Apple Is on Defense at WWDC

Summary

It’s early June and the vibes are decidedly off in Cupertino.The hype leading up to Apple’s last two developer conferences felt much different. There was anticipation in 2023 for a potentially groundbreaking new headset. In 2024, there was a sense of urgency leading up to the company’s AI announcements and whispers that Siri might actually, finally be good at something. But 2025? Well, things are different. The Vision Pro was the big announcement at that 2023 show, and it’s, uh, still around. Apple has reportedly cut production due to slow sales, and you can get one at a steep discount on eBay. Maybe the price is wrong. And the big AI announcement last year? How’s that going? As it stands, Apple Intelligence is stalled out. The features that Apple managed to deploy are underwhelming, and the meaty update to Siri has been delayed — maybe even for years. It sounds like the whole thing was a real fiasco inside Apple, and publicly, the company took down an ad showcasing Siri features that simply don’t exist yet. Ouch.And then there’s the legal stuff. In 2021, a court in California ordered Apple to let developers add links allowing customers to make purchases outside of their apps. The company was also supposed to come up with a rationale for whatever commission it decided to take on those purchases. Apple’s subsequent compliance with this order was so poor that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers got fed up and blocked the company from taking any fees on those purchases and recommended the case for criminal contempt proceedings — all detailed in a seething 80-page decision. Meanwhile, in the EU, regulators have fined Apple for practices that fail to comply with the DMA’s antitrust rules, Fortnite is back in the App Store, and oh yeah, President Donald Trump keeps waving tariffs around in Tim Cook’s face with a cockamamie plan to convince him to build iPhones in the US.What’s a beleaguered tech CEO to do in times like these? Here’s what I’d like to see at WWDC: Apple showing a ...