Apple’s WWDC underwhelms on AI, but software gets biggest facelift in over a decade
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 09, 2025 in Cupertino, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Apple‘s annual developer conference on Monday lacked the splashy announcement that fans are used to seeing at WWDC. There was nothing like the Vision Pro reveal from 2023 or the Apple Intelligence announcement last year.
But there was an important software update that, later this year, will change the way all of Apple’s major devices, from iPhones and Mac laptops to Vision Pro virtual reality headsets, will look. It’s a new design language that runs across all of Apple’s operating systems. The company is calling it Liquid Glass.
For Apple, it’s the first significant redesign of its iPhone operating system since 2013, when the company announced iOS7. Apple says the lock screen will look like it’s made out of glass. Buttons will turn into little glass pills, fluidly sliding over glass rails. And there are new animations, including when answering a phone call.
The unveiling underwhelmed Wall Street, which sent the stock down 1.2% on the day. Investors are pressuring Apple to make big changes to its artificial intelligence strategy, pushing it to match the frontier models capabilities of rivals such as Google and OpenAI.
“Many of the AI features announced were more incremental in our view, and already available through competitor applications,” UBS analyst David Vogt wrote in a note on Monday. He has the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock.
Last year, Apple announced Apple Intelligence, its response to ChatGPT, complete with a demo of a “more personal” Siri that could intelligently parse through emails and messages to figure out the best time to make a restaurant reservation. Apple delayed the feature in March, had to pull ads that depicted it, and provided no update on timing on Monday.
“This work needed more time to meet our high quality bar,” Apple software chief Craig Federighi said on Monday. He restated the company’s “the coming year” timeline.
Liquid glass design
Apple’s focus at WWDC was on providing new features and animations across its software that are “delightful,” in CEO Tim Cook’s words.
The new design language is heavy on transparent buttons, sliders, and other interaction elements. Users will be able to spot it as soon as they upgrade their phones to the new iOS, which will be available for beta testing this summer.
Apple announces liquid glass during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 9, 2025 in Cupertino, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Instead of hard, sharp corners in rectangular windows, Apple’s new design language has curved corners that match the device.
One reason Apple gave for rolling out the update now is that its computers and chips have become powerful enough to handle it. Apple said that its new look was directly inspired by the look of VisionOS, the company’s software for Vision Pro.
“Apple Silicon has become dramatically more powerful — enabling software, materials and experiences we once could only dream of,” Federighi said in a recorded video.
As with many Apple announcements, reactions are all over the map. Some people on social media were excited while others compared the update to the look of Windows Vista, which was released in 2007.
While Apple didn’t make many significant changes to the Siri experience, the company did introduce a few significant improvements and changes to its AI capabilities.
Apple also expanded its integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, integrating its image generation capabilities into an app that previously only used Apple’s technology.
When a user takes a screenshot on an iPhone, a new button will send the image to ChatGPT, which can summarize blocks of text in the image, or even decipher what’s happening.
One major improvement Apple is rolling out is in language translation.
During a phone call between two people who don’t speak the same language, the phone app can translate a sentence after it’s spoken and use an AI-generated voice to speak to the other party in the their language. Apple says the feature uses AI processed on the iPhone and doesn’t require a connection to a server.
New numbers
In some corners of the Apple fan universe, the most notable announcement on Monday may involve a simple number.
Since 2007, Apple had introduced a new version of its iOS every year. By 2024, Apple was on iOS 18. It’s a meaningful number for users who want to know if they have the latest Apple features, and some 82% of users with recent iPhones had upgraded to iOS 18 within a year.
Now, Apple is naming its operating systems for the iPhone and other devices after the year that they’ll be available for use by most consumers. In this case, it’s 2026.
In September, users will upgrade to iOS 26. Apple also has iPadOS 26, WatchOS 26, tvOS 26 and Vision OS 26.
The name change will simplify how to refer to the various operating systems, which had gotten confusing given that each device was on a different generation. It also keeps the pressure on Apple to keep rolling out an update every year, or else the number will make it clear that its software is outdated.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Bezos is ranked third in Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index with a net worth of about $240 billion. He’s behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk at $363 billion and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at $260 billion.
WATCH: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ wedding sparks Venice protests
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.
WATCH: Google buyouts highlight tech’s cost-cutting amid AI CapEx boom
Disposable diapers are a massive environmental offender. Roughly 300,000 of them are sent to landfills or incinerated every minute, according to the World Economic Forum, and they take hundreds of years to decompose. It’s a $60 billion business.
One alternative approach has been compostable diapers, which can be made out of wood pulp or bamboo. But composting services aren’t universally available and some of the products are less absorbent than normal nappies, critics say.
A growing number of parents are also turning to cloth diapers, but they only make up about 20% of the U.S. market.
ZymoChem is attacking the diaper problem from a different angle. Harshal Chokhawala, CEO of ZymoChem, said that 60% to 80% of a typical diaper consists of fossil-based plastics. And half of that is an ingredient called super absorbent polymer, or SAP.
“What we have created is a low carbon footprint bio-based and biodegradable version of this super absorbent polymer,” Chokhawala said.
ZymoChem, with operations in San Leandro, California, and Burlington, Vermont, invented this new type of absorbent by using a fermentation process to convert a renewable resource — sugar — from corn into biodegradable materials. It’s similar to making beer.
“We’re at a point now where we’re very close to being at cost parity with fossil based manufacturing of super absorbents,” said Chokhawala.
The company’s drop-in absorbents can be added into other diapers, which makes it different from environmentally conscious companies like Charlie Banana, Kudos and Hiro, which sell their own brand of diapers.
ZymoChem doesn’t yet have a diaper product on the market. But Lindy Fishburne, managing partner at Breakout Ventures and an investor in the company, says it’s a scalable model.
“Being able to build and grow with biology allows us to unlock a circular economy and a supply chain that is no longer petro-derived, which opens up the opportunities of where you can manufacture and how you secure supply chains,” Fishburne said.
Other investors include Toyota Ventures, GS Futures, KDT Ventures, Cavallo Ventures and Lululemon. The company has raised a total of $35 million.
The Lululemon partnership shows that it’s not just about diapers. ZymoChem’s bio-based materials can also be used in other hygiene products and in bio-based nylon. Lululemon recently said it will use it in some of its leggings, which were traditionally made with petroleum.
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