On the finish of the WWDC 2025 keynote deal with on Monday, the corporate actually sang its praises to app builders, as singer-songwriter Allen White humorously turned prospects’ optimistic App Retailer evaluations into tune lyrics for a tune titled “6 out of 5 stars.”
“Finest app I’ve ever set my sorry eyes upon,” he crooned. “This isn’t an app. It’s a bit of artwork.”
What Apple didn’t point out, nonetheless, was something associated to the tumultuous previous few years for its developer neighborhood, or extra broadly, why its builders ought to proceed to place their belief in an organization that’s combating them for each nickel and dime whereas failing them in different methods.
Lately, the Cupertino-based tech large has put its app developer neighborhood by means of the wringer because it stringently fought towards regulation, lawsuits, and some other efforts to rein in its alleged App Retailer monopoly by nations, lawmakers, and the courts.
In the meantime, it has but to ship on a few 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 12 months’s WWDC. Apple solely briefly acknowledged this fumble throughout this 12 months’s keynote deal with, when SVP of Software program Engineering Craig Federighi mentioned the work “wanted extra time” to fulfill Apple’s excessive bar.
At WWDC, Apple’s scattered mentions of AI associated to options that Google’s AI already has, similar 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 Visible 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 Picture Playground app and for coding help in Xcode. However no offers with different AI suppliers had 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 device.
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 Retailer commissions.
Within the U.S., as an example, Apple is recent off a key loss in its battle with Fortnite maker Epic Video games that forces Apple to now permit U.S. builders to level to different fee mechanisms on the internet, the place it may’t take a fee.
But Apple didn’t spend time throughout its hour-and-a-half-long keynote to speak about how its App Retailer is the perfect place to construct an app enterprise, enhancements it’s made to fee processing methods, 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 Video games app, however the keynote deal with centered on the patron 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 Retailer 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 worth.
Whereas arguably extra developer-focused enhancements will roll out this week at WWDC, by means of its developer keynote, Platforms State of the Union, and its numerous classes, Apple missed an opportunity to shock its developer neighborhood with some type of acknowledgement that it’s understood that these previous years have been powerful, however in the end it’s on builders’ sides.
As a substitute, the one reference thus far to the altering market dynamics of the App Retailer ecosystem was a small replace to its App Assessment Tips, 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 Retailer.
As for enhancing builders’ companies, Apple appeared to be considering of itself and its personal coffers first. Within the preliminary developer beta of iOS 26, the App Retailer opens as much as its Search web page by default, which means that Apple is pushing builders to spend extra on its App Retailer Search advertisements for discovery.
Different 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 shoppers with new bells and whistles, like its interface design overhaul dubbed Liquid Glass.
Although impressed by its VR headset Imaginative and prescient Professional, Apple didn’t supply builders an evidence as to why they need to make over their completely useful apps to fulfill these new design tips. The corporate might have not less than hinted at the truth that Liquid Glass appears an apparent precursor to constructing an working system that will finally lengthen past smartphones and tablets, to succeed in new computing platforms, like AR glasses.
However Apple’s cultural desire for protecting secrets and techniques, regardless of years of complete leaks, largely from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, saved it from suggesting that Liquid Glass was something however an up to date new look to wow shoppers.
In wrapping the occasion by singing cheery App Retailer evaluations (a system now beset by bots and faux evaluations, as builders know), Apple tried to lighten the temper. It knew that this 12 months’s occasion would let down its developer neighborhood with its AI delays, amid an aggressive pursuit of developer income.
The tip end result made the tune really feel like a performative act of developer appreciation — yes, an precise efficiency! — relatively than a real reflection of how precious builders are to Apple’s capacity to ship extra iPhones and make shoppers completely happy.
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