Apple is about to announce updates to how we use the iPhone and its other devices

New York
CNN
 — 

Major Apple announcements from its annual developers conference the past two years heralded big changes — which, so far, have largely fallen flat. This year, the tech company badly needs to deliver a win.

Apple’s weeklong Worldwide Developers Conference, teased with the tagline “on the horizon,” kicks off with a keynote at 1 pm ET on Monday from its headquarters in Cupertino, California. The annual event is where the company announces updates to the software that runs on billions of Apple devices used worldwide.

The iPhone maker is expected to announce relatively modest updates to its Apple Intelligence suite of AI features, such as new translation capabilities, as well as changes that will affect iPhones, AirPods, Apple Watches and more.

The big announcements of the prior two years — the Vision Pro headset and Apple Intelligence AI tools — failed to live up to the hype. Although Apple tried to sell its headset as the future of computing, the Vision Pro remains an expensive, niche product since hitting shelves last year. Apple Intelligence features, widely seen as reactive to competitors’ offerings, were slow to reach devices after the iPhone 16 launch, and the AI-enhanced Siri heralded at last year’s WWDC has been delayed indefinitely.

In the meantime, rivals have surged ahead on AI. Google, for example, announced a flurry of updates last month, including more advanced AI search, shopping and productivity capabilities. And steep AI competition aside, Apple is still having a rough year, with ongoing slow iPhone sales growth and a trade war threatening to force the company to raise prices.

The iPhone maker has a large installed base — that is, people using its products, which currently totals more than 2 billion active devices. That means even if Apple isn’t first to roll out a software innovation, loads of people will still use wind up using their version. But after having delayed the launch of its AI-enhanced Siri, some skeptics worry that consumers could start to look toward other companies’ devices for more powerful AI features.

“Say you’re an influencer and you pick up a Samsung phone or a (Google Pixel) phone and say, ‘I’m done with my Apple phone. This is real AI and I love it,’” Baird Managing Director Ted Mortonson told CNN. “That’s what Apple risks, that iOS displacement and people saying it’s no longer cool.”

The company will likely announce updates to its “Apple Intelligence” system, but most industry watchers believe it remains behind rivals.

Apple’s updated AI capabilities are likely to be “at least equivalent” to earlier versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Forrester senior analyst Andrew Cornwall said in emailed commentary.

Here are some of the major updates Apple is rumored to be announcing at WWDC on Monday.

An AirPods update is expected to enable live translation for in-person conversations, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

If an English-speaking user were having a conversation with someone speaking a different language, the AirPods would automatically translate their partner’s words into their ears, according to the report. Then, the users’ iPhone would translate the user’s English speech back into the other language.

The offering could make AirPods more competitive with rival products, such as Google’s Pixel Buds or Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, which already enabled live translation.

Automatic translation is also coming to messages, along with support for conducting polls within the messages app, Apple blog 9to5Mac reports.

The pressure is on for Apple to prove that Apple Intelligence justifies buying a new iPhone or Mac. Based on reports, Apple will likely build on what it announced last year rather than previewing massive new AI updates.

Among the biggest updates Apple is expected to make is opening its AI models to third-party developers, so users could soon see apps built on the iPhone maker’s AI technology.

For consumers, the biggest AI-related changes could be a new feature that uses AI to preserve battery life and an AI-powered health coach, Forrester vice president and principal analyst Thomas Husson wrote ahead of the event. Bloomberg has also previously reported that Apple is working on both features.

That AI-powered “battery management” feature would reportedly adjust how much power apps can draw based on device owners’ usage trends. Such a tool could be especially useful in the slimmer, iPhone “Air” model that Apple is rumored to be releasing later this year, which would likely have a less powerful battery.

Gurman reported that the new health app and AI health coach — said to be called Project Mulberry inside Apple — would collect data from across users’ iPhone, Watch and other devices and use that information to make personalized health recommendations. The company has reportedly brought in health experts to film videos about various conditions, which could be shown to users based on the recommendation of the AI health agent.

Apple typically previews software updates in June before releasing the final versions widely in the fall, usually coinciding with new hardware product launches.

Rumor has it that Apple’s operating system will get a new look. The effort, reportedly dubbed Solarium internally, includes more glassy, translucent windows and notifications that let background images peek through, similar to how windows on the Vision Pro display let users’ natural surroundings show through.

That could provoke mixed reactions from iPhone owners, said Carolina Milanesi, president and principal analyst at tech analysis firm Creative Strategies.

“Consumers are creatures of habit,” she said. “And change is always resisted before it’s embraced.”

And while the name of Apple’s latest operating system release typically goes up by one each year (i.e. iOS 17 to iOS 18), Monday’s software update is expected to jump to iOS 26 on Monday, and ditto for the Mac, iPad, Apple Watch, TV and Vision Pro operating systems, Gurman reported last month.

The change could bring the OS naming convention in line with the year in which customers will be using it. The version announced on Monday will be live on Apple devices from September 2025 through September 2026. It would also create consistency across all of Apple’s devices, which currently have different operating system version numbers — for example, macOS 15 and watchOS 11 — because they were released in different years.