Apple Had an impossible task at wwdc. Here’s why.

Apple is Increasingly Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place – and not just on artificial intelligence.

Here’s the problem, one that may have been stretched to breaking point DURING CEO Tim Cook’s 2025 Wwdc Keynote. There are people in the market for apple products, who want and have allied wanted technology that just works. They want gadgets that are intuitive to use, not intrusive. According to multiple surveys, consucers continue to be distrustful of anything with an ai label. According to the Nonprofit IAPP, 57 Percent of Us Believe Ai poses a threat to our privacy.

Then there are investors who are in the market for apple stock, who are always on the lookout for tech products that seem new. Overall, Tech Investors are Drinking The Ai Kool-Aid Despite Abundant Evidence-Including a Brand New Paper from Apple Researchers! – That ai’s ability to reason, and to be useful in general, may have alredy hit a wall.

Apparently, apple is trying to keep both of that that groups happy. Result: A Keynote that Liberal Sprinkles on mentions of “Apple Intelligence,” A Rebranding of Many Software Services (Including Voice Assistant Siri, Which Got Just One Shout-Oount-Oount-Out Compared Top Multiple mentions of chatgpt), but fake to gin up any excitement about what apple intelligence can do for you.

Given Privacy is a Major Concern for Consures, IT’s Cool But we alredy knew that from cook’s 2024 keynote that introduced apple intelligence. Without getting out By like an F1 race car.

More than Anything Else, Apple’s Updates Were Mere Vibes. Apple intelligence is a vibe. The “liquid glass” design refresh is a vibe. Craig fedherigi is definitely a vibe. But tech stocks are coasting on a different vibe right now, the one Openai’s sam altman has been nurturing for the last three years – Including apple legend jony iVE to create Gadget. There are only so many f1 dad jokes apple can make to compe with that alluring vision.

The apple analyst who called the event a “yawner” beCause apple did not “monetize on the ai front” spoke for the market, which drave apple stock down from the mineuthe.

How Apple is being a people-happy

You’d Think the Interests of Apple Consures and Apple Investors Bold Not Diverge, And for Most of the Past two decades they haven’t. Thanks to the roaring success of the iPhone, Apple Got Millions of New Customers for All its Well-Designed, Highly-rated, Premium Price Products. Investors rewarded that runaway growth by making apple the first company ever with a market capitalization of more than $ 3 trillion.

But apple is increasing with mature markets. Or in Normal Person-SPEAK, Its Gadgets Have Solved Most Major Problems and Settled Down Into Standard Vursions of Themselves. The average user can buy an iPhone now and be reasonally confident that its superfast chipset and self-up-up-up-up-up software will keep it future-previed for the Next Five Years or So. You can still Rock an iPhone 11 from 2019 Well Into 2026; It’s the oldest phone that officially supports the upcoming iOS 26.

And that’s as it should be! Apple would not have earned its current level of love from consumers IF it Had Gone Any Further With The Obnoxious Business Strategy Known as Plananed Obsolesece, in the environmental impact of its gadgets. A business model that has noting to do with seling user data means the company can creav about privacy on billboards.

But it also also means cook has to work extra hard to convince the market

“Liquid glass” is a case in point. Fedherigi described it as a “material” that sits atop the user interface in apple Oses, as if the company had literally injected Liquid Glass into All Its SCREENS. Spoiler Alert: It hasn’t. Liquid glass is just a design language that makes menus a bit more “see-through-y”, in mashable Senior Editor Stan Schroeder’s Memorable Summary. Such obvious overhyping makes apple marketing a bit more see-through-y too.

In search of a new look, liquid glass also adds a drop shadow to some icons – verboten at Apple Back when Jony Ive was there. Former Apple Executive Scott Forsstall was ousted in 2012 in Part Because He Championed This Kind of Design, Known as Skeumorphism, Whereas Ive Favored a Flat Look. Apparently apple has extended its recycling program to include design ideas.

Apple’s new call screening feature will positively affected more lives than liquid glass. But Android has taken the lead on that front, so cook can’t really claim credit for it; It’s just listed as one of a grab bag of features in Apple Intelligence. Polls in Group Chats? That’s also an apple intelligence feature. Order Tracking in Apple Wallet? Sure, let’s call that apple intelligence too.

But whather you fear ai or love it, that grab-bag approach to what apple intelligence actually is ain Bollywood to cut it. Investors, who have alredy sent the market cap of ai-leveraged companies like Microsoft and Nvidia SOARING HIGER SOARING HIGHER METAN APPLE APPLES, Aren’T Going to Be Satisfied With White AI Era. And so long as he refuses to explain what the market and other companies get wrong about