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Apple Intelligence Upgrades for Siri Likely Pushed Back to iOS 18.5

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Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last month reported that Apple was considering delaying at least some of its promised Apple Intelligence enhancements for Siri until iOS 18.5, and that plan appears increasingly likely based on his latest information.

iOS-18-Siri-Personal-Context.png

Gurman said Apple was initially planning to launch the Apple Intelligence enhancements for Siri in iOS 18.4, but it seems that the features have been pushed back until iOS 18.5 due to a lack of readiness and software bugs. Accordingly, none of the promised features are available in the first beta of iOS 18.4 released last month.

In his Power On newsletter today, he said the features will be available in iOS 18.5:
The follow-up release, iOS 18.5, is where the good stuff is supposed to wind up. It has the AI-infused Siri that the company showed off last June, as well as support for Apple Intelligence in China.
Click to expand...
Apple's software engineers have been internally testing iOS 18.5 since at least the start of February, according to the MacRumors visitor logs.

Gurman expects iOS 18.5 to be released in May, but beta testing should begin sooner:
The next version of Siri will be a test of whether Apple can mount a comeback. The software is likely be released in May, a full 11 months after it was introduced.
Click to expand...
It is still possible that some of the Siri upgrades could arrive in a later iOS 18.4 beta, but Gurman seems to be leaning into iOS 18.5 timing for now.

The upgrades coming to Siri will include on-screen awareness, understanding of a user's personal context, and deeper per-app controls. For example, during its WWDC 2024 keynote, Apple showed an iPhone user asking Siri about their mother's flight and lunch reservation plans based on info from the Mail and Messages apps.

Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 model.

Article Link: Apple Intelligence Upgrades for Siri Likely Pushed Back to iOS 18.5
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/03/02/siri-apple-intelligence-likely-ios-18-5/
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It would have been better for Apple to focus only on this and not even try any of the embarrassing things they have released like Image Playground. Nobody wanted that, nobody wanted Genmoji, or any of the other garbage they've been wasting their time on.

I know it's not one person working on this, but it feels like someone procrastinating by doing pointless easy things to avoid the real work.
 
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CarAnalogy said:
It would have been better for Apple to focus only on this and not even try any of the embarrassing things they have released like Image Playground. Nobody wanted that, nobody wanted Genmoji, or any of the other garbage they've been wasting their time on.

I know it's not one person working on this, but it feels like someone procrastinating by doing pointless easy things to avoid the real work.
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A lot of “nobody” based on what ? Your feelings?
 
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CarAnalogy said:
It would have been better for Apple to focus only on this and not even try any of the embarrassing things they have released like Image Playground. Nobody wanted that, nobody wanted Genmoji, or any of the other garbage they've been wasting their time on.

I know it's not one person working on this, but it feels like someone procrastinating by doing pointless easy things to avoid the real work.
Click to expand...
Why is image playground embarrassing? It’s really cute. What you say nobody wanted that you would be wrong. I wanted it, I wanted genmoji. And I’m not the only one.
 
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FlyingDutch said:
A lot of “nobody” based on what ? Your feelings?
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Well yeah, my personal experience. And all the articles I've read. And the lack of usage I've seen of any of this in the real world since it was released.

Are you the happy, regular user of Genmoji and Image Playground I've been looking for? Can you tell me about how it has enriched your life more than an improved Siri would have? You endorse this use of developer resources?
 
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Whether one has zero interest in AI or can't sleep waiting for it, the core issue is that Siri is a joke of a service / product and the fact that Apple under Cook either cannot improve it or simply does not care is shocking. But it still has its defenders, a couple of whom will undoubtedly chime in shortly.
 
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Absolutely hilarious how inept Apple is. Tim has been awful let’s be honest. He walked into a company that could not fail for a very long time no matter who was in charge.

He purchased Beats for billions of dollars which was to this day the worst purchase Apple has ever made by far. They could have made a streaming music service for less than 100 million. I personally would have bought Pandora because to this day it is still by far the best streaming music service because they actually understand radio algorithmic playlists. Their music selections are so vastly superior.

He then gave the okay for multiple products that were insanely niche and made no sense given Apple’s entire mantra ‘We only want to make a few products, and only what we could affect real positive change to’. They made HomePod which was the exact opposite of what people were buying Alexa Echo devices for. People wanted something insanely cheap with a voice assistant that wasn’t Siri garbage.

Then they made AirPods Max which are $550 headphones that virtually no one would buy because negligible audio enhancement is not worth that much. Then you have the fact that AirPods Max of course only work on extremely few devices. Like imagine not having dongles for AirPods Max so they could function well for video games for the PS5 and Xbox. Just embarrassing.

Then they made Vision Pro which they thought would be a good idea at $3,500. They actually thought that this device that is the exact same thing as an iPhone and a Mac display was going to be bought for $3,500. Try again at $1,000 and you might get a few purchasers but not many because an iPhone is still needed no matter what, and the vast majority won’t be buying a headset that does nothing different hahah.

They released the iPhone 16 devices with the camera capture button and I WOULD ABSOLUTELY PAY TO SEE THE ANALYTICAL DATA on that lmfao. You know how many people use that? It’s guaranteed sub 1% of iPhone 16 owners. It’s the biggest piece of garbage gimmick since peek and pop and Dynamic Island.

Now they went down the AI road making the most useless AI stuff imaginable. Genmoji LOL. And their writing tools don’t even work lmao. I tried a simple proofreading task and it just said ‘error completing task’ or something like that. It’s totally useless.
 
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CarAnalogy said:
Well yeah, my personal experience. And all the articles I've read. And the lack of usage I've seen of any of this in the real world since it was released.

Are you the happy, regular user of Genmoji and Image Playground I've been looking for? Can you tell me about how it has enriched your life more than an improved Siri would have? You endorse this use of developer resources?
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No I’m not, being an EU citizen I still have to try it, but I wouldn’t go that far saying that “nobody” wanted it, based on personal experience
 
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Cloudyskies22 said:
Absolutely hilarious how inept Apple is. Tim has been awful let’s be honest. He walked into a company that could not fail for a very long time no matter who was in charge.

He purchased Beats for billions of dollars which was to this day the worst purchase Apple has ever made by far. They could have made a streaming music service for less than 100 million. I personally would have bought Pandora because to this day it is still by far the best streaming music service because they actually understand radio algorithmic playlists. Their music selections are so vastly superior.

He then gave the okay for multiple products that were insanely niche and made no sense given Apple’s entire mantra ‘We only want to make a few products, and only what we could affect real positive change to’. They made HomePod which was the exact opposite of what people were buying Alexa Echo devices for. People wanted something insanely cheap with a voice assistant that wasn’t Siri garbage.

Then they made AirPods Max which are $550 headphones that virtually no one would buy because negligible audio enhancement is not worth that much. Then you have the fact that AirPods Max of course only work on extremely few devices. Like imagine not having dongles for AirPods Max so they could function well for video games for the PS5 and Xbox. Just embarrassing.

Then they made Vision Pro which they thought would be a good idea at $3,500. They actually thought that this device that is the exact same thing as an iPhone and a Mac display was going to be bought for $3,500. Try again at $1,000 and you might get a few purchasers but not many because an iPhone is still needed no matter what, and the vast majority won’t be buying a headset that does nothing different hahah.

They released the iPhone 16 devices with the camera capture button and I WOULD ABSOLUTELY PAY TO SEE THE ANALYTICAL DATA on that lmfao. You know how many people use that? It’s guaranteed sub 1% of iPhone 16 owners. It’s the biggest piece of garbage gimmick since peek and pop and Dynamic Island.

Now they went down the AI road making the most useless AI stuff imaginable. Genmoji LOL. And their writing tools don’t even work lmao. I tried a simple proofreading task and it just said ‘error completing task’ or something like that. It’s totally useless.
Click to expand...
You forgot about him wasting $10b on the car that never launched.
 
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Good. Keep it in development until it’s actually ready for release. However, it’s a given that the initial release will be underwhelming, but at least minimize the bugs please, Apple.
 
bluecoast said:
You forgot about him wasting $10b on the car that never launched.
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Which was due to a 100% tariff on electric cars manufacture in China, announced in early 2024, and coming into effect September 2024.

You might not know that a 2X increase on the retail price of an Apple Car would not result in a sustainable business.
 
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Apple is evidently incredibly behind with GenAI and were caught sleeping at the wheel.

Yeah, the wheel of the car that never launched.

All the more embarrassing, because aside from their superb work in making the iPhone camera better each year, increasingly, the new headline features in their platforms each year have felt gimmicky and trite.

And major ux features have been misfires. Tabbed ui for safari. The new window management feature for macOS that I only tried once and can’t even remember its name because it was so bad.

Apart from these, most of the new headline features that seem to have been dreamt up by marketing in order to give them something to say at WDDC - ie reactions in FaceTime and video calls and hey, how dare you try and turn this off - rather than serious foundational improvements.

Whisper it - vanilla android is now pretty good and iOS just hasn’t got the ux average that it once had, with privacy and ecosystem integration really now being the strong draw.

macOS can’t decide if it wants to be more iPadOS like or not and has been stuck in a kind of a twilight zone for a decade or so.

And iPadOS is still like iOS on a bigger canvas and just isn’t leaping forward to power the hardware that it’s twinned with.

But we have Genmojis and Memojis, so … phew.
 
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Nozuka said:
Siri is cursed. Time to ditch it!
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They bought Siri before iPhone 4S and everyone of that initial team has left Apple since. I honestly think they just don't have the right set of people in house anymore. They could have been pioneer in AI considering when Siri was introduced but have done nothing with it besides a few UI iterations.
 
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