Apple teases OS redesign with new 'Sleek peek' splash page tagline

AppleInsider

Apple appears to be preparing a unified design update across its platforms, with hints pointing to a visionOS-inspired redesign at WWDC 2025.

WWDC 2025 'Sleek peek' teases unified OS redesign | Image credit: Apple

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.

See you June 9 at 10am PT. pic.twitter.com/qhrzevDbMH

-- Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz)

June 2, 2025

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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tht

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.

michelb76

It's giving Windows Aero Glass

mikethemartian

Hasn’t frosted glass been done before?

tht

mikethemartian said:

Hasn’t frosted glass been done before?

On macOS, they had frosted transparency for a couple of releases. Still there in some places. 

Hopefully this incarnation is batter. I like the 3D-ness versus 2D layers transparency.

blastdoor

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. 

apple4thewin

Although current rumors say it is a very low feature update, I would say a whole new os design will be greatly appreciated and would be more noticeable for all users than adding a slight customization change (or settings reorganization).

massiveattack

I am pretty sure that most developers have low expectations as well. 

9secondkox2

Looks like Windows Vista. 

One one at apple found the Photoshop 7 bevels, gradients, and drop shadows. 

Not looking great so far. 

foregoneconclusion

blastdoor said: 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. 

AI is all about the size and quality of the database used for training. The LLM programs themselves aren't nearly as important. 

williamlondon

MassiveAttack said:

I am pretty sure that most developers have low expectations as well. 

Only juveniles and trolls who push the "Apple is doomed" narrative over and over and over again ad nauseam.

bloggerblog

Those blurs are processor intensive, this shows off the performance of the GPU in M processors.

blastdoor

foregoneconclusion said:

blastdoor said: 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. 

AI is all about the size and quality of the database used for training. The LLM programs themselves aren't nearly as important. 

1. That’s wrong. The models do matter.
2. It’s irrelevant because apples problem is neither data nor models, it’s building the products on top of those things. 

Continuing the Copland analogy, Apple certainly knew what preemptive multitasking was and how to implement it. In fact they had implemented it in AUX. Their problem was at the level of incorporating the technology into a coherent, desirable, shipping product. 

Apple can use off the shelf models and they are doing so. Where they are failing is creating the product, which under jobs was their greatest strength.

9secondkox2

Wonder if this means this years iPhone will e a bigger deal than first thought.

godofbiscuitssf

blastdoor said:

foregoneconclusion said:

blastdoor said: 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. 

AI is all about the size and quality of the database used for training. The LLM programs themselves aren't nearly as important. 

1. That’s wrong. The models do matter.
2. It’s irrelevant because apples problem is neither data nor models, it’s building the products on top of those things. 

Continuing the Copland analogy, Apple certainly knew what preemptive multitasking was and how to implement it. In fact they had implemented it in AUX. Their problem was at the level of incorporating the technology into a coherent, desirable, shipping product. 

Apple can use off the shelf models and they are doing so. Where they are failing is creating the product, which under jobs was their greatest strength.

Copland?  No. Apple is not in a corner here, technologically.  It’s not a bet the company situation.  They’re not anywhere near replacing WHOLESALE all the OSs with something they’re buying elsewhere.  

Their biggest failure is in marketing. They don’t know how to market their way out of failed promises. They just don’t. They have always under promised and over delivered. It’s practically a legendary trait of the company. Remember how you heard nothing about that Power charging pad for forever? Nothing at all? And then it was just gone?  They didn’t know how to handle it.  As in literally could not decide their was out of the failed promise, messaging-wise.  

This isn’t Copland. Not even close.  You don’t know anything about the company at the time or the politicking or dysfunction going on then.   It wasn’t about messaging then. It was about technical decision making.  They wanted it all and couldn’t have it.  

edited June 2

paisleydisco

Looks like the rumored visionOS design bits. I'm here for it!

Unlike many here with their doom and gloom nonsense. Never fails. 

cheesefreeze

“We don’t have anything to show for in June in respect to useful AI, Tim. We now support a new cool cartoony variety in Image Playground, but that’s it.”

”What about Vision Pro?”

”We have 16 active users now. Not exactly great ROI, Tim.”

”What we could do is skin our operating systems with the Vision Pro OS look, to get some value out of the R&D. It’ll distract our user-base from the lack of innovations. Frosted glass, please.”

debonbon

This seems like change for the sake of change but also for lack of anything else.

macintoshm1

Things to look forward to. Apple mastered anticipation a long time ago. While one can mearly hope they prefer the new look and feel. There some to love and hate about about the current OS’s looks and feels. As to the Ai features most mentions either attribute the delays to management issues or privacy concerns.  I like many on Apple os’s value my personal privacy greatly and would rather a delay and get it right to getting it sooner. I believe that bless discussed issues with keeping it on device being an important consideration in maintaining Apple’s commitment towards environmental goals particularly renewable energy production for the duration of lifecycle is going to be far more achievable by keeping all the processing localized. If suddenly the iPhone is measurable % of AI data centers electric loads being responsible for this electricity generation that they can’t control would open all sorts of doors that they understandably want cleft closed 

danox

If Apple is so far behind, why are the Six flies of the Apocalypse (Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Spotify, and Epic) constantly buzzing around Apple to redesign or get access its ecosystems? And if they don’t get in, they petition the EU/DOJ, crying about unfairness and damage to their business plans.

Apples disruption comes from its combination of MacOS, iOS, VisionOS, Apple Watch OS, iPadOS, and Apple Silicon. Designing a solution to stay connected to the internet and home to supercomputers for answers is easy, even Samsung can do it. But Apple aims for something higher than the information Broker/Ad companies.

That’s what the competition is doing Google, Meta, and Microsoft. Amazon back in the day with Alexa always sounded good with that internet pipeline and Apple was always behind Amazon/Google and doomed because of it what happened to her and the smoke and mirrors show?

The success of an AI model or Chatbot hinges on its constant connection to supercomputers. Privacy concerns are secondary, particularly when the objective is to collect vast amounts of public information. 

This approach, is currently being employed by Google, Meta and now Microsoft, but Apples path is different from its competitors in terms of the privacy aspect, and the probability that they have new Apple Silicon (servers?) in play being upgraded and adapted in conjunction to their software efforts at the same time.

WWDC 2025 should be interesting…

tht

9secondkox2 said:

Wonder if this means this years iPhone will e a bigger deal than first thought.

Well, the cameras have seem to wrought rather large protrusions such that they are now camera bars. They will be talking camera performance to justify that. Camera performance has been so good for the past several models that the 2025 models will be the last gasp. Improvements in phone camera performance is now for a niche of pros, not amateurs, but they will make it a big deal. Sensor shift stabilization on all cameras? 48 MP for all cameras? Other fancy photography and video stuff I have no interest in.

If they increased iCloud storage tiers to 10 GB for free, 100 GB for $1/mo, 500 GB for $3/mo, and 3 TB for $12/mo, I think that represents a huge win for mainstream consumers in the photography and video features.

The rumored thin iPhone is obviously a big deal. It's time for such a model after 10 years of not trying for thin. I think it will sell better than iPhone mini and Plus models, combined. It's been a long time since Apple has chased after "thin".

The Pro models will have a more "unibody" design it seems, where the camera bar half will be part of the band, supposedly. This represents a huge hardware design change. For the past several years, iPhones used an internal mid-frame structure for internal components to mount to, enabling the front display and back MagSafe glass to be easily removed and replaced. If the camera bar is not part of the case, hmm, how will those internal components be mounted?

The UI changes could be the biggest win if they made good GUI design changes and it's not just a skin. Too much of the UI is now live, where touching it does something. That needs to be detuned, especially the lock-screen hot areas and the generic slide gestures. They should get rid of the slide to the left to bring up the camera gesture from the lockscreen. The long press on the camera and flash-light icons should be sliding switches, or a sliding switch with a path. There should be notification and control center handles. Notification and control center panels should appear on the app switch UI, which I would prefer the app windows not to have an overlap. Just simply fine-tuning the UI would be a huge, best feature in years type of change.