“I’ve never seen so many iPhones before!” Tim Cook joked as thousands of Apple staff and developers rose to applaud him at Apple Park on Monday, 8 June 2026. It was his last Worldwide Developers Conference keynote as chief executive.
The mood turned warmer, and for a moment Cook looked emotional. “Your imagination and ingenuity have inspired me for the last 15 years and I’m deeply grateful to have been on this journey with you,” he told the audience. He called leading Apple the “honour of a lifetime”, the BBC reported.
A running joke, retired
Cook has opened nearly every Apple event with the same two words, “Good morning”, to the point that it became a meme. Before the keynote began, he posted a video on X in which a string of celebrities riffed on the greeting. 9to5Mac listed Rhea Seehorn, Brett Goldstein, Jimmy Fallon and Whoopi Goldberg among them.
He steps down on 1 September. His successor is John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Ternus did not speak at the keynote, though he sat in the front row beside Cook at a media briefing on the new Siri afterwards, and the BBC noted he had greeted attendees at a reception the evening before.
Siri gets rebuilt
The software headline was Siri AI, a major overhaul of the assistant after criticism that Apple had fallen behind rivals in artificial intelligence. It will work across Apple products and apps and arrive with its own app, in the style of the assistants from OpenAI and Anthropic. Apple says it will draw on a user’s past interactions, understand images and carry broader world knowledge. Earlier this year Apple partnered with Google on Apple Foundation Models based on Gemini.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief, took a swipe at the industry’s habits. He criticised “AI for the sake of AI without considering the people it’s supposed to be able to serve” and said helpful AI “must be centered around you and your needs”.
A beta is due later this year for supported English-language devices, but not in the European Union. Apple said EU regulators had rejected every solution it proposed for bringing Siri AI there while keeping other voice assistants safe to use.
Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight, said the verdict would depend on what users make of it once it is in their hands.
Child safety and iOS 27
Apple also showed new trust and safety controls in iOS 27. An expanded “ask” feature will require a parent’s approval before a child can talk to an unknown person, and the system will automatically block images flagged as potentially sexual or violent on a known child’s device. Outside the venue, a small group of protesters pressed Apple over child safety on the App Store.
The week-long conference, which runs through 12 June, also covered macOS 27, iPadOS 27 and the rest of the next operating-system generation.
Sources
- Tim Cook posts comedic ‘Good morning’ video to mark final Apple event as CEO
- Apple WWDC 2026 event: Live updates on iOS 27 and Siri AI | Mashable
- Apple unveils Siri AI makeover as Tim Cook bids farewell – BBC
