WWDC 2025: Apple’s grand reveal disappoints

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

WWDC 2025: Apple’s grand reveal disappoints

As always, the company unveiled its latest and greatest updates to its products at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The biggest Q this year: Will Apple—the great laggard in AI—catch up with its rivals? The answer: Nope, at least not for now:

Apple announced new features today like translation of calls and messages, phone call screening, and the ability to search for items in images on your phone’s screen. But these were some of the earliest applications of AI that arrived on Android, particularly from Google and Samsung. And while Apple is keeping pace, competitors continue to barrel ahead with new AI tools and services.

The glaring omission in the flurry of AI updates: Siri—the company’s core personalised tool.

Wtf is up with Apple & AI?: The company has always been sceptical of the AI hype machine. Right before the conference, its researchers published a new study titled ‘The Illusion of Thinking’—which argues that the machine brain cannot handle high amounts of complexity. The scientists tested the entire gamut of ChatGPT and Gemini models:

By creating controlled puzzle environments that could precisely manipulate complexity while maintaining logical consistency, they revealed three distinct performance regimes in Large Reasoning Models.

In low-complexity tasks, standard models actually outperformed their supposedly superior reasoning counterparts. Medium-complexity problems showed marginal benefits from additional "thinking" processes. But most tellingly, both model types experienced complete collapse when faced with high-complexity tasks.

Also damning: “This is not a gradual degradation but a sharp drop to near-zero accuracy as problems become sufficiently difficult.” Reminder: Apple made similar claims last year in a separate research paper. They showed that AI models struggle with math problems when they are presented in new formats. The reason in both cases is the same: AI can’t think, it just matches patterns.

A half full ‘Liquid Glass’: As consolation for its fans, Apple made everything prettier—instead of ‘smarter’—rolling out a new ”Liquid Glass" design:

“[It’s] our broadest design update, ever,” says Alan Dye, Apple’s VP of human interface design. “For the first time we’re introducing a universal design across our platforms.” The new design adds glass-like elements throughout iOS, including to the dock and the lockscreen, and it’s designed to mimic the optical qualities of glass.

It looks like this:

Reading list: This YouTube vid from Apple has lots more on the design. The CNN Liveblog has a list of the latest updates. Wall Street Journal (paywalled) and The Guardian report on the lack of AI oomph. You can read the Apple paper here—or an overview over at Forbes and Hindustan Times.

Trump vs LA: Send in the Marines!!

The context: Over the weekend, ICE launched sweeping raids across LA—arresting 100, sparking protests, and prompting Trump to deploy the National Guard in a move not seen since 1965. Civil rights groups called it an “oppressive and vile paramilitary” crackdown, as the White House doubled down on workplace arrests to ramp up deportations. This Big Story has lots more.

What happened now: The master of pandemonium upped the ante by doubling the number of National Guard troops to 4,000—and threw in 700 US Marines for good measure. Yup, he sent in the military—though they have not been charged with law enforcement. But Trump is repeatedly calling the protesters “insurrectionists” to give himself cover—for future escalation.

As for those protests: The police, mayor and governor have repeatedly said they do not need any extra help controlling angry crowds. The scene in downtown LA was pretty calm for most of Monday:

Protesters linked hands outside the downtown federal detention center.. and at times sang in front of a line of police officers, who unsuccessfully asked people to move off the road and onto the sidewalk. Religious leaders joined the protesters, working with organizers at times to deescalate moments of tension.

It looked something like this:

But the mood soured a little by the evening—when law enforcement officers fired flash bangs and foam rounds to disperse a crowd. Reminder: No one sent in troops when Trump supporters stormed the US Congress—which looked like this:

We’ll see you in court!: All disputes in America eventually end up in a courtroom. The state of California has sued the Trump administration—for taking control of the state National Guard and deploying troops in LA. The complaint calls it an “unprecedented usurpation of state authority and resources”—adding, “President Trump has repeatedly invoked emergency powers to exceed the bounds of lawful executive authority.”

Where we are now: Around 150 have been arrested in LA—and protests are spreading to other cities like San Francisco. For now, Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act—which would allow him to deploy US troops to put down the protests—and complete America’s transformation into a banana republic. Liveblogs at the New York Times and The Guardian offer the latest developments. (Associated Press via The Hindu)

Global reforestation is not a silver bullet

New research shows fully reforesting Earth will indeed cool the planet—by around 0.34°C. That’s if we add about 4.6 million square miles of forests to bring the amount of trees back to preindustrial levels.

But it will not be enough to reverse global warming—since we have already crossed the 1.5°C threshold. And replanting trees doesn’t have the same impact everywhere. For example, Northern trees tend to warm the atmosphere around them because of their dark color—“since dark surfaces absorb more heat, a dark tree-covered surface will trap more of the Sun’s heat — and warm the local climate.”

Point to note: Many experts are sceptical about reforestation as a strategy:

Protecting existing forests and planting new ones are surely good things to do. However, scientists say we must not place too much faith in trees to save us. In particular, last year one research group claimed we can plant a trillion extra trees and remove a quarter of the carbon dioxide currently in the air. These figures have been widely criticised as overhyped and unreliable.

BBC News has more on that point of view. (Washington Post)

what caught our eye

business & tech

In India, city folks are picking cheaper, unbranded daily goods, while villages are warming up to big-name brands.
Tesla’s robot boss quit, throwing a wrench in Elon Musk’s big plan to roll out 5,000 Optimus bots this year.
OpenAI’s in hot water—after a court order tied to a NYT lawsuit, it now has to keep all ChatGPT logs, even deleted ones, sparking global privacy panic.
Fortune has a good read on the sovereign AI paradox—countries like the UAE, France, and India claim tech independence, but still rely heavily on others’ hardware and infrastructure.
YouTube is relaxing its content rules—moderators have been told to lean toward free speech, even if it means leaving up potentially harmful videos.

sports & entertainment

RIP Frederick Forsyth—the former journalist and MI6 informant who turned real-life espionage into bestselling thrillers like ‘The Day of the Jackal’ has died at 86.
Warner Bros Discovery is splitting the script—HBO and CNN will become separate companies in a bold move to simplify the business and boost investor confidence.
Big win for college athletes in the US—schools can now officially pay them, after a major legal settlement got the green light.
Aryna Sabalenka’s post-final comments stirred backlash for downplaying Coco Gauff’s French Open win—she’s now issued a statement to clear the air.

health & environment

Delhi baked on Monday with temperatures feeling like 49°C, as IMD issued an orange alert for the ongoing heatwave.
Ozempic and Wegovy promise weight loss—but users are spotting “Ozempic face,” rotten breath, and other ugly side effects from head to toe.
The Cut has a good read on why UTIs are getting tougher to beat.
Sea acidity just hit a dangerous new high, putting entire ecosystems on the edge, scientists warn.

meanwhile, in the world

Greta Thunberg’s Gaza-bound boat reached Israel’s Ashdod on Monday after its seizure—she and 11 others now face medical checks and deportation.
Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla’s trip to the ISS has been delayed by a day due to bad weather in Florida.
Trump’s new travel ban kicked in on Monday, stopping visitors from 12 mainly African and Middle Eastern countries amid a toughening immigration crackdown.
The UK government’s secret role in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program will face a rare legal challenge this week.

meanwhile, in India

After four people died falling off a crowded Mumbai local, the Railways board says new non-AC trains with automatic doors will roll out by January 2026 to prevent such accidents.
Sonam Raghuvanshi, the missing Indian bride, has surrendered to police after being accused of hiring killers to murder her husband Raja during their honeymoon in Meghalaya.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru and event organiser DNA Entertainment Networks have moved the Karnataka High Court to quash criminal cases filed against them over the M Chinnaswamy Stadium stampede.
Reuters has a good read on India’s $80 billion coal-power expansion hitting a major hurdle: many new plants are planned in water-scarce areas, risking increased conflict between local communities and the energy industry.
India’s extreme poverty rate plunged from 27.1% in 2011-12 to just 5.3% today—even as the World Bank bumped up the global poverty line to $3 a day.
Four died and nine were injured in a tragic Mumbai train accident when bags of people riding on the footboards of two local trains brushed against each other in Thane.

Six things to see

Content advisory: The clip below is not bloody but it is shocking.

One: On Saturday, the rightwing Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe was shot at during a campaign rally in Bogotá. The motive remains unknown but a 15-year-old was arrested at the scene with a firearm (see those photos here). The videos of the assassination attempt have now gone viral—spreading alarm across the country. Uribe is out of surgery but “fighting for his life.” (Euronews)

Two: A Singapore-flagged cargo ship travelling from Colombo to Mumbai caught fire off the Kerala coast yesterday—damaging 20 containers and 22 crew members. The Indian Navy and Coast Guard conducted rescue operations and got 18 crew members to safety while four people are missing. The missing belong to Taiwan, Indonesia and Myanmar. The cause for the fire is still being investigated. See the vid below. (The Independent)

Three: A video shared by Indian-American entrepreneur Kunal Jain showed an Indian student handcuffed and pinned to the floor at Newark Airport before he was deported. The kid appeared to be speaking Haryanvi, and seemed unable to communicate clearly with the officers. Check out the video below. The Indian Consulate in the USA is in touch with local authorities to figure out what happened. (Hindustan Times)

Four: KASHISH Pride Film Festival 2025—South Asia’s largest LGBTQ+ film festival—concluded yesterday in Mumbai. The grand prize was bagged by Chandradeep Das’s Bengali-language short film called ‘Jasmine That Blooms in Autumn’—centred on a love story of two elderly women. See the trailer below. (The Telegraph)

Five: On Sunday, the forest department found a tiger and a dog trapped in a deep pit on a private plantation in Idukki, Kerala. Both animals were shot with tranquiliser darts and rescued. The miracle: The tiger did not kill the dog—even though it was initially barking. The reason, according to wildlife experts: “For trapped predator and prey, instinct to survive overrules impulse to hunt.” They do look kinda chill lol! (The Hindu)

Six: The legendary hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan has returned after 25 years with a new action co-op game called ‘Rise of the Deceiver’. Ofc, the game’s soundtrack features their music. See the trailer below. (The Verge)