Once a decade, Apple does something that mobilizes its entire userbase in a fit of pixelated rage: It redesigns its software and debuts that new design. The updated look is called Liquid Glass, and it’s predictably controversial.
“What’s the use of this cool new Liquid Glass design if you can’t read or see anything clearly?” a tech content creator wondered, referring to the translucent backgrounds that dominate the glassy new interface. “Am I the only one who thinks Apple’s new Liquid Glass design is bullshit?” asked a startup CEO. “Every day we stray farther off Steve’s light,” a designer posted.
First things first, this panic is only temporary. While it looked very polished onstage at Apple’s WWDC developer conference this week, the final versions are not set in stone. The new operating systems for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch will now enter a beta-testing phase that will last at least three months, and after that, the design will get tweaked constantly thereafter. This is what happened 10 years ago when Apple rolled out its last major redesign. People, being creatures of comfort, tend to hate redesigns of anything.
Ultimately, the bickering over a redesign has done little to drown out the chorus of people panicking over Apple’s unfulfilled AI promises. This is a particularly sensitive time for the tech giant. At last year’s WWDC, the company announced Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI features baked into its various operating systems. Yet the most powerful Apple Intelligence features still haven’t shipped, and what has been rolled out so far has been pretty mediocre. This is an issue for gadget bloggers, and it’s a big deal to Wall Street, where Apple investors worry that the company is losing ground to competitors in the AI race. But does it really matter to Apple’s users, the people suddenly worried their iPhones are about to get uglier?
“Ultimately, real users are not that worried about what the tech press says about where Apple is with AI,” said Tom Mainelli, head of device and consumer research at the market intelligence firm IDC. “They just want features that work.”
Apple Intelligence, in its current form, does not work well. One of the first features that launched were notifications summarized by AI, which are sometimes nonsensical. Another tool, called Clean Up, which uses AI to remove unwanted objects from photos initially got mixed reviews. These features have gotten better over time, and if you don’t want to use them, Apple makes it really easy to just turn off Apple Intelligence altogether.
Meanwhile, the revamped, “more personalized” Siri that was supposed to be the centerpiece of Apple Intelligence was never released. After months of delays and incremental updates, Apple admitted in March that the Siri features it showed off at last year’s WWDC — things like the ability to connect data across your apps, take actions on your behalf, and even help you remember people’s names — weren’t going to be ready for a while. It’s unclear, however, how much any of this matters to the average iPhone user.
Some litigious consumers are expressing their displeasure rather forcefully. Apple launched a massive marketing campaign around Apple Intelligence, including some commercials that highlighted a more advanced Siri. That name-reminder magic trick showed up in an ad starring the Last of Us actor Bella Ramsey and was later cited in a class action lawsuit that accused Apple of false advertising. Apple is now facing three of these lawsuits. The plaintiffs broadly argue that they bought new Apple devices in order to enjoy the Apple Intelligence tools (only the latest devices support the new software) and ended up paying an “unlawful premium” for something that didn’t exist. Apple ended up pulling that Ramsey ad and added disclaimers about the new Siri features to its website.
In a sign that Apple is feeling the heat, its executives are also now defending their decision to hold off on releasing more AI features more quickly.
“This stuff takes hard work, but we do see AI as a long-term transformational wave as one that’s going to affect our industry and of course our society for decades to come,” Apple software chief Craig Federighi told the Wall Street Journalthis week. “There’s no need to rush out with the wrong features and the wrong product just to be first.”
The new Siri is taking so long, Federighi said, because Apple had to rebuild Siri’s architecture with an eye toward privacy. Google, meanwhile, has few hang-ups about enlisting its massive cloud computing infrastructure to power the latest version of Gemini, the AI assistant that’s baked into Android.
For any Apple users sick of waiting for better AI features — and again, it’s not clear how many of them there are — Google is the clear alternative. Google is not being shy about broadcasting its AI ambitions, either. While Apple barely mentioned AI at its developer’s conference, Google made AI the star of its own conference in May. The company even showed off a prototype that could use your phone’s camera and microphones to know what’s happening around you at all times and do tasks on your behalf. If Siri is slightly helpless, Google’s AI might be too powerful in the future.
As it has done with everything from the iPod to the Vision Pro headset, Apple famously waits to see what everyone else does with a new technology before making its move. If Apple isn’t the first company to make something, it wants to make the best version of it.
“There is a risk for Apple that if they are too slow or too deliberate, they could lose some of the folks that want to live on the bleeding edge,” Mainelli said, “but I think the vast majority of Apple customers just want them to get it right.”
It’s actually surprising that Apple has even announced anything AI-related at all given how chaotic the industry still is. While Google looks comparatively put together, other tech giants keep scrambling to figure out how they fit into a new AI-powered world. Meta is reportedly investing billions in a new “superintelligence” lab as it reorganizes its AI efforts, which have so far yielded mixed results. Amazon is struggling to release its new Alexa+ AI assistant. Even OpenAI is being cagey about its next move after acquiring a startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, who is secretly working on making AI “companions” for people to carry around with them.
For now, Apple devices can be a sort of safe haven from over-experimentation with AI in a digital landscape where the new technology feels like it’s encroaching everywhere. You can always use AI apps like ChatGPT or Perplexity or even Google Gemini on an iPhone or a Mac. But your experience doesn’t have to revolve around half-formed AI tools. As Federighi, the Apple executive, told the Wall Street Journal, Apple introduced the internet to millions of its users, but it didn’t do it by building a search engine.
“Apple made the internet accessible in a lot of ways — more than anyone,” Federighi said. “That didn’t mean every experience that you take on was going to happen inside of Apple.”
In the same interview, Federighi made it clear that Apple is charging ahead with the development of its own AI models and that the company wants the new technology to be deeply integrated into its devices. But if you’re looking for a generally AI-free way to enjoy your iPhone, you can do so for another year.
You cannot, however, escape Liquid Glass. Love it or hate it, the new look coming to all of the latest Apple devices in the fall.
—Adam Clark Estes, senior technology correspondent
