Apple's WWDC 2025: Beautiful Design Can't Hide the AI Gap—Yet
Apple's WWDC 2025 showcased a stunning design but revealed delays in AI features, particularly for Siri, highlighting a gap in innovation compared to competitors.
The anticipation was palpable as Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 kicked off on June 9th. After a year of watching competitors surge ahead in the artificial intelligence race, many hoped this would be Apple's moment to demonstrate that it had finally caught up. Instead, what emerged was a tale of two conferences: one showcasing a stunning visual redesign called "Liquid Glass," and another revealing an AI strategy that feels increasingly out of step with the fast pace of innovation defining the industry.
The Elephant in the Room
At WWDC 2025, Apple announced several AI features, such as a workout coach, live translation, and more. Yet these incremental improvements pale in comparison to the transformative capabilities being deployed by competitors. The most telling moment came not during the keynote, but in its aftermath, when Apple executives confirmed that those Siri features are not coming later this year. The promised overhaul of Siri—featuring personal context understanding, on-screen awareness, and deep app integration—has been pushed to 2026.
Having installed the developer beta of iOS 26 and macOS 26, the reality becomes clear: Apple Intelligence still feels at arm's length and hard to access. This isn't just a minor delay; it's a fundamental challenge to Apple's position in an industry where months feel like years.
A Pattern of Delays
The Siri delay tells a larger story about Apple's AI development. Federighi said that the new Siri experience "did not converge in the way, quality-wise, that we needed it to," adding, "We wanted it to be really, really reliable. And we were not able to achieve the reliability in the time we thought."
Apple's executives revealed that they were working on two versions of Siri's architecture simultaneously—V1 and V2—with the latter needed to achieve the quality standards they demand. Apple is aiming to debut its delayed personalized Siri features in the spring of 2026, potentially as part of iOS 26.4.
Incremental Innovation in an Exponential World
What Apple did announce at WWDC 2025 reveals a company trying to check AI boxes rather than push boundaries. Apple's latest AI-driven workout coach is exactly what it sounds like — it uses a text-to-speech model to deliver encouragement while you exercise, mimicking a personal trainer's voice. Live Translation for Messages and FaceTime, while useful, is already offered on rival devices from Google, Samsung and Microsoft.
The company's most significant AI announcement—giving developers access to its on-device foundation models—comes with a caveat. According to the company's own benchmarks, the models underperform older models from rival tech firms, including OpenAI. Human testers rated Apple's new server model behind OpenAI's year-old GPT-4o, while Meta's Llama 4 Scout outperformed Apple's image analysis capabilities.
Despite Apple’s claim of deep OS integration, the first-beta experience still feels like an overlay: Siri in one place, Genmoji in another, Writing Tools in a pop-up. Until these touch-points cohere into a single flow, Apple Intelligence risks coming off as a grab-bag of demos rather than a seamless assistant.
The Liquid Glass Silver Lining
It would be unfair to dismiss everything Apple announced at WWDC 2025. The Liquid Glass interface redesign represents a remarkable achievement in software engineering and user experience design. This isn't just a fresh coat of paint—it's a complete reimagining of how Apple's operating systems look and feel across all devices, from iPhone to Vision Pro.
The unified design language, with its transparent elements and fluid animations, demonstrates Apple's continued mastery of the intersection between technology and liberal arts. It's the kind of holistic, ecosystem-wide update that only Apple, with its tight integration of hardware and software, can pull off effectively. While competitors chase AI benchmarks, Apple has created something tangible that millions of users will interact with daily—a reminder that there's more to the user experience than just artificial intelligence.
This design prowess suggests that when Apple does eventually get its AI house in order, it will have the design chops to integrate these capabilities in ways that feel natural and intuitive. The question is whether users will wait that long.
The Privacy Paradox
Apple's commitment to privacy and on-device processing has long been a differentiator, but it's becoming a double-edged sword in the AI era. While competitors leverage massive cloud infrastructure and vast datasets to train increasingly capable models, Apple's privacy-first approach may be limiting its ability to compete.
While its rivals, Google and Microsoft, depend heavily on cloud-based data processing—an approach that involves extensive data collection and analysis—Apple has taken a bold stand with its on-device computation strategy. This principled stance resonates with privacy-conscious users, but it comes at a cost when the industry standard is rapidly advancing through cloud-powered innovation.
The Competitive Field
While Apple treads water, its competitors are swimming laps. Microsoft is nearly doubling its AI spending, jumping from $41.2 billion in 2023 to $80 billion in 2025. Google is going even further, increasing its investment 2.3 times from $32.3 billion to $75 billion. These investments aren't just numbers on a balance sheet—they're translating into tangible products and capabilities that users can experience today.
OpenAI continues to push boundaries with ChatGPT and its latest reasoning models. Google's Gemini is being integrated across its entire ecosystem, from search to productivity tools. Microsoft is transforming how millions work with Office applications. Meanwhile, Apple is still trying to get basic Siri improvements to work reliably.
Looking Forward
"Many of the AI features announced were more incremental in our view, and already available through competitor applications," UBS analyst David Vogt wrote. This assessment cuts to the heart of Apple's challenge. In previous technology transitions, Apple succeeded by arriving late with superior execution. But AI's rapid evolution and network effects may have changed that calculus. The delay of major Siri improvements to 2026 means Apple will miss another full year of the AI revolution.
Yet it would be premature to count Apple out entirely. The company has a history of entering markets late and still managing to redefine them—think smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches. Apple's massive installed base, integrated ecosystem, and unparalleled brand loyalty provide a foundation that few competitors can match. If the company can solve its AI execution challenges while maintaining its privacy principles, it could still deliver a differentiated experience that resonates with users tired of the privacy trade-offs required by other platforms.
The Bottom Line
Apple has surprised us before. The company's unique combination of hardware expertise, software integration, and design excellence could yet produce an AI experience that leapfrogs the competition—if it can accelerate its timeline. The Liquid Glass redesign shows Apple hasn't lost its ability to innovate; it just needs to apply that same boldness to artificial intelligence.
For Apple users, the message from WWDC 2025 is clear: patience will be required. Whether that patience will be rewarded, or whether users will drift toward platforms that deliver AI's promise today, remains an open question. What's certain is that Apple can no longer afford to treat AI as a feature to be perfected in isolation. It must become central to the company's vision, or risk watching its ecosystem become a beautiful, but increasingly irrelevant, walled garden in an AI-powered world.
The clock is ticking, but the game isn't over. Apple still has the resources, talent, and ecosystem to mount a comeback. The question is whether it has the urgency.
Keep a lookout for the next edition of AI Uncovered!
Follow our social channels for more AI-related content: LinkedIn; Twitter (X); Bluesky; Threads; and Instagram.