Two years. Count 'em, it's been two years since Apple Intelligence was unveiled in 2024 for iOS 18. The showstopper feature Apple presented at the time was a much-needed Siri upgrade boasting chatbot smarts paired with deep personal contextual awareness. That Siri was delayed repeatedly, leading Apple to offer a $250 million settlement to disgruntled users and sparking rumors the demo was a mirage. At long last, the promised Siri is available via the OS 27 Developer Beta. Here are the key facts from our testing.
Key Fact: Siri Now Delivers on Personal Context
The new Siri effectively matches the 2024 demo. It now understands complex requests and provides sourced, chatbot-like answers. The standout feature is personal context: Siri can access your iCloud content—emails, messages, notes, photos—to surface relevant information. Examples from testing include translating a Japanese homework conversation, identifying a keyboard purchase from photos, recalling device sale details, pulling up trip photos based on a movie reference, and summarizing your own articles. When it works, it works exceptionally well, rarely requiring follow-up clarification. However, early beta software means occasional misfires and non sequiturs.
Key Fact: Indexing Can Take Days
Before Siri can use your personal data, it must index your content. In the beta, indexing can be frustratingly slow. On an iPad used normally, indexing took over a week. On an iPhone left plugged in for hours at a time, it finished in a couple of days. Even with a moderate 200GB of iCloud data, the wait was substantial. Apple may optimize indexing for the final release, but users with larger libraries may face even longer delays before Siri becomes truly useful.
Key Fact: On-Device Processing Still Requires Internet
Despite being advertised as on-device, the new Siri relies on Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers to know how to handle requests. In areas with poor Wi-Fi or cellular signal, complex requests either fail or take very long. Simple tasks like setting reminders work offline, but anything requiring understanding or contextual answers demands an internet connection. Apple should clearly communicate this limitation to avoid user disappointment, especially given privacy concerns about sending personal data to the cloud. The new Siri is built on Google's Gemini, adding another layer to the cloud dependency.
Key Fact: Deep Apple Ecosystem Integration Boosts Performance
The more you use Apple's own services—iMessage, Calendar, Photos, Notes, Reminders—the more effective Siri becomes. Users relying on third-party apps like Gmail, WhatsApp, or OneDrive may find Siri unable to access their data. During testing, questions about conversations in non-iMessage apps were unanswerable. This frustrates even those heavily invested in Apple's ecosystem. However, third-party app support may improve over time as developers adopt App Intents and MCP frameworks, similar to how apps eventually adopted the Liquid Glass design language.
Key Fact: On-Screen Awareness Is the Killer Feature
Siri's ability to understand and act on content displayed on your screen is a game-changer. It can grab a driver's license number from a picture and fill a form, send a note as a PDF to an email, screenshot a page and share it, open a new Safari tab with a product page, identify people in images, set reminders based on screen content, and copy text from a receipt to a note. These random examples demonstrate significant potential for saving time on tedious tasks. As long as information is clearly visible, Siri can perform basic actions on it, far beyond Apple's earlier party-recipe demos from WWDC 2026.
Overall, the new Siri finally delivers on Apple's original promises, but with caveats. The beta shows immense promise, especially with personal context and on-screen awareness. However, users must be prepared for lengthy indexing and a constant internet connection. The ultimate usefulness depends on how deeply you are embedded in Apple's ecosystem. With expected bug fixes before the September public release, this Siri upgrade could be the assistant Apple promised two years ago.
Source: SlashGear News