At the tip of the WWDC 2025 keynote deal with on Monday, the corporate actually sang its praises to app builders, as singer-songwriter Allen Stone humorously turned prospects’ constructive App Store evaluations into track lyrics for a tune titled “6 out of 5 stars.”
“Best app I’ve ever set my sorry eyes upon,” he crooned. “This is just not an app. It’s a chunk of artwork.”
What Apple didn’t point out, nevertheless, was something associated to the tumultuous previous few years for its developer group, or extra broadly, why its builders ought to proceed to place their belief in an organization that’s preventing them for each nickel and dime whereas failing them in different methods.
In latest years, the Cupertino-based tech big has put its app developer group by way of the wringer because it stringently fought in opposition to regulation, lawsuits, and every other efforts to rein in its alleged App Store monopoly by nations, lawmakers, and the courts.
Meanwhile, it has but to ship on a number of the key expertise advances that might modernize builders’ apps for the AI period.
In March, it delayed its “extra personalised,” AI-powered Siri, demonstrated finally yr’s WWDC. Apple solely briefly acknowledged this fumble throughout this yr’s keynote deal with, when SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi mentioned the work “wanted extra time” to satisfy Apple’s excessive bar.
At WWDC, Apple’s scattered mentions of AI associated to options that Google’s AI already has, equivalent to Apple’s AI-powered translation options, although it tried to distinguish from Google by providing lyrics translation in Apple Music. Apple’s AI-powered Visual Intelligence function was even demonstrated by tapping into Google’s app for picture search outcomes, one thing that feels extra native on Android gadgets with improvements like Circle to Search, Lens’s multisearch, visible search in movies, and extra.
Elsewhere, Apple appeased builders’ demand for AI with additional integrations with OpenAI expertise, just like the addition of ChatGPT in Apple’s Image Playground app and for coding help in Xcode. But no offers with different AI suppliers have been introduced, regardless of rumors that Google Gemini integration was on the way in which and that Apple was teaming up with Anthropic on an AI-powered coding help software.
Apple additionally made its scripting and automations app Shortcuts simpler to make use of with the addition of AI options, however this ended up feeling extra like a stop-gap to tide over energy customers till an AI Siri might take actions of their apps for them.
Then there was the deafening silence over the more and more controversial App Store commissions.
In the U.S., as an illustration, Apple is recent off a key loss in its battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games that forces Apple to now enable U.S. builders to level to different fee mechanisms on the net, the place it may’t take a fee.
Yet Apple didn’t spend time throughout its hour-and-a-half-long keynote to speak about how its App Store is one of the best place to construct an app enterprise, enhancements it’s made to fee processing techniques, or the way it’s removing scams. (It touted a few of its developer advantages within the days main as much as WWDC, the place it centered on its anti-fraud options and developer revenues.)
Apple additionally launched a standalone Games app, however the keynote deal with centered on the buyer advantages — Challenges, social options, easy accessibility to Apple’s personal gaming retailer, Arcade — not on what it might do for cell builders.
Nor, as some had hoped, did Apple announce a discount in its App Store commissions throughout the board for all builders, lastly placing the query to relaxation as as to whether Apple’s in-app funds system is value its value.
While arguably extra developer-focused enhancements will roll out this week at WWDC, by way of its developer keynote, Platforms State of the Union, and its numerous periods, Apple missed an opportunity to shock its developer group with some kind of acknowledgement that it’s understood that these previous years have been powerful, however finally it’s on builders’ sides.
Instead, the one reference thus far to the altering market dynamics of the App Store ecosystem was a small replace to its App Review Guidelines, which has swapped out the wording “different app market” for “different distribution” — a refined reminder that Apple solely thinks the one app “market” that may exist is its personal App Store.
As for enhancing builders’ companies, Apple appeared to be considering of itself and its personal coffers first. In the preliminary developer beta of iOS 26, the App Store opens as much as its Search web page by default, that means that Apple is pushing builders to spend extra on its App Store Search adverts for discovery.
Other modifications level to Apple seeing builders as simply one other lever to be pulled to make the corporate more cash, whereas it focuses on delighting customers with new bells and whistles, like its interface design overhaul dubbed Liquid Glass.
Though impressed by its VR headset Vision Pro, Apple didn’t supply builders a proof as to why they need to make over their completely practical apps to satisfy these new design pointers. The firm might have no less than hinted at the truth that Liquid Glass appears an apparent precursor to constructing an working system that may ultimately lengthen past smartphones and tablets, to achieve new computing platforms, like AR glasses.
But Apple’s cultural choice for conserving secrets and techniques, regardless of years of complete leaks, largely from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, stored it from suggesting that Liquid Glass was something however an up to date new look to wow customers.
In wrapping the occasion by singing cheery App Store evaluations (a system now beset by bots and pretend evaluations, as builders know), Apple tried to lighten the temper. It knew that this yr’s occasion would let down its developer group with its AI delays, amid an aggressive pursuit of developer income.
The finish end result made the track really feel like a performative act of developer appreciation — yes, an precise efficiency! — reasonably than a real reflection of how helpful builders are to Apple’s skill to ship extra iPhones and make customers blissful.
