Apple SWEARS Siri Is About to Get Smart. We've Heard This Song Before.

Adam Spencer
7 hours ago
4 min read

Apple has promised a genius Siri before, pulled the ad, and paid out US$250 million. At WWDC it promised again, and the market shrugged. If it lands this time, a billion-odd iPhones make it impossible to ignore.

The belnded Northern Star Trail above Kitt Peak. — ('Sorry I can't do that': created via Kapwing)

(First published on my Substack where you can get #NerdNews, marvellous maths and general geekery.)

Siri-ously, we need to talk.

Siri, you have hurt me so many times before. Whether the promised, undelivered upgrade that led to last year's US$250 million settlement, or the countless times I've sat in my car screaming at you "for f**ks sake how can you not recognise my wife's name", I've been promised the world.

TBH not even the world. Just a system that vaguely worked.

And you've come up way short.

Well Apple are whispering sweet nothings again. What’s the promise this time?

And if they stick the landing, how does the world change?

A(nother) dent in the universe?

Apple tech events are the stuff of legend.

Who can forget Steve Jobs at Macworld in 2007, twinkle in his eye, intoning "are you getting it? This is one device", before revealing the iPhone and putting a dent in the universe?

Well, at the just-completed developer love-fest the big promise was "Siri goes AI".

Can Apple finally deliver?

Back at WWDC 2024 Apple showed off a more personalised Siri, ran TV ads spruiking it, then quietly delayed the headline features and pulled the Siri ad when the rollout slipped. The Apple-watcher John Gruber was not gentle about that original demo.

"Concept videos are bullshit, and a sign of a company in disarray." — John Gruber, Daring Fireball.

Then came the US$250 million class-action settlement over claims it had over-promised on Siri and Apple Intelligence.

Apple denied any wrongdoing. But paid up.

For many people, Siri is emblematic of Apple in 2026, a company still playing catch-up on AI.

Will this be the great leap forward?

I promise, I’ve changed.

So what is on offer?

(Apple promotional material for Siri AI)

A Siri that can finally read your whole phone. It can dig a name out of your messages, find the flight confirmation buried in your inbox, or surface the holiday photos you actually want.

It answers questions off the web like ChatGPT and Gemini, and with "on-screen awareness" can tell you about whatever is on your screen, then direct you to a place in a photo, stopping to pick up a mate on the way.

Point your camera and Visual Intelligence names the plant, landmark or restaurant, splits a bill from a snap of the receipt, and, in Apple's demos, estimates the nutrition on a plate of food.

Siri also becomes a standalone app that looks a lot like Messages, synced across your devices via iCloud, in the Dynamic Island and Spotlight on your computer.

Under the bonnet is a three-tier set-up: simple stuff runs on-device, trickier requests go to Apple's Private Cloud Compute, and only the heaviest queries reach a custom version of Google's Gemini, licensed in a reported US$1-billion-a-year deal. Apple says anything sent to Google is stripped of identifiers, and Google is contractually barred from training on it.

"Apple's demos during the WWDC keynote looked promising." — NY Times Wirecutter.

That line, from Brenda Stolyar writing in NY Times Wirecutter, one of the world's most respected review platforms, is about as warm as the early verdicts get.

Promising. Not proven.

A captive audience.

There is so much at stake here.

Ubiquity alone does not change the world. Siri has sat on a billion-plus phones for over a decade, and most of us use it to set a timer.

An installed base that size is necessary, but not sufficient. What matters is whether this new offering is good enough to change behaviour.

If it is, Apple holds an asset nobody else has cracked: a vast, engaged (some would say cultish!), user base. Siri AI promises to give them a personal assistant powered by on-device personal context that cloud chatbots cannot hope to touch.

Get that right and Apple drags AI assistants from "thing enthusiasts download" to "thing everyone just has", turbocharging a shift already under way.

Beyond the guff.

Wall Street was unmoved: Apple shares slipped close to 2 per cent after the keynote, analysts grumbling at the lack of a firm launch date.

More cold water. Siri AI will not ship on iPhone or iPad in the European Union at launch, thanks to a standoff over the Digital Markets Act, though Apple says EU users on Mac, Watch and Vision Pro will still get it. China misses out across the board. Apple's line: bending to the EU would force it to hand rival chatbots near-unlimited, autonomous access to your device.

For everyone else, developer betas of iOS 27 and the new macOS "Golden Gate" are out now and a public beta lands next month. The final software is expected around September.

The new Siri arrives in beta later this year, English first. Apple's official list is broad, including iPhones from the 15 Pro up, M-series iPads and Macs, recent Watches and Vision Pro.

Some pundits reckon the splashiest features will only really shine on the very newest chips.

AdiOS Tim (see what I did there).

The keynote was also Tim Cook's last WWDC as chief executive, with John Ternus taking the chair on 1 September. His parting note carried a familiar Apple optimism.