Dan Counsell
Jun 9, 2026
I first attended WWDC in 2009, the year of Snow Leopard. The last time I went was in 2015, when El Capitan was introduced. I have very fond memories of every WWDC I attended. Meeting developers from all over the world, attending community events and parties, and spending a week immersed in the Apple ecosystem was always a highlight of the year.
A lot has changed since then. Watching WWDC in recent years has been fascinating and sad in equal measure. I understand why things evolved the way they did, but I also believe Apple could run the developer conference more like they used to if they wanted to. The highly staged presentations often feel a little too polished and unnatural, and don't get me started on the hand gestures.
This year's WWDC keynote was the strangest yet. The wording throughout the presentation felt overly manicured, even more than usual. At points I found myself thinking, "a lot of this is just word soup, I don't even understand it". The overhyped presenters don't sound like people speaking naturally anymore. Every sentence feels rehearsed to death, almost robotic and overly refined. It's all just a bit too much.
In a world of impersonal AI-generated content, I think it's going to become more important for companies to communicate like actual human beings. People are craving authenticity (I know I am). Apple still does a lot of great things, but at times the company feels surprisingly tone-deaf when it comes to how it presents itself.
Thankfully, it's not all bad news from Apple Park.
The changes in macOS 27 Golden Gate are very welcome. Apple have walked back many of the decisions introduced in Tahoe. Some of the most noticeable improvements include removing the frankly awful floating sidebar, reducing the corner radius of windows, and dropping the icons from every menu item.
Toolbars now have a proper tinted background, which helps the shiny toolbar buttons feel anchored rather than floating above your content. Apple have also brought colour back to the sidebar icons and refined the window outlines, making it much easier to identify the active window at a glance. All of these changes are very welcome.
macOS Golden Gate is really starting to feel more like the spiritual successor to the original Aqua UI on Mac OS X. I hope Apple continue with these refinements, and if they do, we might just end up with a system that feels like it's built for professionals.
If you skipped Tahoe, and I know a lot of people did, you should find macOS Golden Gate much easier to get along with. Is it perfect? No, but then nothing ever is.