Apple is about to hold one of its biggest events of the year – and launch some of the most substantial changes in its history.
The company is planning to rebrand and redesign all of its operating systems, bringing the most significant visual changes to the iPhone’s software in a decade.
And that is just one part of an event that could see a host of important changes introduced across Apple’s products.
The Worldwide Developers Conference event will begin at 10am local pacific time, or 5pm in the UK, on Monday, 9 June. It will be live-streamed on Apple’s website as well as on YouTube.
Here are the biggest changes that Apple is expected to introduce.
AI turnaround
Last year, WWDC was the start of Apple's big AI push, branded as Apple Intelligence. In the run-up to the event, investors and analysts were pushing Apple hard to lean into the technology, criticising Apple for being late to it and being left behind by rivals such as Google and OpenAI.
In the event, Apple had a great offering: it showed off relatively modest new features such as the ability to summarise notifications, and much bigger ones such as a totally redesigned Siri. The market and critics were initially positive.
But in the years since, only the former more modest features have arrived, and the bigger updates have been subject to delays and questions over their possible quality. And so the actual substance of Apple's AI push has been relatively limited.
That leaves Apple in a difficult position this time around. It is rumoured to have more new AI features – from battery saving technologies to a health-focused coach – but it will also be contending with skepticism from those who worry that Apple promised too much the first time around.
Some rumours have suggested that Apple's response will be to be a lot more modest this time around, and give AI a relatively smaller focus. While it will show off some new features as well as possibly give updates on those existing ones, it's unlikely to be quite such an AI focused event as last year's.
New names
Apple is rumoured to be working on perhaps the biggest ever rebrand of its operating systems, with a big plan to get rid of the current confusing run of names. At the moment, it is difficult to know what version each operating system is on: the Vision Pro headset's Vision OS is on number 2, for instance, while iOS is at 19 and MacOS has a confusing and hard to follow numbering and naming system.
This time around, rumours suggest that Apple is planning to swap all those different numbers for a year. The next version's of iOS, WatchOS, MacOS and all the other operating systems will simply be "26", rumours have suggested. (MacOS will probably keep its additional place-based naming system too, however.)
... and new looks
The most obvious change to Apple's software is likely to be a total redesign, which could also come to numerous platforms, if not all. Rumours suggest that Apple is planning to give its operating system a sweeping redesign, which will add the transparent, glassy, three-dimensional look that first came in the Vision Pro.
Apple's special page for WWDC appears to give some sort of hint at what this might look like. Recently, it has been updated to feature a transparent Apple logo and the tagline "sleek peek", which both seem to suggest that the new look will be glassy and shiny, as rumoured.
#WWDC25 is next week! Can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on.
— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) June 2, 2025
See you June 9 at 10am PT. pic.twitter.com/qhrzevDbMH
This could be the biggest visual redesign for iOS since iOS 7, in 2013, which removed the more physical look of the early versions and switched to a more simple and thin design. The new look proved very controversial, and Apple eventually walked back some of the more dramatic changes, but it introduced the design language that lives on the iPhone even now, more than a decade on.
Maybe no new products
WWDC has always been focused on software. But it has occasionally seen the release of new hardware products, too, especially when they have compelling stories for developers, such as new versions of the MacBook Pro or the original unveiling of Apple's Vision Pro augmented reality headset.
This time around, however, no new hardware is expected. Apple has refreshed most of its hardware recently (though the Mac Pro remains a largely untouched part of the lineup, with its last update at WWDC 2023), and there are few rumours about anything new on its way.
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