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’ constructive App Retailer opinions into tune lyrics for a tune titled “6 out of 5 stars.”
“Greatest 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, nevertheless, 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 the wringer because it stringently fought in opposition to regulation, lawsuits, and every 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 number of the key expertise advances that might modernize builders’ apps for the AI period.
In March, it delayed its “extra customized,” 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 program Engineering Craig Federighi stated 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, resembling 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 characteristic was even demonstrated by tapping into Google’s app for picture search outcomes, one thing that feels extra native on Android units 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 best way 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., for 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 cost mechanisms on the internet, the place it may well’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 very best place to construct an app enterprise, enhancements it’s made to cost processing programs, or the way it’s hunting down scams. (It touted a few of its developer advantages within the days main as much as WWDC, the place it targeted on its anti-fraud options and developer revenues.)
Apple additionally launched a standalone Video games app, however the keynote deal with targeted on the buyer advantages — Challenges, social options, easy accessibility to Apple’s personal gaming retailer Arcade — not on what it might do for cellular 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 value.
Whereas arguably extra developer-focused enhancements will roll out this week at WWDC, by its developer keynote, Platforms State of the Union, and its varied classes, Apple missed an opportunity to shock its developer neighborhood with some form of acknowledgement that it’s understood that these previous years have been robust, however in the end it’s on builders’ sides.
As an alternative, the one reference up to now to the altering market dynamics of the App Retailer 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 Retailer.
As for enhancing builders’ companies, Apple gave the impression to be pondering 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 adjustments level to Apple seeing builders as simply one other lever to be pulled to make the corporate extra money, 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 purposeful apps to satisfy these new design guidelines. The corporate might have at the least hinted at the truth that Liquid Glass appears an apparent precursor to constructing an working system that might ultimately lengthen past smartphones and tablets, to succeed in new computing platforms, like AR glasses.
However Apple’s cultural desire for holding 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 shoppers.
In wrapping the occasion by singing cheery App Retailer opinions (a system now beset by bots and pretend opinions, as builders know), Apple tried to lighten the temper. It knew that this yr’s occasion would let down its developer neighborhood with its AI delays, amid an aggressive pursuit of developer income.
The top 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 worthwhile builders are to Apple’s capability to ship extra iPhones and make shoppers pleased.