Amber Neely
Apple appears to be preparing a unified design update across its platforms, with hints pointing to a visionOS-inspired redesign at WWDC 2025.
In early March, it was first rumored that Apple would overhaul its operating systems in hopes of making its platforms more cohesive. The reasoning is that the change should make the platforms feel familiar to people coming from one device to another.
Since then, we've had a slew of potential leaks and prognostications suggesting that Apple would, indeed, be bringing the glassy visionOS-inspired elements to everything from the next iteration of iOS and macOS, all the way down to the humble Apple Watch.
We got our first hint from Apple in late March, when it showcased its new WWDC25 logo, which boasted a frosted-glass 25. The frosted glass element is seen as a nod to visionOS, the operating system that runs the Apple Vision Pro.
Now, Apple seems to be leaning in, with a new tagline for this year's event. WWDC 2025's new tagline, "Sleek peek," certainly feels like a not-so-subtle hint.
Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak, affectionately known as "Joz," shared a second teaser on X.
#WWDC25 is next week! Can't wait to show you what we've been working on.
— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) June 2, 2025
See you June 9 at 10am PT. pic.twitter.com/qhrzevDbMH
This year's WWDC keynote will take place on Monday, June 9 at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET. The Platforms State of the Union will take place on Monday, June 9 at 1:00 pm PT/4:00 pm ET.
Apple also advertises its usual collection of Apple Sessions and one-on-one labs, as well as brand-new deep dive group labs.
The redesign isn't the only thing that will help standardize Apple's operating systems, either. Currently, rumors suggest that each of its operating systems will drop their end numbers in favor of 26, meaning that we should see iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, tvOS 26, and watchOS 26, rather than the initially anticipated iOS 19, iPadOS 19, macOS 16, tvOS 19, and watchOS 12.
Apple has long teased upcoming events with clever taglines. In September 2020, Apple teased an Apple Watch-centric event with the tagline "Time Flies."
In October 2020, it teased the addition of 5G connectivity to the iPhone 12 lineup with the tagline "Hi, Speed."
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28 Comments
Frosted glass with a bit of depth (the Apple logo)? Looking forward to a change. Wasn't a big fan of the UI look introduced with iOS 7, and it took a long 12 years for the fashion to get old.
It's giving Windows Aero Glass
Hasn’t frosted glass been done before?
A fresh coat of paint can make all that is old seem a little less old. And it generates buzz as people debate whether they like the new look better than the old look.
But I'm becoming convinced that folks who have used the Copland analogy for AI are right and I was wrong to be dismissive of that analogy. While Apple's current difficulties with AI don't threaten the company the way difficulties with Copland did, there are still a lot of similarities. With Copland, apple promised to bring a lot of cutting edge OS features -- preemptive multitasking and memory protection -- to MacOS. Those were features present in other operating systems, but the approach Apple took to adding those features to classic MacOS failed miserably for project management/leadership reasons as much as technical reasons.
Today, the AI features Apple desperately wants and needs to bring to their products exist in products from other companies but Apple's project management/leadership appears to be failing big time. Apple can turn it around, and I bet they eventually will. But for the time being, this really looks like a mess.