I turned off Siri on the Mac years ago and never looked back. Similarly, I found Apple Intelligence so fruitless I never engage with it. But the new Siri AI coming to macOS 27 Golden Gate has at least got me slightly rethinking things.
I'm still early in testing Siri AI, as I've only had access to it in the macOS 27 developer beta for little more than 24 hours. It's also in an early preview state on the dev beta, so there should be lots of runway for improvements before it releases later this year. I don't even know if it's done indexing my files and folders on our review unit M5 MacBook Air and M5 Max MacBook Pro. Unlike on the iOS 27 dev …
iPhone owners are getting real, native AI photo editing for the first time.
The most popular camera in the world just got its first set of serious AI photo editing features, and I don't think any of us are ready.
As far as AI photo editing goes, the new features in iOS 27 are pretty tame compared to what you can do on, say, Google's Pixel phones. But for the iPhone, they represent a tipping point in what the native photos app allows you to do to your photos. I mean memories. I mean, I don't know anymore.
These new features are part of the iOS 27 developer beta right now, so bear in mind that Apple may continue making tweaks to them before they're released to the general public. There are three, or maybe two and a …
You'd be forgiven for thinking this day would never come. Siri has spent a decade and half somewhere between "sort of useful at a few things" and "utterly disastrous, why did I even try, can it honestly not even set a timer." But the wildest thing just happened: Apple put out a new version of Siri, and it actually seems to be pretty good.
On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay talk about their early experiences with Siri AI, and what it means for users, and the rest of the AI industry, for the iPhone's built-in assistant to be good enough at most things. There's very little about Siri AI that feels bleeding edge or brand new, but …
A Apple confirmou na WWDC 2026 todos os modelos compatíveis com o iOS 27, e a boa notícia é que nenhum iPhone ficou para trás face à versão anterior. Já a nova Siri com IA só chega aos modelos mais recentes, mas apresenta uma justificação para tal.
Donnez vie à vos projets, échangez, jouez ou profitez de vos contenus multimédias dans d’excellentes conditions grâce à la puissance de l’Apple iPad Pro M4. Lancée en 2024, cette tablette fine et facile à transporter bénéficie actuellement d’une baisse de prix importante chez Rakuten, avec plus...
Apple’s executives have been taking questions, hosting seminars, seemingly working around the clock to stress one very important thing: Apple is not using a white label version of Google Gemini to make Siri AI happen. They just pooled resources to get there.
The new Siri AI is faster, more accurate, offers powerful contextual capabilities and shows how Apple has leap-frogged into a good peer position in an AI race critics felt it had already lost. Its market scale — even without the EU — is huge. For most consumers, Apple Intelligence and Siri will continue to be their primary/first engagement with artificial intelligence on a device.
Getting there took a lot of work, and Apple needed Google to get it done. Though there is still some confusion about what that means, Apple’s software chief tried to explain it this week. “We use none of the models that Google deploys to their customers, nor do we use the infrastructure and means by which they employ models to their customers,” Craig Federighi said in a presentation at WWDC.
Apple is not even using Google Search as the foundation of its system, he said. “This is the amount of Google Assistant we use,” Federighi said, pointing at an empty chart. “Nothing.”
Apple not Gemini, Siri AI is not Google’s
What makes this hard to understand is that we all know Apple partnered with Google to build Siri AI; back in January, we were told the next generation of Apple Foundation Models would be based on Gemini models and cloud technology. So, how can we have moved from partnership hero to usage zero?
The answer is, we didn’t. What happened is that Apple built its new Apple Frontier Models (AFMs) (the AI inside Siri AI) by training them using proprietary Apple data and reinforcement learning and then refined those models using “outputs from Google’s Gemini Frontier models.”
In other words, Apple used Google Gemini to help improve its own models, which means the models themselves, the AI in Siri AI, are Apple’s — but they were trained with help from Gemini. They are not white label iterations of those Google models.
Apple also hit a second snag. Its very best model (AFM 3 Cloud Pro) requires more processor power to run than Apple could deliver using its own cloud-hosted Private Cloud Compute servers. Now, we know Apple doesn’t like using other people’s stuff. But it’s a realistic company that understands it sometimes must, and just as it uses AWS to support some of its services, it moved to adopt Google cloud services and Nvidia processors to drive the most demanding requests.
Apple also developed a technological solution that means it can claim the interaction remains just as private as if it were run on your device. Apple has made it possible for independent security experts to confirm this and says it is the only company that can deploy software on those servers, with strong security to ensure your device only interacts with those servers when you want it to. So far, no one has broken this protection.
I came across an interesting report in which Tekonyx Founder and Chief Research Officer Sid Nag explained the significance of Apple finding a way to expand its Private cloud Compute infrastructure beyond its own data centers.
“Apple is effectively arguing that trust in AI systems should come from cryptographic and architectural guarantees rather than trust in the cloud provider itself,” he told Fierce. Where enterprises have faced a choice between access to powerful AI or privacy, Apple has introduced a new solution he called “portable trust.” This could conceivably become a new IaaS offering from the companies involved over time.
Working together for the benefit of all
So, while Apple’s models were built with Google’s help, and while its most advanced models run with support from Google and Nvidia, the models are Apple’s alone.
It’s good for Google, of course. Apple is paying for this use, which helps the search giant claw back some of the value of its massive, muti-billion-dollar AI infrastructure investment. It’s not clear how much Apple is paying; earlier this year, the $1 billion figure was bandied around. But Apple’s decision to tie usage to iCloud subscriptions in some hitherto undisclosed way hints that the deal may also see some token-based usage charges on top of the basic Apple fee. I’ve not come across any details, but that’s what I surmise based on the size of Apple’s ecosystem and the growing realization of how quickly users can consume AI capacity.
What AI models is Apple running?
AFM 3 Cloud Pro is one of five Apple Frontier Models driving Siri AI. Here’s how Apple describes those five models:
On-device models
AFM 3 Core, the next generation of Apple’s 3-billion-parameter dense model. You’ll use this for basic text generation, summaries, conversational replies, all the standard uses. It can also handle indexing, search, App Intents, basic dictation and contextual awareness.
AFM 3 Core Advanced, the most powerful on-device model. This is what makes Siri’s voice match mood or context, does all the high-accuracy dictation, and can process various data to handle tasks across different apps. It’s the AI driving your more involved Siri conversations.
AFM Core Advanced is impressive in its own right, because Apple has managed to cram a 20-billion-parameter model onto a smartphone. It has done this by using a sparse architecture, which means it activates just 1 to 4 billion parameters at a time depending on the request. It is, however, only available to Apple’s most powerful systems — iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, M4 or later iPad, M3 or later Mac with 12GB+ memory.
Server-based models
AFM 3 Cloud, which Apple calls its server-side workhorse, optimized for speed, efficiency, and performance.
ADM 3 Cloud (Image), for image generation and editing, which unlocks advanced photo-editing tools, the all-new Image Playground, and more.
AFM 3 Cloud Pro, the most capable server-based model, which powers the most demanding use cases, like agentic tool use and complex reasoning.
All five were built using the same common foundation, which was then specialized to reflect the proposed use of that model. It’s interesting to look at the human evaluation tests Apple ran to test how well these models performed; they demonstrate impressive improvement on the company’s original models, effectively justifying the decision to work with Gemini.
Mobile World Live brings you our top three picks of the week as Apple reset its AI ambitions at WWDC, OpenAI edged closer to a stock market debut and French operators agreed a €20.4 billion deal to carve-up SFR.
Apple lands Siri AI at WWDC as Cook takes a bow
What happened: During its annual WWDC event, Apple reset its AI strategy, unveiled a revamped AI-powered Siri and spotlighted new child-safety controls as Tim Cook delivered his final keynote as CEO.
Why it matters: Apple SVP of software Craig Federighi said, “truly helpful AI must be centred around you and your needs”, positioning privacy, personal context and deeper app integration as core pillars of the AI-enhanced Siri. The launch gives Apple a chance to overwrite a damaging run of Siri AI delays described internally as “ugly and embarrassing”. Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, said “Apple had to address its shortcomings in AI, and WWDC provided some answers”, but added the company must deliver “a meaningfully better everyday experience, not just parity with rivals”. He noted many features will already be familiar to Android and third-party AI app users, adding iPhone users are “more likely to upgrade for better battery life, an improved camera or a bigger screen rather than to get AI”. However, challenges have already emerged. The AI-upgraded Siri and Apple Intelligence features have already been delayed indefinitely in the European Union (EU) over competition laws and blocked in China over local AI regulations.
On child safety, Wood called Apple’s push “a welcome and timely move” as concerns about online harm grow among regulators but said “stronger cross-industry safeguards need to be built into operating systems at a deeper platform level”. Cook’s farewell added weight to the event as he declared the iPhone will “continue to be the centre of people’s digital lives”, adding, “the best is still ahead”.
What happened: OpenAI confidentially filed paperwork for a US IPO, becoming the latest AI company to move towards a listing as the sector’s biggest players race to raise fresh funds.
Why it matters: The ChatGPT-maker stated it had submitted a draft registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), adding, “we expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it”. It did not disclose the size, price or timing of the listing and cautioned a debut may not be imminent “because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company”. OpenAI explained the decision involves “a complicated set of trade-offs”, but the filing gives it “the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best”. Reuters reported the company is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, with a debut possible as early as September. The filing puts OpenAI into a crowded and expensive AI listings race; rival Anthropic confidentially filed for its own US IPO last week, while SpaceX launched a blockbuster listing. Aviva Investors’ head of multi-asset Sunil Krishnan told the BBC all firms all have a “vast need for cash” as “no one wants to be last” in a space where access to capital could prove crucial as companies fund AI chips, infrastructure and model training. Harrison Rolfes, senior research analyst at PitchBook, argued OpenAI’s $1 trillion listing is “a bet on a company that has never been profitable, in a market it is currently losing, with a cost structure it cannot change for at least another year”. He added this is “all while racing a direct competitor through the same SEC process in the same quarter.” Rolfes concluded: “There is no scenario where OpenAI pricing after a profitable Anthropic favours OpenAI.”
What happened: Bouygues Telecom, Free-Iliad Group and Orange signed a memorandum of understanding with Altice France to acquire and carve up SFR in a deal valuing the operator at €20.4 billion, setting the stage for a major reset of France’s telecoms market.
Why it matters: Under terms outlined in April, Bouygues will take 42% of SFR’s assets, Free-Iliad 31% and Orange 27%. SFR’s consumer mobile and fixed broadband operations will be divided between the three operators, while Bouygues will take control of the B2B unit. Completion is targeted for H2 2027, subject to regulatory clearance. Kester Mann, director, consumer and connectivity at CCS Insight, noted the move marks the biggest potential shake-up in French telecoms since Iliad entered the mobile market in 2012, cutting the number of major operators from four to three and reshaping competition. He said the agreement appears “a successful outcome for all parties” as Bouygues, Orange and Iliad all gain “important new assets in their pursuit of greater scale”, while removing a key rival will “reduce the competitive intensity of the market”. However, the biggest challenge will be to regulators show the deal will deliver “positive outcomes to the French market”. He noted that while that would once have been “a herculean task”, recent approvals in the UK and Spain suggest Europe’s stance on consolidation is softening.
‘Listen, that's not what I'm here for.' | Image: Apple
Our early testing has already shown that Siri AI knows when to shut up, and that's very much by design. In an interview with Mostly Humanspotted by MacRumors, Craig Federighi said Apple's new Siri won't act all sycophantic like chatbots made by OpenAI, Google, and others.
"As you may know, if you use many of the existing chatbots, they're really focused on engagement to a large degree," said Federighi, who is responsible for software at Apple. "And sycophancy, right? They kind of want to pull you in. They might encourage you to reveal things about yourself, and then use that as a basis to establish a connection."
Apple warned us this was coming, but macOS 27 will not support Intel at all. The company will deliver three more years of security updates for those devices, and you will still be able to use Rosetta to get Intel app binaries to run legacy apps on Apple Silicon. But if you still rely on any Intel apps or Macs, it really is time to plan your upgrade.
DDM becomes the present
It was the future once, but when it comes to Declarative Device Management (DDM) that future is now. Apple is removing all its legacy MDM mechanisms to replace them with DDM. “For IT admins, WWDC 2026 is a migration year,” wrote Fleet. “Apple is removing legacy MDM mechanisms and replacing them with Declarative Device Management (DDM). Some of it is urgent. Some of it just needs a plan.”
It’s a great step, though IT admins will need to ensure they aren’t relying on legacy MDM to handle any of their device fleets. That’s a particular issue around software and security update management. In most cases, your MDM provider has probably already introduced DDM support. But if you aren’t certain, now is the time to find out before your systems fail.
Apple has also added new DDM tools across various systems, apps, identities and more. Some of the highlights include:
VPN and Network configurations can be provisioned using DDM; they also become credential-reliant, which should make management more streamlined.
Apple Intelligence, Siri, and keyboard settings can also be configured via DDM, and admins can manage individual Apple Intelligence tools.
Web content filter and content caching both become controllable with DDM.
A new privacy key lets IT manage things like camera or microphone access.
Apple has added a device system health reporting function to verify that hardware components on iPhone and iPad are genuine.
IT will be able to detect whether a device is in Lockdown Mode.
“One of the new features I’m most excited about is the ability to set permission defaults for managed apps and websites viewed in Safari,” said Adam Henry, senior product manager at Iru. “While the user is still prompted to allow these permissions, we can now present those requests as a unified prompt immediately upon app launch, along with a custom explanation as to why those permissions are important — think a teleconferencing app or website that always needs access to camera and microphone.
“Overall, I think this is a much more user-friendly solution that will likely increase permission compliance.”
Siri and AI
Although, Apple has introduced new management tools for AI, it’s important to remember some advice from Joel Rennich, senior vice president for product management at JumpCloud: “Traditional IAM models assume users directly interact with applications, but agentic systems change that assumption. AI intermediaries can now retrieve data, execute workflows, and make decisions across systems. Enterprises will need identity frameworks that govern both human and non-human actors consistently.”
He also noted: “The separation between where data lives and where it is used becomes increasingly invisible to the user. Intent becomes the primary input, not app selection.”
At the same time, the evolution of AI on Apple’s devices promises a lot for enterprise users. Matt Vlasach, Jamf senior vice president, enterprise products and solutions engineering, told me: “Most notable for me was Siri AI and the push towards on-device and more capable models that can do more with user context. While obvious for consumer use cases as illustrated in the keynote, the opportunity to evolve this to the work context using a more advanced Apple Intelligence framework is an exciting evolution.”
Farewell AFP
Apple has finally eradicated Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) in macOS. This will be an issue for any business that uses legacy Time Capsule or NAS storage devices, though in most cases those products are already obsolete and should be replaced. This is unlikely to be a huge challenge for most, given that Apple began using SMB as its primary file sharing protocol back in 2013 and support for AFP server disappeared in 2020. (Time Capsule fans might want to take a look at the TimeCapsuleSMB open-source project.)
Hello AppleCare log collection
Apple will introduce a new remote log collection capability that integrates directly with the company’s support infrastructure. So, when AppleCare support engages with an organization’s IT team, they can provide an enhanced logging token which can be shared to get the device to collect diagnostic logs to upload to AppleCare. You just know this will expedite remedy.
Single Sign-On improvements
As I noted here, there are some significant Single Sign-On (SSO) updates; two that caught my eye include:
IT can now insist on biometric as well as password ID on managed devices.
Authenticated Guest Mode with Platform SSO allows users to quickly and securely login to a shared Mac in a temporary session.
Platform SSO on macOS 27 adds web-based authentication.
Network and more
Another change affects the system processes used in device management at a network level. Apple now requires that you use TLS 1.2 or later. If you or your MDM systems are not doing so, get ready for things to break. (Apple has published a support article to help IT test their network environments in preparation for this change.)
Apple also announced that IT admins will be able to purchase and manage app subscriptions directly in Apple School Manager and Apple Business Manager. And it introduced a managed migration feature that should help migrate data, while preserving device management enrollment and settings.
More information
I’ve really only offered a flavor of some of the IT improvements introduced at WWDC. To find out more, watch the Apple sessions on “What’s new in managing Apple devices” and take a look at the Apple Platform Deployment guide; it should be updated before the new operating systems ship this fall
Apple Intelligence and Siri AI have sucked most of the oxygen out of the room at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this year—understandable, maybe, given that the AI-powered Siri delays are all anyone has wanted to ask any Apple executive about for the last two years.
But Apple Intelligence is just one of the three big focus areas Apple outlined during its keynote this week. The second is new parental controls—overdue, but promising-looking, as the parent of a 6-year-old with an iPad that I only begrudgingly connect to the Internet. And the third is "platform improvements," a catch-all for a wide range of fit-and-finish changes aimed at boosting responsiveness and addressing common user complaints.
I have the first beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate running on an M1 MacBook Air—the oldest, slowest hardware Apple supports now that Intel compatibility is out the window. With some help from Apple's densely packed wall-of-features slide, here are a few things from the "platform improvements" column I like the most, plus one item I'd still like to see.
Segundo Thomas Regnier, porta-voz da Comissão Europeia, não existe nada no Regulamento dos Mercados Digitais que impeça a Apple de lançar novos produtos, acrescentando que a empresa "simplesmente não conseguiu desenvolver soluções de interoperabilidade que cumpram os requisitos essenciais de privacidade e segurança".
Apple's new Siri AI is finally here, and so far, it seems like it works. I have access and have been messing around with it, and my biggest impression so far is that Siri AI is quite curt - which I mean as a compliment.
Many AI chatbots are cheery and wordy. While a more verbose and casual personality can make a chatbot seem friendlier and more fun to talk to, there are instances of users becoming extremely attached to their chatbot of choice. People have fallen in love with chatbots. When OpenAI suddenly shut down GPT-4o, users grieved its loss, and the company brought the model back for paid users. And while some companies have dialed bac …
While it’s true the data is based on a relatively small sample group, it does seem to reflect what the industry in general sees.
Apple’s chip design transforms Mac reliability
The success of Apple Silicon hardware is attributed to its simpler design, which integrates multiple components into a single chip, reducing the number of potential failure points. Additionally, Apple Silicon Macs run cooler, leading to less wear and tear on components such as batteries and USB-C ports, the report says. Across the wider laptop market, most studies show hardware faults affect one in five non-Apple machines over their first three years in use.
This builds on Apple’s enduring record for making good hardware as independent reliability surveys consistently rank the company as the most reliable laptop brand. To some extent, the data reflects the anecdotal experience most Mac users have — their computers seem to last much longer than other systems do, which helps them retain value on the second-user market.
Apple already had a good story to tell in terms of tech support before it introduced Apple Silicon machines. More than a decade ago, Fletcher Previn, then vice president of Workplace-as-a-Service at IBM, told the Jamf Nation User Conference that just 5% of IBM’s Mac-using employees needed to call the help desk; in contrast, an astonishing 40% of PC-using staff had to do so. That difference is significant because it translates into serious differences in cost; each tech support call made by those working on your ailing PC fleet has a price.
That TCO difference prompted Previn to say, “I can confidently say every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money.” Years later, as CIO at Cisco, he said the company’s tens of thousands of Mac users experienced five times fewer cyberthreats and nine times fewer virus issues than PCs, and that Cisco needed 33% fewer engineers to manage the Macs.
Those impressive real-world data points reflected Macs in the pre-Apple Silicon world. Those Intel Macs already worked better for longer and required less tech support. This month’s Hoxton Macs data, while based on a much smaller sample group, suggests that this particular advantage has grown even greater now. And it’s not just down to the silicon.
Fewer parts, less heat, fewer failures
Apple has designed its processors to deliver excellent performance per watt. Because these are SoCs (System on Chips) the power requirement to drive all the system components is that much lower, and it means whole categories of component failure are removed. The design also means they use less energy and generate less heat to run, dramatically reducing thermal wear and tear.
“Fewer parts, less heat, simpler construction: the result is a machine with markedly fewer ways to break,” Hoxton Mac said in an extensive article explaining its data.
>Failure rates are consequential to everyone. Even a small failure rate means some people will end up with Macs that have hardware issues, which is always a problem for those affected. But the low fail rate should be reassuring to the millions of people switching to Apple’s href="https://www.computerworld.com/article/4180406/after-a-quick-1-1m-sales-macbook-neo-set-to-reshape-the-pc-industry.html">even cooler-running MacBook Neos>.
Those users might now justifiably look forward to lower running costs from their new computers, combined with good resale rates once they’re ready to upgrade. It doesn’t hurt Apple’s platform loyalty either — making it even more likely those millions of users will stay with the Mac rather than going back to where they were before.
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