Pre-keynote draft for WWDC 2026

Before Apple released the iBook in 1999, magazines ran entire features on what it might look like. Rumors, renders, and breathless speculation made anticipation feel participatory, the way Apple somehow always could. You were not just waiting for a product. You were part of the build-up.

Stephen Hackett's piece on the clamshell iBook G3 is worth reading if you want to remember what it felt like when a computer could still be genuinely surprising. Blueberry. Tangerine. Indigo. Key Lime. Apple was making things that had personality, and the world responded. The iBook sold 700,000 units in 19 months.

People wanted delight, and Apple gave it to them.

That is the energy I am bringing to WWDC on June 9.

I am not a developer. I cannot evaluate an API or tell you what a new Swift feature means for the industry. What I can do is show up as someone who has loved Apple products for a long time and still gets genuinely excited when Apple gets something right. The excitement is not ironic, hedged, or self-protective. It is just excitement.

So here is what I am hoping for.

Siri, finally.

I want Siri to become the assistant I cannot live without. Not in a creepy way. In the ordinary, useful way: knowing enough context to help, remembering what I asked for, and moving with me through the day instead of making me stop and translate my life into commands. The technology is there. The ambition just needs to match it.

OS features that are focused and delightful.

Not a list of 200 new things. A handful of things that feel considered. The kind of update where you use a feature once and think: of course it works this way. That is the Apple I love.

Developer tools that help someone build something I cannot imagine yet.

This one I hold loosely because it is not my domain. But I know what it produces downstream: apps that make my life better in ways I did not know to ask for. That is worth hoping for.

A colorway that makes me feel something.

Clarus the Dogcow was a mascot. Bondi Blue was a statement. Cosmic Orange on the iPhone Pro last year was the first color in years that made me stop and look. I want more of that. Give me something vivid. Give me something that says Apple is still willing to surprise us.

Bondi Blue was not just a color. It was permission.

Permission for a computer to be friendly. Permission for technology to have a little pizzazz in it. Permission for serious tools to carry wonder without apologizing for it.

WWDC Live Reacts

[Coming June 9: I will watch the keynote and file reactions in real time. Check back here.]

Apple has announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman and John Ternus will become Apple's next CEO. Cook is the logistics genius who made sure the supply chain worked, that the margins held, and that Apple could scale into a company no one had ever seen before. Ternus represents something different. As the leader moving from hardware into the CEO role, he has to answer for what the things actually are.

I think the era ahead is going to be refined, iterative, and quietly ambitious. Safe in the best sense means considered, not timid. Profitable because the products earn it.

And I think, somewhere in there, there is still room for a Bondi Blue moment.

I will be watching for it.