Apple fighting for its crown: WWDC announcements that showed Samsung and Google are to be reckoned with

Apple’s WWDC starting keynote wrapped up with a number of news regarding the upcoming iOS 27, iPadOS 27, MacOS, and AI (not proudly flaunted as Apple Intelligence nowadays). And, among the announcements, I kind of caught a few that were more “playing catch-up” than “King of the Hill”-sounding ones.

Make no mistake, this article isn’t about badmouthing one company or another. It’s to appreciate how we have major players in the space that are pushing the envelope and setting new standards. And even a mighty player like Apple needs to rise up to the occasion.

1. iPhone 11 to get iOS 27

There was a time when iPhones were the gold standard for expected software support. While Apple doesn’t straight-up promise how long a device will be updated for, it had a very solid history — each iPhone got iOS updates up to five years post-release. The iPhone 6s was the only exclusion here, famously getting 6 iOS updates post-release, or a full 7-year life of support.

However, exclusions don’t make the rule, and we generally expect iPhones to get 5 updates. However, in recent times, both Google and Samsung have upped the ante. For the last couple of years, they both promise 7 major Android updates right there on their websites.

Which is why Apple’s mention of the iPhone 11 getting iOS 27 feels like a very deliberate response to that. And, fully in Apple’s style, too — instead of outlining the update schedule in a “Trust me, bro” subheading, Apple will straight up push the update to a 7-year-old iPhone. Yeah, the iPhone SE2 will also get it!

2. iOS 27 Photos Shared Albums to work with Android and Windows

It’s not like Apple to straight-up admit that other operating systems exist under the sun. Which is why it always feels noteworthy when they name them, claiming that the new features will be compatible with Android and iOS right on stage (or, in pre-recorded presentation, but that’s semantics).

Yes, the Photos app in iOS 27 will have an updated Shared Albums functionality. It will allow for invited friends and family to view and contribute to them. And — make sure you are sitting down for this — they will not be looking at low-res compressed versions of the photos inside the album. Full… shared… access! Regardless of operating system.

3. Custom EQ for AirPods

Apple finally gave in. The AirPods sound is no longer the “Apple sound, and you will like it!”. It’s the “We suggest you try this sound… but we will also include a custom EQ with iOS 27“.

4. Smarter Siri is here

We were promised to get an advanced AI-driven Siri two years ago. It took a while, and the story isn’t pretty. While Cupertino won’t come out and tell us what happened behind the scenes, there were plenty of dirty leaks telling us it wasn’t an ideal situation.

But… Smarter Siri is almost here, come iOS 27. A conversational assistant that will pull information from your contacts, meetings, phone calls, and messages, and follow along with your requests. So, when you ask it “Am I free next Wednesday?”, you can then follow up with “Cancel that and set up a meeting with Jasmine instead” without Siri looking like it’s about to have a stroke.

Yes, these are all features that you can expect from Google’s Gemini, maybe Samsung’s Bixby, maybe even Moto AI and Perplexity. Apple did put its privacy spin on it, outlining that the requests are either handled on-device or Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which is encrypted and even Cupertino doesn’t have access to it. So… fingers crossed!

5. Get AI nudges straight into iMessage

Want to share the photos of that trip that you are currently chatting about? Or schedule that meeting you are chatting about straight in your Calendar? Yeah, Apple’s AI will be able to do that with one tap now, just going by context. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same thing that Samsung’s Now Nudge and Google’s Magic Cue do.

Pretty textbook catch-up — not reinventing the wheel, just giving users something they can expect to find on other premium products.

6. Generate wallpapers with Image Playground

iOS 27 is getting a huge update to Image Playground with more styles and suppsed reinforced accuracy and quality. That’s all great, but here’s the catch-up feature — you will now be able to generate a wallpaper for your homescreen, which is something we’ve seen from Samsung and Google phones over the past couple of years. But hey, you will also be able to generate backgrounds for iMessage threads straight within the app, so that’s a one-up.

7. Expand tool (generative reframing)

AI photo editing is still going forward. And, while Apple announced something very impressive in the form of Spatial Reframing — the ability to literally change the angle that a photo was taken at, using Spatial and Generative AI in tandem —, it also played a little catch-up. If you simply want to zoom-out on a photo, to make it appear you were further away or had a wider lens on, the Photos editor will generate more background to make it look seamless.

Again, that’s a bit of catch-up. But, I have to admit, the Spatial editor is a one-up that looks very impressive and will definitely be the cause Google and Samsung play catch-up in the next update cycle.

iOS 27 is shaping up to be no slouch

It bears no repeating that this isn’t about pointing and laughing. The updates to iOS 27 are either an adequate step to keep it competitive, or they offer very interesting curveballs that show Apple can still think outside the box. The fact that they went in and supposedly improved the speed of loading apps and file-fetching requests by up to 30% also sounds very promising. I can’t wait to test the snappiness of it and hope the battery life is as good as ever!