In some ways, it's been a rough couple of years to be an Apple user.
Two years ago, Apple announced a bold vision for AI that stalled out. Last year, Apple unveiled a revamped user interface that was, in many ways, a step backward. But at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple addressed these issues head-on, announcing operating system enhancements that correct many of their shortcomings, as well as a reboot for Apple's AI efforts.
Although Apple's announcements are not particularly groundbreaking, some of them could significantly change the way you use Apple devices in your nonprofit's work, while others may be relevant to those you serve.
Disclosure: TechSoup partners with Claris, an Apple subsidiary, to provide FileMaker products to nonprofits via the Claris for Nonprofits program. This blog post was written and produced independently of that program and was not subject to approval from Apple or Claris.
Fit and Finish Improvements
Unlike recent years, this year's upcoming Apple OS updates are relatively light on marquee new features. Instead, Apple is focusing its energy on refinements and performance enhancements.
If you've visited any Apple user community in the past year or so, you've probably seen many posts complaining about various issues in Apple's software, ranging from weird bugs to rough edges of the interface. In both the WWDC keynote and Platforms State of the Union presentation — which gets into more detail for developers — the company tried to make it clear that it was listening.
Liquid Glass Gets a Refresh
Most notably, Apple focused on addressing issues with its Liquid Glass interface design. Introduced last year, the new design brought a more consistent look and feel to all of Apple's devices, and it made heavy use of glassy onscreen elements that floated above an app's content. Reactions were mixed: Some loved the new look, while others were less than enthused.
The upcoming version-27 releases of Apple's OSes address some of Liquid Glass's most significant shortcomings. The company has made a number of tweaks to improve the legibility of text and onscreen elements and to refine a few areas that needed some extra polish. Based on screenshots of the updated interface, it looks to be a huge improvement, even though it isn't a huge departure from the existing design.
Performance Improvements Abound
Beyond the surface-level changes, Apple says that it's made a number of improvements to performance across its operating systems so your devices feel faster and more responsive. For example, the company says that iPhone apps open up to 30 percent faster on iOS 27 compared to iOS 26. It also retooled Spotlight search to provide better results and to be more efficient so you can more easily find items on your device.
Is any of this groundbreaking? No. But a maintenance-focused release like this sure is overdue.
End of the Line for Intel Macs
If you've still got Intel-based Macs in your workflow, you won't be able to upgrade to macOS 27, also known as macOS Golden Gate. The upcoming release will support only Macs that are based on Apple's own M-series and A-series chips.
Apple announced this change last year, and, according to Ars Technica, the company will provide security updates for computers running macOS 26 Tahoe until fall 2028. So you'll have a little more time to figure out what to do with your Intel-based Macs, but not a lot.
According to LifeHacker, several iPad models will also be left behind with iPadOS 27. On the other hand, iOS 27 will run on phones going back to the iPhone 11, which came out in 2019.
New Parental Controls
Citing recent research on the effects of screen time on children and teens, Apple announced an overhauled suite of tools that give parents much more control over how their kids use their devices. Improvements include new child accounts, more granular and flexible app and time limits, and much more. These new parental controls will roll out across Apple's operating systems when the new 27 versions come out later this year.
We won't get too deep into the weeds here, but Apple's website provides an overview of what to expect.
These new and enhanced features are geared more toward parents and families rather than organizations, so it's unclear how nonprofits will be able to use them in their own work. Still, if you work with children or vulnerable populations, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with Apple's new parental controls and understand how they work — and to understand both their capabilities and limitations.
Apple Intelligence, Take 2
Two years ago, Apple took the wraps off of its AI strategy. Whereas companies like Google and Microsoft were focused on bringing AI chatbots to their users, Apple opted for more subtle AI-powered features that it said would integrate more seamlessly into your everyday work.
While the AI chatbots at the time were entirely cloud-based, and its makers used the data you entered into them for training purposes, Apple presented a more private vision of AI, with models that run on your devices augmented with a private cloud system that would process bigger requests while protecting your personal data.
It didn't work out so well. The most anticipated AI-powered features never materialized. In March 2025, Apple announced that it was delaying its revamped Siri personal assistant and Apple Intelligence's most anticipated features. And the features that did ship were roundly criticized.
"The fiasco here is not that Apple is late on AI. It’s also not that they had to announce an embarrassing delay on promised features," commentator John Gruber wrote at the time (post contains some strong language). "[...] The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn’t true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn’t true, and they set a course based on that."
It's 2026, and the world of AI has moved forward considerably. But WWDC presents Apple as a company that's sticking with its own vision of AI — and working to actually deliver this time.
What's Under the Hood
Apple Intelligence uses some of the same technology that powers Google Gemini, the result of an agreement that the two companies announced earlier this year. In a press release, Apple said that its new models are "custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models."
In a gathering with the media on Monday, Apple executives further clarified that it wasn't using the same exact models as Google Gemini, according to CNBC, nor is Apple Intelligence using Google's datacenters. Instead, the models use Apple's own training data, and they all run on Apple's own servers.
Apple Intelligence uses a combination of AI models that live on your devices alongside cloud-based models. The idea is that the on-device models handle many common, lightweight tasks, while the cloud models process anything that requires heavy lifting.
Privacy is a big focus here. Apple says that its cloud-based models don't store any of your data and that it only uses the data you send to process your request and nothing more. Additionally, the company says that neither Apple, nor anyone else, can access the data you submit to Apple Intelligence at any time.
This configuration, which Apple named Private Cloud Compute, is somewhat unique among the major general-purpose AI providers. While some other providers offer paid plans with this level of privacy, many will use queries you enter into the free tier of their AI tools to further train their AI models.
Powered by Context, Third-Party Apps
A key part of Apple's strategy for AI is to use your "personal context" to provide better answers or to complete tasks more effectively. For example, it can pull information from your email, your text messages, your contacts, and your document to process a request. For example, you can ask it to find the name of the park where your coworker Bill is holding a barbecue this weekend; Siri will search your email and messages and do its best to find the answer for you.
This particular feature was part of Apple's original vision for Apple Intelligence, which it first presented in 2024. However, the company was unable to deliver on these features at the time. Since then, other companies have made strides in this area.
For example, Google Spark, the Gemini-powered personal assistant that the company demoed at Google I/O, can tap into and act on your Gmail, Google Calendar, and so on. And Microsoft 365 Copilot can similarly make use of your data stored in OneDrive or SharePoint.
What differentiates Apple Intelligence, according to Apple, is the way that it integrates into all of Apple's platforms and the way that developers can use it in their apps. In other words, it works across all the Apple devices you own. And using a feature known as App Intents, developers can give Siri access to features in their own apps. This means that Siri's capabilities will grow as more apps become Siri-aware.
Siri Sees What You See
Another set of features known as Visual Intelligence can pull from whatever you're looking at to provide information, answer questions, or suggest actions that you can take.
For example, Siri Mode in the iOS Camera app will let you get information on whatever you're looking at. It works a little like Google Lens, Google's visual search app, but it has some additional tricks. For example, the keynote video showed how you could point your iPhone camera at a receipt from a restaurant and Siri will pop up a screen that allows you to more easily split the bill.
You can also ask Siri to act upon what's displayed on your screen. In the keynote, Apple showed how you could select an image of focaccia bread on your Mac and ask Siri if you can make it gluten-free.
Enhanced AI Image Editing and Generation
Also demonstrated were a number of improvements to AI-powered image editing and generation. The Photos app can now extend images by filling in missing portions: Say you want to add some extra space around your photo's subject, for example. Another reframing feature can use AI to change the apparent camera angle of the photo and adjust the scene accordingly.
Image Playground, Apple's AI-powered image generation app, also gets an update. It can now generate images using a wide range of visual styles — including photorealistic — rather than the handful of illustrative styles that prior versions supported.
While it didn't mention it in the keynote presentation, Apple stated in a press release that its next-generation Apple Intelligence uses Google's Synth ID to apply an invisible watermark to any images that you create or edit with it. We don't yet know whether Apple will also support CP2A Content Credentials, a budding industry standard for indicating whether a file has been modified using AI.
A Measured Approach to AI
It's striking how different Apple, Google, and Microsoft are from one another, and developer-conference season has put the three companies in stark relief. Of the three, Apple is taking the most measured approach to AI.
On the whole, Apple Intelligence covers the basics that AI users expect. Apple made a couple references to agentic AI — like a new feature in the Passwords app that can automatically change passwords for accounts that appear in data leaks — but as of right now, it doesn't seem to be focused on agents in the same way that Google, Microsoft, and others are.
Based on comments from company executives, that difference in focus appears intentional.
"AI is incredibly powerful technology, with the potential to shape society in profound ways. And, with proper care, unlock meaningful benefits for people everywhere," Craig Federghi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said in the keynote. "Still, some appear to be racing forward, seemingly pursuing AI for the sake of AI, without clear regard for the people — all of us — that it is ultimately meant to serve."
Strictly speaking, in a world where other companies are releasing sophisticated AI for research institutions and agents that claim to do everything but take out the trash, Apple's own offerings are behind the curve.
Is that a bad thing? If you're an industry analyst, tech enthusiast, or someone with skin in the game, maybe. But if you're a typical AI user? It's probably not as big a deal, especially since the most popular AI tools run on Apple devices without any issues. And with the various ways that developers can tap into Apple Intelligence, it's reasonable to expect that third-party app developers will fill in whatever gaps that Apple has left open.
We're still in the early days of AI, and a lot can change as the technology grows. Let's check back in five years.
[Thumbnail photo: Shutterstock]
