When it comes to AI, the fruity cargo cult Apple seems to think that Intelligence is the sort of thing that happens to other people.
Despite having more wealth than Croesus, Apple has fallen so far behind in the AI race that the other runners are heading home, having had their showers and a refreshing drink at the bar.
The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple first teased a sweeping Siri overhaul at WWDC 2024, promising a context-aware assistant that could understand what is on your phone and act on it.
Since then, delays have followed delays, with rumours pointing to iOS 26.4 as the major launch. Job’s Mob has now shipped iOS 26.3, which in theory should mean the AI cavalry is nearly here.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, it is not. Apple has reportedly delayed the major Siri upgrade again.
Gurman says the company originally aimed to land AI Siri in iOS 26.4, expected around March, but testing “snags” have forced a rethink.
Instead of a single grand reveal, Apple is reportedly splitting the update into pieces and releasing them across iOS 26.5, likely in May, and iOS 27 in September.
Given the recent track record, pencilling that into your calendar might be optimistic.
Behind the scenes, Apple is reportedly struggling to get Siri to properly process queries and respond quickly enough to be useful.
Engineers are said to be testing the new features in iOS 26.5, including the headline trick of letting Siri tap into your personal data to answer questions.
Users may have to flip a switch in Settings to preview the features, effectively acting as unpaid beta testers for something first shown nearly two years ago.
App intents, the feature that lets Siri take actions across apps on your behalf, are also proving unreliable.
The idea is that you could ask Siri to open an image, edit it, and share it, but that only works if the assistant can chain those actions.
Siri is cutting off prompts too early and sometimes defaulting to ChatGPT instead of using Apple’s own tech, which undermines the “we built this ourselves in our glorious walled gardens” pitch.
Apple is said to be testing a new AI web search tool similar to offerings from Perplexity and Google, along with a more advanced image-generation feature built on Image Playground, but both are reportedly encountering development hurdles.
Long-term, Apple wants to give Siri chatbot-style capabilities similar to ChatGPT, potentially powered by Gemini, and may even spin it into a dedicated app.
Siri was once the poster child for mainstream voice assistants, yet it quickly fell behind rivals that have embraced generative AI with contextual awareness and natural language control.
That version has never materialised, with Apple instead rolling out smaller iterative updates under the ironically named Apple Intelligence banner.
Two reasons why Apple might be failing is that its insistence on privacy while trying to deliver cloud-powered AI features and the fact that insists on its own hardware for AI processing rather than simply buying GPUs in bulk.
Rather than The Tame Apple Press caning its favourite trinket maker for incompetence and slowness, it is instead saying that an AI Siri would be unlikely to meaningfully shift iPhone sales.
