Apple’s 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference keynote had the feel of a spouse proudly ticking off items from a long-neglected to-do list. Instead of unveiling anything truly groundbreaking, the company focused on fixing last year’s “Liquid Glass” design, overhauling its notoriously poor search function, and improving the Playground feature. Most notably, two years after promising a smarter Siri and failing to deliver, Apple finally demonstrated a revamped version of its AI-powered voice assistant. Yet the most revealing aspect wasn’t the announcements themselves, but how Apple chose to present them. Many of the Apple Intelligence demos showed someone standing, phone in hand, pressing buttons or using voice commands in real time, while another camera captured the phone’s response. These were not live, on-stage demos where anything could go wrong—they were pre-recorded. But they felt far more like proof of working features than what Apple offered at WWDC 2024, when it first introduced Apple Intelligence and a new Siri through slick, polished videos that ultimately proved to be more promise than product.

This shift in presentation style did not go unnoticed. On Monday, comments on X compared the keynote to the so-called “vaporware” demos from 2024. At that time, Apple claimed the features would be available soon to users who upgraded to the iPhone 15 Pro and newer devices with M1 chips or better. But by March 2025, Apple admitted to Daring Fireball that rolling out the features shown in those production videos was “going to take us longer than we thought to deliver.” Shortly afterward, the Cupertino company faced a federal lawsuit alleging false advertising over the features showcased at the 2024 event—a case that carried significant reputational risk for a brand built on the promise that its products “just work.” Last month, Apple agreed to pay a $250 million settlement without admitting wrongdoing. Monday’s presentation seemed designed, at least partly, to avoid a repeat. While there were still plenty of fully produced videos of features—such as one showing how to adjust Siri’s voice and another demonstrating improved voice-to-text transcription—many AI features were shown in this “live-like” format, with someone using the feature on an actual device. The implicit message was clear: these features work on real devices, and you will soon have them.

Apple is also not requiring users to buy the latest iPhone to access these features. According to the company, the new Siri will be available through iOS 27 on iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, as well as all iPhone 16 models and later. Since the current model is the iPhone 17, most users who upgraded in the past couple of years won’t need new hardware to get access. This is perhaps a concession that Apple won’t lock the features behind new devices to create upgrade pressure, especially after promising two years ago that such features would be available on the iPhone 15. Apple also stated that the new features will be available across its broader hardware lineup, including the iPad mini (A17 Pro), iPad models with M1 or later, MacBook Neo (A18 Pro), Mac models with M1 or later, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 10 or later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, and Apple Watch SE 3 when paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone nearby.