media alike had cautious expectations going in after two years of underwhelming AI advancements, I still felt excited. I knew this was going to be the year Apple was going to deliver on what it had previously previewed.

On the day of the keynote, I arrived with the rest of the media and checked in. I was handed my media badge and shuttled into a dedicated media area within Apple Park.

It was similar to years past, but it felt a little different. This time, there was this fresh confidence from the Apple team, and I felt they were ready to deliver.

Watching WWDC from Apple Park

After arriving, I had a few moments to check out this year’s swag. I got a tote, a water bottle, some randomized emoji stickers, and some pins.

The pins were extra cool this year, with Apple giving throwback nods to both Clarus the dogcow and the Apple Jolly Roger flag. Not to mention, an official Little Finder Guy (Fin) pin.

Just ahead of the 10 a.m. PST kickoff, Craig Federighi took to the stage. This is common, but it was different this year as it was Tim Cook‘s final conference as CEO.

Federighi gave a heartfelt speech about Cook on his impressive tenure and how important WWDC always was to Tim, before inviting him onstage to a raucous standing ovation.

Cook spoke for a few minutes, thanking everyone for being there and expressing what the developer community meant to him and how honored he was to have helmed Apple for the last many years. As he teared up, the crowd once again burst into applause on his departure.

As Cook headed backstage, the pre-recorded dub dub video started playing. We in the audience were eager to see what Apple was set to announce. We all had a lot of questions that we wanted answered, like if Siri 2.0 would be in the beta, or even ship this year.

Lots of announcements from Cupertino

There’s no escaping it, the WWDC keynote was a bit odd. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it certainly didn’t have Apple’s typical structure.

In almost every other WWDC keynote, Apple would go through each update, platform by platform. This year, Apple focused heavily on safety, before talking through general improvements coming to all platforms, and then going deep on Apple Intelligence.

As we watched, it felt like there were fewer new features due to the heavy focus on AI. Many enhancements were hiding in a huge word wall that had over 260 individual features listed.

The Apple Intelligence demos in the keynote also felt slow. This felt intentional, though, letting the audience realize they were “live” demos and not something fabricated for the keynote.

Ultimately, we finished the keynote with some excitement in the air. It was exciting that not only was Siri AI real, but it was shipping in the first beta.

Additionally, there were plenty of features we’d get to uncover for ourselves.

And uncovering those new features is just what we did. I came out of the Apple campus to sit at the Apple Park Visitor Center, temporarily converted into a media filing area. I tried to get the beta downloaded as quickly as possible, while also digging through release notes, screenshots, and more to find interesting tidbits.

Turns out, there was a lot.

The 27 updates aren’t small

Since the keynote, I had the opportunity to attend a tech talk, hosted by Craig Federighi and the team, where they went through the new third-generation Apple Foundation Models and their Google Gemini collaboration. I also got plenty of time in demo briefings and to test the beta for myself.

My biggest takeaway so far, which I’m sure many others have also expressed at this point, is that Siri AI is the real deal. It’s shockingly good, and not just a simple skin on top of Gemini.

I had grown accustomed to avoiding Siri entirely, as I knew it was quite unreliable. I’ve slowly started using Siri more and more as I start to realize how much it can do.

At one point, I wanted to save someone’s current address from Find My as their work location on their contact card. I started trying to copy the address, but then realized Siri could do it instead.

I asked Siri to add this person’s current location as their work address to their contact. Siri did just that, only asking me to confirm the change to the contact card.

A local artist was doing a special new drop at 8 p.m. the next day that I didn’t want to miss, and I saw them tease it on X. I went to set a reminder, so I asked Siri: “Look up this artist’s website and remind me to check out their new drop when it’s released with a link to the store,” and it used the info from the tweet to correctly make that reminder.

It’s useful in so many ways, and I feel like I’ve only started using it.

And, everything feels faster. Apple TV didn’t get a ton of new features, but Apple calls out specifically faster app launches, more responsive Control Center, quicker music playback, and faster AirPlay.

The performance gains are consistent across the board. The Vision Pro, for instance, boots much faster than it did in the initial release.

I already want to install it on my partner’s phone, who’s been complaining about the lag. I’m not about to do that, though. I’m not a rookie.

The more I use it, the more little features I start to find. The update adds several practical tools, from keyboard pasteboard suggestions and Apple Watch gestures to keyword support in Photos and 4K camera compatibility in Apple Home.

I loved getting to try out the extension creation in Safari. I just told Safari to create an extension to act as a recipe manager with a clean UI with blue accents, a rating system, comments, and a category for each recipe. After giving me a few App Store options, it went to work writing the code using Apple’s Safari extension APIs.

It came back from Private Cloud Compute (PCC) a few moments later and was ready to go. I created a custom extension that would automatically sync across my devices in less than a minute.

There was also a demo in Xcode that helped us create an entire pin trading app just via Vibe coding. This was complete with camera-based pin identification, animations, and AI tools, which were super impressive.

Not perfect, overdue, but very welcomed

I know a lot of people will be pessimistic about this round of updates. Speed, battery, and performance improvements aren’t exactly sexy features.

But using iOS 27 and the other updates feels different. It isn’t an update that all of a sudden feels bloated on your phone, where you have a few headline features you get to toy around with.

It’s an update you download where your device instantly feels faster, smarter, and more personal. I think a lot of people will end up loving this when it arrives in the fall.

Several months remain to further improve and polish the experience. It is only going to get better over time.

The developers that I talked to at Apple Park were equally as excited. There’s a lot of potential and the ability for many of them to tap into these AI models on their own.

Until then, I’m going to head back to trying to find more new features to play around with.