There are many products mentioned within this article that have not been officially announced by Apple. Any information regarding unreleased products, be it the folding iPhone, touch-screen MacBook Pro, HomePad, camera-enabled AirPods, AR glasses, or AI pendant, is based solely on third-party reports and analyst insights. None of this information can be considered an affirmation of Apple’s plans.To be blunt, when the news about iOS 27 began trickling out late last year, with emphasis on stability, increased performance, Snow Leopard-style interface, my immediate response was one of slight disappointment. Having waited two whole years for something called Apple Intelligence, another year sounded like too much more of the same.
Then WWDC happened, and I changed my mind.
As far as my initial response to watching the keynote went, it was definitely not one of excitement. Rather, it was that sense of flatness one experiences after being disappointed by something they were expecting from it. For instance, Apple came through with Siri AI; finally, really, as an actual product and developer beta and, to be quite honest, my immediate reaction was Okay, great, that is what you promised two years ago. To say I felt like standing up to applaud Apple at having reached their promised goal was just not possible.
As time passed during the evening and I sat through it, zooming out from the individual updates to the bigger picture, I figured out that I had misread the message completely.
I am incredibly excited about Apple now. I don’t think that I have been able to state that clearly in a few years now.
Here’s why.
Search got a total overhaul. The CPU scheduler was tuned to make iPhones, even the six-year-old iPhone 11, faster. Mail got a new ranking system. The era of Intel is entirely behind us, which means that OS 27 are the first to work for one single architecture stack without carrying the burden of six years’ worth of cross-compatibility baggage within every single framework. AirDrop works 80 percent faster. Apps launch 30 percent faster. Wi-Fi handoff is more intelligent. I could go on.
Apple went from top to bottom. Line by line, clearing the table of issues that have plagued iOS, macOS, and iPadOS users for years. And when Apple clears the table, the only real question is: what are they cooking?
In short, stepping back to get the full picture of everything that Apple has in its plans for the next eighteen months, this is easily the boldest array of new products Apple has ever dared to attempt since the time of the first iPhone. Everything on the horizon will be fundamentally dependent upon the foundation laid down by iOS 27 and the suite of 27 releases.
First up is the foldable iPhone, apparently coming out this September. It has two screens, a hinge, and an aspect ratio that shifts once you unfold it. This is something iOS is not used to dealing with, until now. This summer will be completely dedicated, in part, to Apple getting iOS developers comfortable with the challenge of creating resizable and flexible apps. The road came first, long before the car rolled up.
But should all of that not be enough, a major redesign is coming for the Mac, too, and one that represents a far more revolutionary development than the introduction of Apple Silicon. The next MacBook Pro will apparently have a touchscreen, using OLED technology, Dynamic Island, and is likely due out somewhere around late 2026 or early 2027. And yet, what must be remembered is that Apple did not wait for such hardware developments to bring the concept of touch to macOS. In fact, this week, under the radar, Apple introduced touch support to the Mac.
In macOS 27 Golden Gate, extending your Mac’s display to an iPad allows you to use touch for the first time ever to manipulate and operate macOS, something you could not do before. Without the need for an Apple Pencil or mouse, you can actually perform Mac actions with just your finger.
And then there is the “HomePad”, a not-so-creative name that is basically an amalgamation of the much-talked-about HomePod and iPad combo. It will come with a seven-inch screen, front camera, and Siri at its core. The device itself has undergone numerous postponements; every one of them has come about, in part, due to the same reason: Siri was not yet ready. But Siri AI is finally here. The issue with HomePad has never been about hardware; it’s always been about software. And iOS 27 solved that software issue.
Cameras in AirPods are also coming; infrared cameras in the stem, providing Visual Intelligence input directly to your iPhone as it rests in your pocket, allowing you to talk to Siri and get information about what you’re seeing in the real world. Just try to picture the actual functionality involved here: Visual Intelligence technology, which was introduced to the Mac for the very first time this week, operating through the AirPods. This is only possible with working Siri AI running on iOS 27.
And lastly, there is the pendant: a tiny, AirTag-esque device worn clipped to clothing or around your neck, with a camera and a microphone but no display, serving as eyes and ears for Siri, which is tied to your iPhone. The Humane AI Pin, but from Apple, iPhone-compatible, Apple-designed, and featuring a Siri capable of doing something. It’s hard to say if this will ever come to fruition, but it’s in the works somewhere, even if it never hits apple.com.
The smart glasses have already been developed under the codename N50 and are slated for release in 2027. Notably, there is no display. It is all linked to your iPhone, relying heavily on a Siri AI capable of comprehending the context and reacting autonomously. Again, something not possible without Siri AI or a solid foundation of iOS 27 and visionOS 27.
This is what I believe people miss about Apple in all their daily coverage. Apple never telegraphs its punches. It does not call a press conference to say that it will soon be doing something amazing. It simply and systematically builds the foundations for what it is going to do, until one day in September, everything is already in place and ready to go.
This has happened many times before. There was no App Store when the iPhone was released. It came fifteen months later on top of an infrastructure that Apple had already created, and it transformed the idea of the smartphone. The Apple Silicon transition took two years from start to finish because Apple had been working behind closed doors for years on creating the right software ecosystem before announcing any plans. The Apple Watch took two years to go from being a timepiece that could track your health to becoming the most popular watch in the world as a result of improvements in watchOS and hardware.
A foldable iPhone. A touchscreen Mac. AirPods that can see. A HomePod + iPad combo. Smart glasses. A weird little AI pendant that Apple may or may not ever ship. A new CEO with a passion for hardware and a foldable iPhone for his first product announcement. These are not things you do when your product lineup is quietly updating itself as usual. These are the preparations for the biggest swing Apple has made in a decade.
This is the reason why I am excited. It’s not for iOS 27, which is a stability release with a fantastic Siri tacked onto the top, but rather for the message that iOS 27 sends. The wiring is set up. The foundation is laid. The walls are squared.
Something extraordinary is coming. I can feel it in the plumbing.