SMART COOKIES

Apple's latest operating system, with its translucent Liquid Glass interface, is an impressive feat of cross-device conformity and user experience

- WRITER: JONATHAN BELL

What does the world's foremost exponent of consumer minimalism do in a maximal era? Apple is in an envious position. One of the world's most valuable companies, hovering around the $3 trillion mark, its scale jiggles the geopolitical seismograph with every move, sending waves that ripple from the top of government down to the arrangement of the icons on your iPhone. Overseeing billions of devices and stoking the demand for billions more is a scale of responsibility hitherto unknown in history.

At the centre of it all is the intertwined alliance of design with desire that has given Apple our perpetual loyalty and attention. Some of this famous fervour was on display at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Held on site at Apple Park in Cupertino, it's a rare opportunity for those involved in building the apps that make up the ecosystem to get up close and personal with Apple's own teams and processes. It's a week of launches, innovations and insights, presented with panache on a grand scale before an invited audience and many millions more online.

This year, for the first time, we attended WWDC. In the spotlight was iOS 26, a new generation of the company's mobile operating system that brings with it a look and feel that permeates all the way across Apple's products. Leaping from iOS 18 straight to 26 across the board provides a unifying system that shares a common aesthetic, Liquid Glass design.

WWDC also provided a rare opportunity to quiz Apple's designers on their home turf, as well as sit down with the senior team to talk tech, aesthetics, and the intersection of the two. Apple is famously cagey when it comes to the press. At events like this, there is a laser-like focus on the product in hand, not what happened last week, or ten years ago, or, heaven forbid, what might be happening next. Other people's products are also politely placed off limits, whether they're real or just the subject of wide speculation.