Apple Seeds Second Betas of iOS/macOS 26.4

- The deprecation of Carbon APIs continues Apple's long-term transition away from the C-based framework, which was originally introduced to port classic Mac OS applications to OS X. Most Carbon APIs were first deprecated in 2012 with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and support for 32-bit Carbon apps was removed entirely in macOS 10.15 Catalina. - The new on-device AI APIs are part of a broader "Apple Intelligence" strategy that leverages the Neural Engine in Apple's M-series silicon for privacy-focused, on-device processing. For developers, this is exposed through frameworks like Foundation Models, which allows direct access to on-device large language models for features like text generation and tool calling. - The mandatory move to Xcode 26 ensures that all new app submissions leverage updated compilers and SDKs, which improves security and performance across the App Store. The Xcode 26.4 beta 2 specifically includes Swift 6.3 and the Apple Clang compiler with new features from the C++26 standard. - "Contextual Intelligence" is likely linked to the ongoing Siri overhaul, which aims to provide more advanced conversational AI and contextual awareness through on-device processing. This follows a trend of Apple building its own visual and language models to reduce reliance on third-party services from companies like Google or OpenAI for features like Visual Intelligence. - The deprecation of older Core Location methods aligns with a multi-year effort, starting around iOS 14, to provide more granular privacy controls and accuracy management, moving developers towards newer authorization and update APIs. - The new APIs could enhance interactions with smart home devices using the Matter protocol, an IP-based standard supported by Apple that enables local, secure communication across devices from different manufacturers. Matter runs on Wi-Fi and Thread network layers, using Bluetooth Low Energy for the initial setup of devices.