WWDC26: First impressions
WWDC26 wasn’t at all that exciting. The only moment that truly caught my attention was right at the end, when Tim Cook gave his farewell. There was a weight in his voice that was hard to miss. I’ll definitely miss him, and I’ll always appreciate that he brought the Apple Pencil to the iPad.
Besides that, nothing really stood out during the keynote, so I decided to try the updates myself to see if they were more fun to experience than just watching them on stage. The feature I was most eager to test was Siri AI — hoping it could finally replace all the other tools I’ve been relying on.
Child accounts and EU pressure
While waiting for downloads, I noticed how much effort Apple has put into child accounts. It feels like a direct response to the EU’s crackdown on phones. As a parent, I know my kids won’t be getting phones, no matter how “child‑friendly” they become. An iPad is far more useful, but even there, child controls matter. Honestly, I don’t see them wanting to watch TikTok on iPads, but Apple clearly thinks it’s worth preparing for.
Indexing and privacy
I realised the terms I accepted allowed for indexing of my iPad. Funny enough, there was a time I didn’t even want my handwritten notes indexed. Now it’s just part of the deal.
Appearance settings
My first stop was appearance. I already had reduced transparency turned on, and I was definitely going for the tint option. Transparency is distracting, and I’ve never understood the appeal of glass icons with backgrounds popping through. Theoretically, they look beautiful, but for real work, the overlaps never made sense. This doesn’t really feel like an update. We already had the tint option in iPadOS 26, and iPadOS 27 just adds a scale to it instead of leaving us with two extremes. Honestly, it still doesn’t make much sense.
Siri AI: the waiting list
Apple spent a lot of time on Siri, at the WWDC26 keynote, and I was ready to dive in — but there’s a waiting list. That dampened my mood. It felt like there was no point pursuing this developer beta anymore.
Even though nothing feels groundbreaking in the new OS updates, I can still appreciate the effort. That background polishing, that just makes sure everything runs even better. It is truly underrated in the tech world. Updates don’t always have to be dramatic; sometimes stability is enough. I’m sure most of us would have been perfectly happy sticking with Windows 7, instead of suffering through the disasters of versions 8 and 10 — all because we expect a new operating system every year that looks dramatically different from the last.
macOS Update Struggles
I rushed to update macOS mostly because I was tired of apps failing to update in macOS 26. Right now, I have 19 apps stuck in “preparing to download” forever. The only workaround is deleting and redownloading, but even that doesn’t solve it. It started with MarginNote, and now it’s spread to many others. Some of these updates have been failing since April.
iPadOS 27: a step back
Installing macOS 27 didn’t fix the issue, and iPadOS 27 was even worse. I spent a whole day trying to roll back to iPadOS 26 without any backup (still haven’t learnt). It was painful, and I lost recordings in the process, even though I thought I had backed up my iPad. I should have copied them to my Mac or sent them to Uncle Dan first. Still, I don’t regret downgrading — iPadOS 27 just wasn’t worth the hassle.
Final thoughts
This looks like the first beta I won’t be testing in years. I’ll wait for the official release because, from the small test run I had, I’m not missing out on much. Hopefully, your experience has been better than mine.