A few words about WWDC26

I won’t make it long, just a few quick hot takes (or should I say lukewarm, since a day has already passed?) on what struck me most in the introductory keynote for WWDC26.

Parental Controls. Maybe it is because my daughters are already grown up, but I’ve always had many reservations about the effectiveness of parental controls. Kids easily bypass them, perhaps with the help of a nerdy friend, while parents gain a false sense of security and, worse still, use them to deceive themselves into thinking they have no responsibility for their children’s online activities.

We’ll soon see if this time Apple has gotten the right balance between control and freedom.

Siri AI. Speaking against Siri is like shooting the Red Cross, and since my daughter is a doctor, I won’t do that. That said, maybe this time we’ll finally be able to use Siri to interact more easily and quickly with our Apple devices, without the nonsense of the past.

I wrote we’ll be able, but the sad truth is that here in Europe we will have to wait who knows how long to be able to use Siri on iOS and iPadOS, while it should be available immediately on macOS. We’ll see.

macOS 27 Golden Gate. After the Tahoe disaster, and in particular the awkward implementation of Liquid Glass in macOS Tahoe, Apple seems to have listened to the criticisms of many dissatisfied users (I’m one of them, but I doubt Apple noticed), trying to correct the most glaring flaws of Liquid Glass.¹

The impression I got from the keynote is that Golden Gate is a version of macOS focused more on improving what’s already there than on introducing new features.

To me, this is very welcome news, given that these are the versions of macOS I loved the most and that I still consider the best, from Panther and Snow Leopard, to Mountain Lion and El Captain. As soon as I finish writing this, I’ll try downloading Golden Gate, so stay tuned!