At Apple's 2026 Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8, the Cupertino tech giant appeared to make a deliberate shift in how it showcased its artificial intelligence features, leaning heavily on pre-taped demonstrations rather than the slickly produced hype videos that came back to haunt it two years earlier. The keynote, headlined by fixes to last year's "Liquid Glass" design, a long-overdue overhaul of Apple's search function, and improvements to its Playground feature, culminated in Apple finally unveiling a smarter, AI-powered Siri that the company had originally promised back in 2024. But the more telling story was the format: many of the Apple Intelligence demos featured a presenter holding an iPhone in real time, pressing buttons and issuing voice commands while a second camera displayed the device's response onscreen. That demonstration style stood in sharp contrast to WWDC 2024, when Apple introduced Apple Intelligence and its promised Siri overhaul through glossy marketing videos that critics later derided as "vaporware." At the time, Apple assured customers that the features would roll out soon to anyone with an iPhone 15 Pro or newer device running M1 chips or better. By March 2025, however, the company conceded to Daring Fireball that delivery of those features was "going to take us longer than we thought," and shortly afterward, Apple was hit with a federal false advertising lawsuit over its 2024 claims—a case that carried genuine reputational stakes for a brand long defined by the promise that its products "just work." Last month, Apple settled that suit for $250 million without admitting any wrongdoing. Monday's keynote appeared calibrated, at least in part, to insulate Apple from a similar backlash. That said, not every feature was shown in the new live-on-device style: the company still aired fully produced videos demonstrating how to customize Siri's voice and showcasing upgrades to voice-to-text transcription. The mixed approach suggests Apple is trying to thread a needle between rebuilding consumer trust around its AI roadmap and still maintaining the cinematic polish that has long defined its product launches. With the $250 million settlement now in the rearview mirror, the company can ill afford another round of demos that promise more than the software can actually deliver.