Apple’s developer conference started today, and as is tradition, this means it also announced coming updates to its operating systems lineup. macOS is probably one of the two major ones OSNews readers are interested in, so let’s start there:
Much like Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009, Apple said it focused on improving macOS’s performance and dozens of underlying technologies this year.
macOS Golden Gate has some Liquid Glass design changes. For example, apps now have a unified toolbar at the top, and the sidebar now expands to the edge of the window.
A new slider on macOS 27 lets you customize the opacity of Liquid Glass.
↫ Joe Rossignol at MacRumors
Effectively, a ton of “Liquid Glass” features touted only a year ago are being changed and fixed, which should make using Liquid Glass less of a frustrating affair. Of course, there’s a whole slew of new “AI” stuff built entirely on top of Google’s Gemini, but luckily for us Europeans, we won’t be getting those features because EU privacy and consumer protection regulations are too strict. Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, seemingly cannot create “AI” features that comply with some basic consumer protection legislation.
As for the other major platform, that’s iOS of course.
At WWDC 2026 in Cupertino, Apple announced iOS 27, the next mobile operating system for compatible iPhones. The update focuses on tweaking and improving last year’s iOS 26, particularly in areas like app launch time, Liquid Glass design, and more. It does not offer a lot of major new features or upgrades, as Apple focused on polishing the experience. However, there are some new upgrades, such as reworked parental controls, new Siri AI, better search, and performance improvements.
↫ Taras Buria at Neowin
These new versions, as well as those of Apple’s other operating systems, will be available later this year.
