Apple

macOS 26 Tahoe introduces features like the new Liquid Glass UI, enhanced Spotlight search, and Live Activities, which focus on improving user experience. These features could inspire Microsoft to adopt a more personalized approach in its offerings.

macOS 26 Tahoe features a refined design with the Liquid Glass UI, which is more subtle on Macs compared to iOS devices. This design emphasizes visual appeal and user interaction, potentially setting a new standard for operating system aesthetics.

Liquid Glass is a new digital material that combines the optical qualities of glass with fluidity, allowing it to dynamically respond to user interactions and adapt to different contexts. It enhances the user experience by providing a more expressive and harmonious interface across Apple devices.

Liquid Glass improves the user experience by creating a more dynamic and expressive interface. It dynamically responds to touch and movement, providing a lively experience that feels natural and alive. This design also enhances clarity in navigation and controls, making it easier for users to interact with apps and system features.

The Liquid Glass design in iOS 26 introduces a new translucent material that reflects and refracts surroundings, enhancing the focus on content and delivering a more vibrant interface across controls, navigation, app icons, and widgets. This design also brings new customization options and a more immersive experience with features like spatial scenes on the Lock Screen.

iOS 26 includes several other notable features, such as a unified layout for communications integrating Phone and FaceTime, a new Games app for managing game libraries and co-op challenges, and enhanced privacy features like Eyes Only mode. Additionally, Safari offers improved fingerprinting protection.

Apple's latest OS updates feature a major visual overhaul, including a 'liquid glass' design theme with partially transparent icons and menus. Additionally, macOS now has a transparent menu bar to enhance the display appearance.

Apple is shifting to a year-based naming convention for its operating systems, such as iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26, to unify the naming across different devices and simplify the versioning system.

Liquid Glass is Apple's new unified design language that introduces a glass-like aesthetic with dynamic, translucent elements. It enhances user interaction by providing fluid transitions and context-sensitive UI adjustments, ensuring a cohesive experience across all Apple devices. This design update includes features like dynamic toolbars and parallax wallpapers, which adapt based on user actions and content.

The Liquid Glass design will be implemented across all Apple operating systems, including iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26. Users can expect to see this new design in the fall of 2025.

The 'Liquid Glass' design is a visual update that introduces sheen and see-through visuals reminiscent of glass. It aims to create a cohesive look across Apple's products by incorporating transparency and shine effects in toolbars, in-app interfaces, and controls. This design will be featured in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, enhancing consistency and user experience.

The 'Liquid Glass' design is expected to play a significant role in the upcoming 20th Anniversary iPhone, codenamed 'Glasswing.' This device will feature curved glass sides and a fully edge-to-edge display, aligning with the visual themes introduced by the 'Liquid Glass' interface.

Liquid Glass is a new software-based material introduced in iOS 26 that combines the optical qualities of glass with a sense of fluidity, resulting in softer edges, translucency, and adaptive controls. This design enhances visual appeal and makes app icons and interface elements more expressive and delightful, while also ensuring a consistent and intuitive experience across Apple devices. The design adapts to user actions and environments, such as adjusting to light and dark modes, and helps focus attention on content by minimizing visual clutter[2][3][1].

The Liquid Glass design is not limited to iOS 26; it will be extended to all Apple operating systems, including iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. This unified design approach aims to create a seamless and consistent user experience across all Apple devices, making it easier for users to switch between different platforms[1][2].

Apple's AI battery management feature in iOS 26 is designed to analyze user behavior and adjust power settings to maximize battery life. It can limit the power draw of apps and system features based on device usage, making it particularly useful for devices like the iPhone 17 Air with smaller batteries.

The AI battery management feature is expected to be available on iPhones that support iOS 26, but it might be particularly optimized for newer models like the iPhone 15 Pro and beyond.

The redesign is expected to feature translucent and glass-like interface effects, along with rounder app icons, inspired by visionOS. This aims to create a more cohesive appearance across Apple devices.

Apple plans to adopt a year-based naming strategy for its operating systems, such as iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26, aligning with the upcoming year rather than the current one.

Apple is continuing its tradition of naming macOS versions after iconic California landmarks, with Lake Tahoe chosen for its natural beauty and reflective waters. This choice is widely interpreted as signaling a major visual redesign for macOS, emphasizing striking visuals and a refreshed user interface that mirrors the lake's clear, reflective qualities. The name also reinforces Apple's commitment to environmental themes and eco-friendly branding.

macOS 26, codenamed Tahoe, is expected to feature a significant user interface overhaul, including more fluid animations, redesigned icons, and a glass-like, translucent design. Apple is also rebranding its operating system version numbers to align with the calendar year, so macOS 26 will be released in 2025 but will be most widely used in 2026. Additionally, Apple is anticipated to announce updates to its gaming platform, health initiatives, and developer tools at WWDC 2025.

Apple is adopting a new naming strategy where the version numbers of its operating systems are tied to the release year. This means that iOS 26, announced in 2025, will be the version for the majority of 2026, similar to how car manufacturers brand their models by the upcoming year (Gurman, 2025; Zivkovic, 2025)[5].

iOS 26 is rumored to include a major redesign of the operating system, advanced AI features, and significant upgrades to Apple Intelligence and Siri. These changes are expected to enhance user experience and provide a fresh look to Apple's software ecosystem (The Shortcut, 2025; Tom's Guide, 2025)[1][3].

Apple is shifting from its traditional sequential version numbering (e.g., iOS 19, macOS 15) to naming its operating systems based on the year of release, such as iOS 26 for the 2026 release. This approach is similar to how Microsoft named Windows versions in the 1990s, like Windows 95. The change aims to unify and simplify the branding across all Apple operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS.

Apple is planning a major overhaul of its operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS, to deliver a more unified user experience across its devices. The rebranding to a year-based naming scheme is part of this effort to simplify and align the branding, making it easier for users to understand and keep track of the software versions across different Apple platforms.

Apple's overhaul will include significant design changes, such as refreshing icons, menus, apps, windows, and system buttons, while simplifying navigation and control. The new design is inspired by VisionOS, the operating system for Apple's Vision Pro headset, and aims to create more intuitive interfaces across devices.

Apple is moving towards year-based versioning for its operating systems, which could be part of the broader rebranding effort. This change aligns with the company's goal to enhance user experience and streamline software integration across devices.

The Solarium interface is a new design language that Apple will introduce at WWDC 2025, aiming to unify the look and feel across its operating systems, including iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS. It is expected to bring a more modern and sleek aesthetic, aligning interface elements across devices and drawing inspiration from visionOS with features like translucent buttons and menus.

While Apple is emphasizing a major design overhaul with Solarium, its AI development efforts are more modest compared to competitors like Google and Microsoft. Apple will open its internal large language models to third-party developers and introduce AI-powered features like battery management and health tools, but these are not the central focus of WWDC 2025.

Windows 10 will reach its end-of-support date on October 14, 2025. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, technical support, or bug fixes for Windows 10. This could lead businesses to consider alternative operating systems, such as macOS, to ensure continued security and support for their operations.

The end of Windows 10 support could lead to increased adoption of Apple devices in the enterprise sector. As businesses seek alternatives to ensure ongoing security and support, Apple's growing market share, as evidenced by its recent 14.1% year-over-year growth in Mac shipments, could accelerate further.

Apple's smart glasses, often referred to as Apple Glass, are designed to work in tandem with the iPhone to display information such as texts, emails, maps, and games directly in the user's field of view. They will likely use a new interface called 'Starboard' and run on visionOS, supporting augmented reality experiences with sensors like LiDAR for gesture control and eye tracking. The glasses aim to provide private AR interactions visible only to the wearer and may include features like prescription lens compatibility and vision correction technology in future models. However, the first generation is expected to offer mostly passive AR experiences without a camera, focusing on notifications and overlays rather than full AR immersion[1][3][4].

Apple's silicon design team is developing specialized chips tailored for their new product categories, including smart glasses, Macs, and AI servers. For smart glasses, these chips will balance processing power and battery life, potentially offloading heavy computation to connected devices like the iPhone to keep the glasses lightweight and wearable. For Macs, the chips will likely offer enhanced performance and efficiency to support advanced computing needs. In AI servers, the chips are expected to provide powerful processing capabilities to handle complex artificial intelligence workloads, marking a significant technological advancement in Apple's product offerings[3].