Under-the-hood AI changes and efficiency improvements at the OS layer across Apple’s platforms are certainly the highlights at WWDC 2026. But there have also been significant changes IT admins will need to prepare for, particularly around Declarative Device Management (DDM). 

The Intel age is over

Apple warned us this was coming, but macOS 27 will not support Intel at all. The company will deliver three more years of security updates for those devices, and you will still be able to use Rosetta to get Intel app binaries to run legacy apps on Apple Silicon. But if you still rely on any Intel apps or Macs, it really is time to plan your upgrade.

DDM becomes the present

It was the future once, but when it comes to Declarative Device Management (DDM) that future is now. Apple is removing all its legacy MDM mechanisms to replace them with DDM. “For IT admins, WWDC 2026 is a migration year,” wrote Fleet. “Apple is removing legacy MDM mechanisms and replacing them with Declarative Device Management (DDM). Some of it is urgent. Some of it just needs a plan.”

It’s a great step, though IT admins will need to ensure they aren’t relying on legacy MDM to handle any of their device fleets. That’s a particular issue around software and security update management. In most cases, your MDM provider has probably already introduced DDM support. But if you aren’t certain, now is the time to find out before your systems fail.

Apple has also added new DDM tools across various systems, apps, identities and more. Some of the highlights include:

• VPN and Network configurations can be provisioned using DDM; they also become credential-reliant, which should make management more streamlined.
• Apple Intelligence, Siri, and keyboard settings can also be configured via DDM, and admins can manage individual Apple Intelligence tools. 
• Web content filter and content caching both become controllable with DDM.
• A new privacy key lets IT manage things like camera or microphone access.
• Apple has added a device system health reporting function to verify that hardware components on iPhone and iPad are genuine.
• IT will be able to detect whether a device is in Lockdown Mode.

“One of the new features I’m most excited about is the ability to set permission defaults for managed apps and websites viewed in Safari,” said Adam Henry, senior product manager at Iru. “While the user is still prompted to allow these permissions, we can now present those requests as a unified prompt immediately upon app launch, along with a custom explanation as to why those permissions are important — think a teleconferencing app or website that always needs access to camera and microphone.

“Overall, I think this is a much more user-friendly solution that will likely increase permission compliance.”

Siri and AI

Although, Apple has introduced new management tools for AI, it’s important to remember some advice from Joel Rennich, senior vice president for product management at JumpCloud: “Traditional IAM models assume users directly interact with applications, but agentic systems change that assumption. AI intermediaries can now retrieve data, execute workflows, and make decisions across systems. Enterprises will need identity frameworks that govern both human and non-human actors consistently.”

He also noted: “The separation between where data lives and where it is used becomes increasingly invisible to the user. Intent becomes the primary input, not app selection.”

At the same time, the evolution of AI on Apple’s devices promises a lot for enterprise users. Matt Vlasach, Jamf senior vice president, enterprise products and solutions engineering, told me: “Most notable for me was Siri AI and the push towards on-device and more capable models that can do more with user context. While obvious for consumer use cases as illustrated in the keynote, the opportunity to evolve this to the work context using a more advanced Apple Intelligence framework is an exciting evolution.”

Farewell AFP

Apple has finally eradicated Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) in macOS. This will be an issue for any business that uses legacy Time Capsule or NAS storage devices, though in most cases those products are already obsolete and should be replaced. This is unlikely to be a huge challenge for most, given that Apple began using SMB as its primary file sharing protocol back in 2013 and support for AFP server disappeared in 2020. (Time Capsule fans might want to take a look at the TimeCapsuleSMB open-source project.)

Hello AppleCare log collection

Apple will introduce a new remote log collection capability that integrates directly with the company’s support infrastructure. So, when AppleCare support engages with an organization’s IT team, they can provide an enhanced logging token which can be shared to get the device to collect diagnostic logs to upload to AppleCare. You just know this will expedite remedy.

Single Sign-On improvements

As I noted here, there are some significant Single Sign-On (SSO) updates; two that caught my eye include:

• IT can now insist on biometric as well as password ID on managed devices.
• Authenticated Guest Mode with Platform SSO allows users to quickly and securely login to a shared Mac in a temporary session.
• Platform SSO on macOS 27 adds web-based authentication.

Network and more

Another change affects the system processes used in device management at a network level. Apple now requires that you use TLS 1.2 or later. If you or your MDM systems are not doing so, get ready for things to break. (Apple has published a support article to help IT test their network environments in preparation for this change.)

Apple also announced that IT admins will be able to purchase and manage app subscriptions directly in Apple School Manager and Apple Business Manager. And it introduced a managed migration feature that should help migrate data, while preserving device management enrollment and settings. 

More information

I’ve really only offered a flavor of some of the IT improvements introduced at WWDC. To find out more, watch the Apple sessions on “What’s new in managing Apple devices” and take a look at the Apple Platform Deployment guide; it should be updated before the new operating systems ship this fall 

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For the past few days, I’ve been immersed in Google’s latest vision of the future — an AI-infused dashboard that taps into info from all of your Google app activity and then uses that data to cook up a series of daily “stories” designed to “connect you with what matters.”

And — believe me, I don’t say this lightly — the experience of interacting with this system has me longing more than ever for the past.

The app is called Dreambeans. Google launched it as an experiment last Wednesday, and I was offered the opportunity to skip the standard waitlist and get immediate access to explore it.

I won’t beat around the bush: Using the app really has been an eye-opening, enlightening experience for me. Just not in the way that Google had presumably wanted.

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Google Dreambeans and the next phase of AI

In many ways, Dreambeans feels like the ultimate example of everything Google’s been gunning for — and AI in general has been building up to — over the past several years.

With your permission, the app accesses your ongoing activity data from Google Workspace (including such services as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive) along with Google Search, Google Photos, and YouTube to create an evolving profile of your life and interests. That means everything from who you email to what’s on your agenda, what you’re writing or saving files about, and what sorts of subjects you’re searching for, videos you’re watching, and activities you and your friends, family, and other associates are appearing in throughout photos (and even how you all look in those photos) gets constantly analyzed and processed and used as fodder for a personalized feed that updates a few times a day.

On the surface, it sounds a little like Google Now — the excellent and all-too-short-lived proactive intelligence feature Google added into Android for a while back around 2012.

In practice, though, lemme tell ya: It feels dramatically different. Whereas Google Now felt almost magical in its ability to anticipate what you needed before you ever asked for it — with proactive cards on things like flight statuses based on itineraries in your inbox or flight-related searches you’d performed, traffic alerts based on your typical daily routes or appointments in your agenda, and links to maps for businesses you’d been researching — Dreambeans takes those same basic concepts to a whole other level that ends up feeling creepy and invasive, both in the info it’s offering and in the way it’s presenting it.

And, more broadly, it feels indicative of the way AI is heading in general — not just with this one app or with Google but across the industry and in a style that I think most people are increasingly finding off-putting and will only find ever more intrusive in time.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m no technophobe. Far from it: I love clever tech creations and thoughtful new touches that make our lives easier. Heck, I’ve spent much of my life searching for and writing about such feats. And that’s precisely why my reaction to Dreambeans strikes me as so significant: If I’m this put off by this concept, how will average tech users — most of whom are far less tuned into tech trends and intrigued by interesting new options then I am — react?

I’ll tell you more about what I’ve heard so far in a second. First, let me show you exactly what I’ve been seeing, so you can assess this thing for yourself and see how it comes across to your spidey senses.

Here’s a handful of the Dreambeans “story” suggestions that appeared in the app upon its first day working for me, with a few names and personal details blurred for privacy purposes:

JR Raphael, Foundry

I’m honestly not even sure where all of these suggestions came from, but what jumped at me right away were the (occasionally flattering) caricatures of me and my wife and the general sense of invasion from all the slightly too personal stuff and too familiar integration of family members’ names and interests integrated into the material.

For the record: I had been looking into speaker stuff at some point in the not-too-distant past; I’ve never once typed, uttered, or even considered the phrase “hand-loomed textiles” until just now; we had been looking at the arts festival it mentioned; I’ve never specifically searched for or expressed any interest in Scary Movie 6; and I am not into the band Genesis — though, to be fair, I can’t dance.

I showed all this same material to my wife as well as to several other friends and family members I’d categorize more as typical tech users — not tech professionals or card-carrying geeks but just regular people who own and use a variety of devices, as we all do, and rely on ’em for both personal and professional purposes with varying levels of dread, excitement, and/or indifference. Without exception and without any prompting or personal opinions presented to sway them, every single one of ’em responded the same basic way: “Oh. That’s creepy.” And: “I do not like that.” Without fail.

It doesn’t get much better from here, either. Most of the app’s subsequent suggestions have continued to veer just a touch too far onto the “ick” side of the spectrum, as well as occasionally being off-base in some pretty perplexing ways. For instance:

JR Raphael, Foundry

For the record on this set: I do love the show Seinfeld — SERENITY NOW! more than ever — though it’s been some time since I’ve actively watched it; I somewhat famously am allergic to Apple products and avoid ’em whenever possible (notice the name of this column, anyone?); I don’t live in the same city as my brother but do find it creepy to have him pictured in ghoulish caricature form and brought randomly into a discussion about Plex (something he wouldn’t even remotely be interested in hearing from me about); and my various editorial newsletters are all powered by a service called Kit — not Beehiiv — which is mentioned in plenty of places both on my websites and throughout my emails.

Also, while my hairline may not be what it once was, I’m (ahem) not that bald yet — thankyouverymuch, Dreambeans.

Another example that I won’t show here was an item that pictured me in overalls working on installing some “coated stainless steel wire for [my] gallery canvases” — a reference to a community art gallery (with all sorts of details wrong and in some cases flat-out fabricated) connected to my mother’s recent passing. It casually mentioned her by name, too, alongside that eerie illustration of me performing a skill I definitely don’t have in my nonexistent home workshop. I don’t think I have to elaborate on how unsettling, unappreciated, and — again — invasive it felt to have that pop up in this feed.

More than anything, what I’ve been feeling while seeing all of this is a combination of (a) egad, it knows too much — especially when it casually name-drops and caricature-pics my wife, kids, and other family members — and (b) at the same time, the info it’s giving me isn’t especially helpful or insightful. It’s mostly just flat, generic, and — well, more or less exactly what you’d expect from something AI-generated.

JR Raphael, Foundry

More than anything, in other words, it’s a combination of creepy and not particularly useful.

JR Raphael, Foundry

And it’s the “creepy” part that really sticks with me the most.

The fine line Google forgot to avoid crossing

Maybe if the info I’m being served up here were exceptionally useful, this could be a tradeoff I’d be at least a little more likely to accept. Maybe. But in this scenario, it just feels odd and a little too invasive — which I’ve come to realize is a common theme surrounding much of what seems to be the next level of our forced-upon-us AI future.

Take Google’s Gemini Spark, for instance — the “agentic” AI assistant announced at Google I/O that’s meant to be a “proactive” helper tackling tasks on your behalf. David Pierce from The Verge got an early look at the tool in action and called it “the most impressive and terrifying AI experience” he’s had to date, also bringing that “creepy” word into the equation:

I can’t shake the deeply creepy feeling I get from the whole thing. What Spark did feels sort of magical, and very invasive. It’s weird that Spark is so casually telling me the names and ages of my children, reminding me that it knows where I live, and finding information I know for a fact I’ve never volunteered to Google. Intellectually, I know that Google knows an incredible amount about me — add up my emails, my calendar, my photos, and my search history, and you’ve pretty much got me pegged. But seeing Spark treat all that data not as something to be protected, but as something to be mined, just feels bad.

And that, I think, mirrors the exact reaction I’ve been experiencing with Dreambeans. We’ve all always known that Google knows a lot about us, but we’ve also — at least intellectually — understood how all of that data is and isn’t being used. And it’s never been rubbed in our faces just how much the company can figure out about us by putting all the various pieces together and creating an awkward sense of robotic intimacy.

I remember years ago, being in a Google press briefing where someone from the company talked about how much more their systems and services could accomplish but how they deliberately held back on going that far and overdoing the personalization — ’cause even though they had all that info and could make all those connections, they knew (at the time) that people wouldn’t respond well to seeing all their personal activity put together in such shocking ways. They knew (at the time) that most of us weren’t looking for an artificial BFF who knew too much about us. They knew (at the time) that giving us that sensation would cross the line into being creepy.

Well, this just in: That line’s officially been decimated. We’re in AI’s creepy era. And seemingly no one is worrying anymore if it’s actually something any of us want or will appreciate.

It kinda feels now like tech companies are actively rubbing in our faces how much they know about us — and even if there’s nothing truly nefarious going on with what they’re doing, it sure doesn’t feel good. It feels creepy. And at a time when trust in tech titans is shockingly low and most folks outside of the Silicon Valley bubble are feeling more and more frustrated with AI and all of the effects it’s foisting upon us, that isn’t a great look to be giving off.

Put those sensations alongside the sigh-inducing explosion of AI “content creators,” the proliferation of lifeless AI-generated “writing” (been on LinkedIn much lately?), and the troublingly blurry line between photorealistic AI-generated images and actual real-world photographs — not to mention the maddening experience of interacting with an AI bot support agent or encountering the ever-expanding array of AI-powered scams and security threats and AI-generated job cuts, just to name a few other problematic consequences this movement is imposing — and it’s hard not to question if all this purported progress is ultimately more helpful or harmful for us, as living, breathing humans in the real world.

A few months ago, at the three-year mark of Gemini’s launch, I posed the question: Did anyone actually ask for this? And, more pressingly: Is this the future we wanted? As we’re moving now into yet another era of AI innovation and seeing how it’s affecting our lives, it gets tougher every day to imagine many folks outside of the tech industry who’d answer with an emphatic yes.

And, unfortunately, you don’t need any fancy-schmancy AI chatbots to tell you that things are only gonna get more extreme — and, yes, more creepy — from here.

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