Developer John Rodrigues attended WWDC 2026 and saw Tim Cook's final keynote and Siri AI's launch. Siri now uses a hybrid of Google Gemini and Apple's on-device models, triggered by looking at it in Vision OS. Xcode integrates Codex, Gemini, and Claude for AI-assisted coding and design-to-code workflows.
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Welcome to another video. In this video, I'm going to talk about my experience going to Apple's WWDC, and I've been part of the Apple Developer Program, but I've been trying for past 3 years. It's like a golden ticket. You get picked and not everybody get to go, but this time after 3 years, I finally was able to get the ticket. That means I get to go. So it was truly an experience that I was waiting for a long time. And the best part about this WWDC, it's also Tim Cook's final, you know, presentation. Good morning, everyone. Woo! Because he's stepping back from the CEO. So it was truly special to be there. And this was the first time in the history that they allowed developers to attend the Steve Jobs Theater. And there was a movie screening that also I attended. Things that stood out to me is like one, definitely meeting all the designers and developers I know from Apple. And with the AI bringing shift in large-scale organization, looking at that was truly something I was looking forward to. So the one big update that's happened with AI is Siri AI. They finally called AI, and there are some slides they even call like white coding, but not in an open way because Apple always been like avoiding these words and stuff, the buzzwords. But they launched Siri AI. I think this is a great step because Siri had a lot of like architectural problem. So now they connected this to like Google Gemini and Siri. So they, you know, they were leveraging those architectures and models and stuff and probably doing some kind of a hybrid architecture between Apple hardware and Apple software and Gemini. But so this makes like Siri truly efficient. For the longest time, Siri's architecture was very much broken, and you all probably saw all these issues not being as efficient as other AI tools that we use. So now Siri is like almost acting like a personal assistant and going to that agent direction. It can take action and it can do things for you. And as a developer, you can build out this experiences as well of using Apple's intent and things like that. So it's truly opened up a lot of gates for developers to build AI AI-focused experience for Apple platform, but also for the consumers looking at that, you know, Siri getting more smarter, almost acting like a personal assistant and this kind of like competition to rest of the AI models that rest of the AI tools and personal assistant and everything that lives within your phone. So, and visually it looks beautiful and you can customize it as well. So it was truly nice to see that. And some of the best highlight of Siri was also looking at this in the spatial space in Vision OS and things. So it looks very nice. So it's Siri, you don't have to say, hey Siri, in Vision Pro. You can just, what do you say, look at it and then it will start talking to you. I was like looking at this, all these sessions. And so one more thing that is the Apple's foundation models are basically just are, these are on-device model that runs for free and the data stays within the device and does not leave to external providers and stuff. And Apple has always been focusing on like foundational on-device models and stuff, but now they made it better. So means more privacy and stuff, just gonna open up a lot of applications for enterprises who care a lot about data privacy and things, and models getting— this on-device model getting better. And for the longest time, Apple has been a very like closed system, but it was really good to see doing like open source and those integration and stuff. So Xcode also get a very big refresh. It feels like a wipe coding tool with, you know, ability to create agent skills and manage your .md files and then create you know, iOS apps just through like prompting and stuff. Bring your Codex, Gemini, and the Claude code models, integrate with Figma, Figma and GitHub and all that stuff. So it's truly getting that bit of an ecosystem that AI developers and designers and engineers need. So it was really good to see that. And the Apple Intelligence, Visual Intelligence has gotten so much updates. So there was a hackathon after the conference. I was able to take part and prototype quickly with Apple Intelligence and stuff. One more thing was a lot of the designers were very mad about it for a long time is the liquid glass, because it brings a lot of accessibility issues and transparency with the transparency and stuff. So they finally made this change where you can change the refraction and transparency of the UI. That means the developers and designers can control it to what level of transparency that they need. That definitely drastically improves the accessibility of the product. So that was really a good change. They heard the community and designers and things. So it was really good to see. And then increased corner radius and improvements on those things. Where design, subtle design changes was nice to see. So I think one of my fun part also is like meeting a lot of influencers. So it was really fun meeting them in person. I just really fun. I think that was the best part of WWDC. I really enjoyed walking around the Steve Jobs Theater. That was the key highlight. This architecture of that building is very special. It's like a glass thing with the ceiling is like floating or supported by that glass. So it was really nice to sit there and observe the architecture. Also met like Paul Hudson there. See people from this iOS community. To kind of, you know, see them in person after watching them a lot on YouTube. One of the designers that I look up to, Andy Allen, so meeting him in person was super cool. He also has design awards and stuff, so it was really inspiring to meet him in person as well. So yeah, that was the Apple's WWDC experience for me, and something that I thought I'll document it here and save it here. This was my first WWDC, and seeing all these AI updates that are happening and how this, you know, products are turning more agentic, and even big companies like Apple are making this major pivots with their software architecture and how products and companies are built and becoming more open. So which was really nice to see. And giving— this is WWDC, it's a developer conference, so it gives a lot of tools for developers to build on top of Apple's platform. And definitely if I prototype something, I'll definitely share it here and in the AI Builder Club also. I'll share that in the, in that blog, in the blogs there. It was quite a good experience. And thank you for watching. And so make sure you are subscribed. To this channel. Check out the people I mentioned in the description and things. If you're watching it on Substack, subscribe and do that, all that stuff to support this work. Oh yeah, I'll see you in another video.
