Apple’s headline ‘liquid glass’ announcement at WWDC shows the tech company is deliberately cautious on AI, writes Paul Armstrong

Apple’s WWDC 2025 delivered over an hour of careful polish, hardware refinement and calm technological confidence while actually delivering very little (except for ‘we have high standards’) on the AI that was promised a year earlier. The big news was ‘Liquid Glass’, a new ‘material’ for all its operating systems, and while nothing announced was unfamiliar to anyone following spatial computing or AI, when Apple enters a space, expectations shift. Not through noise, but through inevitability.

Liquid glass captured the headlines, and with good reason. Microsoft explored similar waveguide technology in Hololens. Meta has been chasing wearable AR with billions and limited results. Apple’s arrival reframes those in the way only Apple could. When Apple combines hardware with developer tooling and a distribution engine, an idea goes from theoretical to practical.

Glass that responds to input, context and ambient behaviour may not feel like an urgent business consideration yet. But interface expectations are already beginning to shift – think about nods with Airpods or wrist gestures, and that’s all before we really have any decent AR glasses. Screen-first interaction starts to look like a legacy constraint. Spatial design, gesture controls and ambient responsiveness will start to define the next wave of user experience over the next three to five years. Products and services built around fixed display real estate will need to be rethought. Although, we should also be clear it’s 2025 and I still cannot wave my hand over my iPhone to skip a track without extra apps, so don’t fire your developers just........

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