Apple has a habit of being late to technology parties and still being the best dressed. It might happen again this fall with the new Siri in iOS 27.
Siri is in a bad place at the moment, but that’s not a bleak view. Ali has ChatGPT pinned to his iPhone’s home screen. I put Gemini in a prime spot for instant access to really useful AI assistants.
These are habits that Apple stands against. But after a few days of testing the first iOS 27 beta and years of using Siri, I don’t use Gemini much anymore. It turns out that Siri’s new intelligence is based on the Gemini model.
One nice update is that Siri AI (as Apple calls it) can index your phone and retrieve details from texts, emails, notes, and calendar events. You now have answers to questions like “When is my next personal training session?” “By when do I have to cancel my hotel reservation to get a refund?” Siri was able to figure out an answer to my rather vague prompt.
It’s also convenient to have a dedicated Siri app. I think the response is less flattering and more concise than other LLM responses.
Finally, Siri has successfully pulled out real-world knowledge. While watching the Knicks parade, I showed Siri a photo and made fun of it. I knew exactly what was happening and why. And when you ask, they’ll give you helpful tips for commuting from relevant local news sources.
Siri isn’t great yet. People still sometimes misunderstand my non-American accent (Geminis usually don’t). Also, because Siri needs (and has) access to the Health app, you can’t have Siri answer your activity-related questions.
Of course, this is my first beta experience. But my hunch is that Siri will at least be better than worse when it becomes accessible to the masses this fall.
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