Fun episode of Tested with Adam Savage and Norman Chan. The first segment goes deep on what’s new in VisionOS 26. Apple is ignoring the jokes about the platform’s relative obscurity and has obviously been heads-down on building the platform out and up. VisionOS 26 is a huge year-over-year upgrade. Tons of exciting stuff, and so many little things are so much better.

The second segment of the show features cohost Norm Chan going backstage at The Talk Show Live From WWDC on Tuesday night, to speak with Adam Lisagor about the production details of the live immersive broadcast in Theater.

(The YouTube version of the show is in editing now — we’ll post it as soon as it’s ready. But the immersive version in Theater is available for purchase now. Whoops, my bad. The immersive version, which looks significantly better than the livestream — which looked pretty good! — will be available for purchase in Theater a few days after the 2D version hits YouTube.)

Jason Snell:

After last year, Apple could’ve been forgiven for wanting to soft-pedal this year’s Apple Intelligence announcements and regroup. It didn’t do that, nor did it double down on last year. Instead, it’s chosen a middle ground — a bit safe and familiar but also a place where Apple can feel a bit more like itself. In the long run, it needs to get this right. In the short term, maybe it should focus on meeting its users where they are, rather than pretending to be something it’s not.

Agree with Snell’s take completely, I do.

Stephen Hackett has a list of the Intel Macs that MacOS 26 Tahoe supports, and the ones they’re dropping support for this year.

Apple has gone through three CPU architecture transitions in the Mac’s history:

• 68K to PowerPC starting in 1994
• PowerPC to Intel starting in 2006
• Intel to Apple Silicon, starting 2020

With the 68K–PowerPC transition, they supported 68K Macs through Mac OS 8.1, which was released in January 1998. With the PowerPC–Intel transition, they only supported PowerPC Macs for two Mac OS X versions, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (which initially shipped PowerPC-only in 2005) and 10.5 Leopard in October 2007. The next release, 10.6 Snow Leopard in August 2009, was Intel-only. (Mac OS X dropped to a roughly two-year big-release schedule during the initial years after the iPhone, when the company prioritized engineering resources on iOS. It’s easy to take for granted that today’s Apple has every single platform on an annual cadence.)

With next year’s version going Apple Silicon-only, they’ll have supported Intel Macs for five major MacOS releases after the debut of the first Apple Silicon Macs. I think that’s about the best anyone could have hoped for.

Tight 7-minute video at the WSJ (and also at YouTube):

Apple’s AI rollout has been rocky, from Siri delays to underwhelming Apple Intelligence features. WSJ’s Joanna Stern sits down with software chief Craig Federighi and marketing head Greg Joswiak to talk about the future of AI at Apple — and what the heck happened to that smarter Siri.

Update: Here’s the full 24-minute interview. Just an excellent job by Stern.

Ben Thompson:

To that end, while I understand why many people were underwhelmed by this WWDC, particularly in comparison to the AI extravaganza that was Google I/O, I think it was one of the more encouraging Apple keynotes in a long time. Apple is a company that went too far in too many areas, and needed to retreat. Focusing on things only Apple can do is a good thing; empowering developers and depending on partners is a good thing; giving even the appearance of thoughtful thinking with regards to the App Store (it’s a low bar!) is a good thing. Of course we want and are excited by tech companies promising the future; what is a prerequisite is delivering in the present, and it’s a sign of progress that Apple retreated to nothing more than that.