Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference kicking off today in Cupertino, California. The iPhone maker expected to focus on design and productivity enhancements for its operating systems. Joining us now, we've got Bob O'Donnell. He is Tech Analysis Research's president. Bob, great to have you on this morning to get a sense of what we can expect this week. What are your expectations?

Thanks, Maddie. Great to be here. Uh, so look, I mean, basic news is everybody believes it's going to happen is a lot of sizzle and not necessarily a lot of steak. So we're going to see new UI designs, uh, for iOS, Mac OS, watch OS, iPad OS, TV OS, uh, Vision Pro OS, every OS they have. Uh, they'll all have a new consistent look. That is apparently supposed to be similar to what the Vision Pro has. And then they're going to have a new numbering scheme. They're going to line up with the calendar years. We've seen other companies do this. So instead of iOS 19, it's going to be iOS 26 because it's going to come out late 25 and mostly be available in 26. That's the plan. Um, then we'll see some other enhancements, uh, expected, but basically everybody thinks that all the previews suggest very little on Apple intelligence and Siri. And of course, that's where all the market buzz is. Everybody has been talking about AI. You guys were have been talking about it for the last few minutes. I've been listening. I mean, that's what everything's about. So there's definitely going to be some disappointment, I think from the hardcore AI folks and some of the hardcore Apple fans. But you know, look, the thing with Apple, they have this incredible knack for having the right timing on a lot of stuff. So my question really is, hey, so they're late, but in the end, will it really matter? Because not everybody is out there using AI all the time. A lot of people are just sort of nibbling at it. And by the time Apple gets their act together, hopefully they'll have, you know, the demand will be there and it'll all just line up.

And and we've talked at length about generative AI almost replacing the initial mindset to begin a search query on one of the more popular search engines over the past few decades here. What is the technology that you anticipate really driving that next kind of thrust point forward for how people are activating generative AI through the devices that they're using?

You know, it's a great question, Brad. I mean, it boils down to agents, right? Agents is where we expect to see AI move from being just a chatbot, you know, typing in a prompt kind of a thing, uh, like a search query or what have you into actually performing actions. And so that's where you've got AI essentially running in the background doing all these things. And for the record at DubDC last year, Apple presented this very cool vision of exactly that. Like, in a way, they were a little bit ahead of the curve on the whole agent story. The problem is they haven't been able to deliver on it and the few things that they did put out did not work. Well, the basic text summarization and notification summaries, all these things did not work at all like they were expected. The other challenge for Apple, of course, is they don't have their own LLM. They're using other people's. They're partnering with a number of folks. And of course, there's a big question of do they really need to have their own? You would think down the road at some point, they probably do. So, I don't know, maybe they'll tease that today. We'll see.

Is there anything that Apple could say this week that would change not only your mind, but Wall Street's mind on where they stand within the AI race? Like how high is the bar for them?

Well, I mean, look, the bar is super high. Nobody else has more devices in the world. So no one can have a bigger impact on how people integrate AI into their everyday experiences than Apple, right? I mean, it's 1.2 billion or however many devices they're up to these days. So the bar is incredibly high, Maddie, but you know, they have got to show that they're able to deliver on some of the vision, like I said that they showed last year that they're making progress on doing some of their own models, um, that they, you know, have a sense of how they're going to get things there. And frankly, even integrating, like, how do I think about Siri versus Apple intelligence? How do they work together? You know, is Apple intelligence behind the scenes and Siri's in the front? You know, even clarifying some basic things like that, I think are going to be important because there's a lot of confusion about what Apple's trying to do. And then of course, partnerships. Originally, there was a thought they would have an announcement with Google to leverage Gemini in addition to OpenAI. Uh, but now it sounds like perhaps that may not happen. We'll see. That would make a difference as well if they, we saw some big partnerships, uh, with some other LLM providers.