Top Stories: iPhone 17 Air Rumors, Apple's Siri Problem, and More

[MacRumors]

With a bit of a lull in Apple product news following the launches of the latest Mac, iPad, and iPhone updates for early 2025, attention is turning back to rumors about other upcoming products with the all-new "iPhone 17 Air" for later this year and even next year's iPhone 18 Pro seeing some recent rumors.

Apple is also still getting attention for its delay announcement around the forthcoming Siri update based on Apple Intelligence, with the company seeking to generate some fresh energy for the project by bringing in new leadership, so read on below for all the details on these stories and more!

Ultra-Thin 'iPhone 17 Air' Rumored to Include These 12 Features

Rumors and leaks indicate we're getting a new iPhone model this year, with an "iPhone 17 Air" replacing the Plus model that's been in the lineup for past several years and coming in at around the same $899 starting price point.

While the device is expected to have an impressively thin and light design, rumors suggest it will have some compromises compared to iPhone 17 Pro models, including only a single rear camera, a single speaker, and an A19 chip instead of a more powerful A19 Pro chip.

The iPhone 17 Air will reportedly include a 6.6-inch display, and while Apple reportedly prototyped a larger model with a 6.9-inch screen, the company is said to have decided against it due to concerns over an ultra-thin form factor at that size being susceptible to bending.

Vision Pro Creator Taking Over Siri After Apple Intelligence Setbacks

Fallout from delays to a Siri revamp powered by Apple Intelligence and subsequent criticisms of some of the company's actions continues to mount, with Apple moving to shift responsibility for Siri from its AI chief John Giannandrea to former Vision Pro boss Mike Rockwell in an effort to shake things up.

The move comes as the current version of Siri is under renewed criticism for its difficulties handling even some of the most basic queries. Prominent industry analyst Benedict Evans wonders if the Apple Intelligence issues and the push to bring Vision Pro to market are a sign of Apple experiencing a "Vista-like drift into systemically poor execution" similar to what Microsoft went through with Windows nearly 20 years ago.

Report: Apple TV+ Losing $1 Billion Annually as Apple Services Falter

Apple is known to have been investing large sums of money into Apple TV+ in an effort to expand its services business, but it's never been revealed how well the service is performing for Apple.

A new report from The Information claims that Apple TV+ has around 45 million subscribers worldwide, making it a small player in the streaming video market, and that the service is losing roughly $1 billion per year.

Apple has reportedly been trying to tighten up the purse strings a bit to move closer to breaking even on Apple TV+, but it's not the only Apple service that's not exactly pulling its weight in the high-margin services sector, as Apple Music interest seems to be plateauing while Apple News+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Fitness+ are also not seeing significant growth.

Next Year's iPhone 18 Pro Already Rumored to Have Five New Features

We're still nearly six months away from the official unveiling of the iPhone 17 lineup, but that doesn't mean the rumor mill isn't already looking beyond to the 2026 models.

For Apple's high-end iPhone 18 Pro models, rumors have suggested we could see under-display Face ID for a much smaller Dynamic Island, a variable aperture main camera, Apple's next-generation C2 cellular modem, and an A20 chip with upgrades to benefit Apple Intelligence.

Apple's First Foldable iPhone Estimated to Cost Nearly Twice as Much as iPhone 16 Pro Max

Apple has been rumored to be working on several foldable devices, with a foldable iPhone potentially being the first one out the door in late 2026 or early 2027. Based on supply chain checks, Barclays analyst Tim Long believes the device could start at around $2,300, representing a huge premium over Apple's traditional flagship phones.

A larger foldable device may not be far behind, but will it be considered a Mac or an iPad? It may largely come down to whether its operating system is built off of iPadOS or macOS, with analyst Jeff Pu believing it will be a flavor of macOS.

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Article Link: Top Stories: iPhone 17 Air Rumors, Apple's Siri Problem, and More

 

[tonester1984]

Apple has become Microsoft and its very sad to watch. I think of the BILLIONS wasted on the failed Apple Car that could of been better spent on putting Apple ahead in the AI battle. Siri was only ever intelligent before it was owned by Apple. I had the original App and it could do more back then (2010) as an App than Siri can do today as a fully integrated feature of iOS. This rumored iPhone Air 17 is such a stupid concept. Here is an idea Apple, instead of making the phone thinner (which literally no one is asking for) while having a MASSIVE camera bump, lets keep the current thickness and get rid of the camera bump (which everyone would love). Windows and Droid both suck, but now Apple is starting to suck. I guess its time for a third option, to bad that will never happen.

 

[tomsaccount]

Day 1 of new Siri team:

“Alright everyone. We need to find out how to make this system *real heavy and uncomfortable*”

 

[TechWhisperer]

Siri Sucks. In case anyone was wondering, ‘Sucks’ is actually her last name.

 

[Siliconguy]

On a personal level Apple has nothing compelling at the moment. I've achieved my stretch goal of zero minutes talk last month so a new phone isn't necessary, and even if I did get one it wouldn't be Apple's. The current phone is the lowest end flip phone available in 2019.

Augmented Idiocy is a flop and flopping harder as the data they scrape for training is increasingly polluted by AI generated hallucinations which is going to cause a systemic cascading collapse. GIGO baby. If they limit the AI training to pre-2000 literature it might solve the problem. The style of The Well at World's End might make for interesting AI summaries.

None of Apple's services are useful. Spring is here so until November I have many things to do none of which involve Apple services.

The M1 laptop is entirely enough even at 8/256 IF I keep AI off of it, to that end it's rolled back to Sonoma and will stay there until next spring if not longer. As it turned out Sequoia had nothing to offer me.

The iPad is an A13 model and also adequate and AI free. If it dies then the new iPad 11 is AI free and the obvious replacement.

What would interest me is a new iPod nano. My 6th generation has a degraded battery. I would prefer the click wheel version though. That tiny touch screen is not optimal. The first generation was much better from a usability standpoint.

Besides the laptop the only other Mac running MacOS is the stereo cabinet mini, a 2014 model stopped on Monterey. I did try OCLP but there is only so much you can do with a dual core. It's also prone to crashing if I used the Music visualizer due to lack the correct Metal version. The other Intel Macs are running Linux Mint. The main PC is also running Linux Mint.

The professionals laugh at the Mac Pro, the gamers laugh at all Macs, the $1000 phone market is saturated, the iPad is great for content comsumption but the OS is not up to actual work. The M4 Mini has great performance but is port starved since you lose one right off the bat for a backup drive. As soon as you add a hub and upgrade the storage to 512 GB the price isn't so great anymore; the competition has M2 performance with 32 GB RAM and 1 TB storage for the same money.

Apple does have high-performing long battery life laptops, but is that enough? Should they die shrink the M2 to save even more power and go for more battery life? Or has diminishing returns set in?

Apple hasn't been this stuck since the end of the PPC days. G5 laptop == AI?

 

[akatsuki]

I hate to watch Apple make so many mistakes and misses... And I firmly blame leadership, these are poor strategic decisions. They keep dipping their toe into businesses instead of committing to them... E.g.,

1. AI - behind and playing massive catchup
2. Cars - who thought that was a good idea - stop hanging around cafes in Silicon Valley and get out in the world. Are you an embedded systems developer? A car manufacturer? What core competencies are there that overlapped, especially given the failures in AI? Those people should have been fired.
3. Vision Pro - a tech concept demo that should never have gotten anywhere near the shop floor. We especially didn't need screens on the outside to pretend to see our face...

Instead:

1. Catch up on AI now - license something in the cloud while you build internal capabilities. Sign a deal with OpenAI or Claude or someone yesterday and integrate it asap.

2. AppleTV - building just premium content isn't enough without a large bench of shows. It ends up being another subscription. So either go all in on a streaming platform and buy enough content or spin it off to sink or swim..

3. Apple Music - I used it for a while instead of Spotify. And honestly I liked it. But... Spotify Connect is irreplaceable for me. AirPlay is not even close to good enough, so I ended up going back. Again, go all in and fix it or get out of the business. I would add that Connect capability, release a full suite of home audio devices to compete with Sonos, and take it from there. Tie it in with home theater soundbar with an integrated AppleTV maybe.

4. The one ****ing market that is absolutely obvious - a game console. Apple is the largest casual gaming company right now, all they need to do is take an AppleTV, add a medium weight GPU, and include a controller. It isn't rocket science here. Frankly I would acquire Nintendo.

5. Augmented Reality - this is a good nascent market that seems more ripe for a good product than anything else. Lots of smart "glasses" out there that just aren't quite hitting the mark. This is where Apple can shine.

 

[russell_314]

I’m getting the iPhone 17 Air on launch day! November is so far away 😂

 

[switz]

Has the iPhone 17 family suddenly turned into barnyard material? Now the crowd is starting to disparage the iPhone 18. What? No sales until iPhone 19 now??? or is it the 20 series.......

They have yet to get all of the features the adds claimed for the 16 series functioning even excluding AI. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I will no longer be an early adopter as there has been just too much talk and not enough hardware/software that works. May even skip several years of output until the customer can actually use what was hyped.

The over all score on the Titanic was even first class ticket holders did not make it alive. Folks have been paying First Class ticket prices forApple hardware and some are wondering if the ship has some major leaks that seriously impede longevity.

I wonder why Apple has not just bought a company with the skills they need. They certainly have done just that in the past. And I believe they have adequate cash or loan power to do just that now, instead of years later.

 

[Makanmata]

I jumped to Apple when I began to lose confidence in Microsoft and it's lack of innovation compared to Apple around 2005, and for the first time I'm feeling this way about Apple. It's hard to leave the whole Apple ecosystem - there is no way all things being equal I would still have an iPhone otherwise - but it seems more and more likely every day, and maybe more because my Apple stuff no longer "just works" - IOS18 has broken my Mail and my Notes - even more than the lack of innovation.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

This rumored iPhone Air 17 is such a stupid concept. Here is an idea Apple, instead of making the phone thinner (which literally no one is asking for) while having a MASSIVE camera bump, lets keep the current thickness and get rid of the camera bump (which everyone would love).

The thickness of the higher-end cameras in higher-end smartphones is why they all (not just the iPhone) have a camera bump. The physics of optics dictates this. If smartphone manufacturers could keep their current high-end cameras but eliminate the bump, they'd have done that from the start and we'd have never seen these bumps. Work is being done on optics to reduce the thickness of these cameras while retaining their specs, but we're not there yet.

 

[arc of the universe]

The thickness of the higher-end cameras in higher-end smartphones is why they all (not just the iPhone) have a camera bump. The physics of optics dictates this. If smartphone manufacturers could keep their current high-end cameras but eliminate the bump, they'd have done that from the start and we'd have never seen these bumps. Work is being done on optics to reduce the thickness of these cameras while retaining their specs, but we're not there yet.

you are right about the physics to be sure.
thinness and lightness requires the bump. unfortunately. rooting for sony and the great lens/sensor/camera brands to fix this for us. nevertheless i will be a day 1 buyer of the 17air if its as thin and light as the rumours indicate.

the choice was there for apple for the 16e.
apple could have taken the route of making the 16e thicker, like google did with its 9a, to achieve a nearly bump-less look, and use a lot of that extra space to make a longer lasting battery. for USD 500.

Lewis Hilsenteger on Instagram: "Google Pixel 9a. ZERO camera bump"

55K likes, 654 comments - unboxtherapy on March 19, 2025: "Google Pixel 9a. ZERO camera bump".

www.instagram.com

 

[The_Auryn]

Apple has become Microsoft and its very sad to watch. I think of the BILLIONS wasted on the failed Apple Car that could of been better spent on putting Apple ahead in the AI battle. Siri was only ever intelligent before it was owned by Apple. I had the original App and it could do more back then (2010) as an App than Siri can do today as a fully integrated feature of iOS. This rumored iPhone Air 17 is such a stupid concept. Here is an idea Apple, instead of making the phone thinner (which literally no one is asking for) while having a MASSIVE camera bump, lets keep the current thickness and get rid of the camera bump (which everyone would love). Windows and Droid both suck, but now Apple is starting to suck. I guess its time for a third option, to bad that will never happen.

According to Google, an estimated 87% of iPhone holders use a case, which serves to 'flatten out' the camera bump. Question I have is, are these camera bumps getting smaller in relation to the thinning of the iPhone frame (even if there's still a bump) or does a reduced thinness of the frame result in an even larger camera bump, that a case couldn't correct for?

 

[johnsawyercjs]

the choice was there for apple for the 16e.
apple could have taken the route of making the 16e thicker, like google did with its 9a, to achieve a nearly bump-less look, and use a lot of that extra space to make a longer lasting battery. for USD 500.

Lewis Hilsenteger on Instagram: "Google Pixel 9a. ZERO camera bump"

55K likes, 654 comments - unboxtherapy on March 19, 2025: "Google Pixel 9a. ZERO camera bump".

www.instagram.com

The Pixel 9a looks nice having two rear cameras but with a very minimal camera bump, protruding maybe only about a half-millimeter. The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus with their two rear cameras have thicker bumps, though they're a little less thick than those on the 16 Pro and Pro Max.

The 16e’s bump is minimal by comparison with the bumps on the other 16 models, even though its camera module is supposedly essentially the same one used for the main camera module in the 16 and 16 Plus, but as you say Apple might have been able to go one step further and make it nearly flush with the back of the phone by making the 16e a little thicker than its 7.8mm, maybe only by about another 1.1mm, to be similar to the 8.9mm thickness of the 9a, and this would have let them throw in a bigger battery too. I’m guessing Apple might have done marketing research saying most iPhone users don’t want a phone that’s thicker than current iPhones, though a lot have said they do. Maybe the people in charge of these things at Apple just have their own preferences.

I wonder though about the quality of the images produced by the 9a's rear cameras, and whether their apparent thinness might be due to being a little lesser quality than the one in the 16e. The 9a's ultra-wide camera is only 13 megapixels, but it's hard to compare that to the 16e since it has no ultra-wide camera. The sensor in the 9a's main camera is supposedly 1/2.0”, while the main camera in the 16e is supposedly 1/2.55", which is actually smaller than the sensor in the 9a, though I don't know if that makes a difference in either picture quality or thickness of the camera module.

But maybe the rear cameras in the 9a aren't any thinner than the one in the 16e, but instead, in addition to the 1.1mm greater thickness of the 9a's housing, Google managed to make more depth room available for them between the rear housing and the front housing and the display.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

On a personal level Apple has nothing compelling at the moment. I've achieved my stretch goal of zero minutes talk last month so a new phone isn't necessary, and even if I did get one it wouldn't be Apple's. The current phone is the lowest end flip phone available in 2019.

Augmented Idiocy is a flop and flopping harder as the data they scrape for training is increasingly polluted by AI generated hallucinations which is going to cause a systemic cascading collapse. GIGO baby. If they limit the AI training to pre-2000 literature it might solve the problem. The style of The Well at World's End might make for interesting AI summaries.

None of Apple's services are useful. Spring is here so until November I have many things to do none of which involve Apple services.

The M1 laptop is entirely enough even at 8/256 IF I keep AI off of it, to that end it's rolled back to Sonoma and will stay there until next spring if not longer. As it turned out Sequoia had nothing to offer me.

The iPad is an A13 model and also adequate and AI free. If it dies then the new iPad 11 is AI free and the obvious replacement.

What would interest me is a new iPod nano. My 6th generation has a degraded battery. I would prefer the click wheel version though. That tiny touch screen is not optimal. The first generation was much better from a usability standpoint.

Besides the laptop the only other Mac running MacOS is the stereo cabinet mini, a 2014 model stopped on Monterey. I did try OCLP but there is only so much you can do with a dual core. It's also prone to crashing if I used the Music visualizer due to lack the correct Metal version. The other Intel Macs are running Linux Mint. The main PC is also running Linux Mint.

The professionals laugh at the Mac Pro, the gamers laugh at all Macs, the $1000 phone market is saturated, the iPad is great for content comsumption but the OS is not up to actual work. The M4 Mini has great performance but is port starved since you lose one right off the bat for a backup drive. As soon as you add a hub and upgrade the storage to 512 GB the price isn't so great anymore; the competition has M2 performance with 32 GB RAM and 1 TB storage for the same money.

Apple does have high-performing long battery life laptops, but is that enough? Should they die shrink the M2 to save even more power and go for more battery life? Or has diminishing returns set in?

Apple hasn't been this stuck since the end of the PPC days. G5 laptop == AI?

Out of curiosity, what did Sonoma offer that's useful, that Ventura didn't?

I'm running Ventura 13.7.4 on my M1, and can't see any compelling reason to update to Sonoma. Have I missed something?

It seems to me that these days each iteration of macOS, is more about removing advanced functionality, and adding lock-in, than it is about adding anything useful.

And yes, Apple seems to be slowly dying of self strangulation, as it chooses more and more to reduce functionality of it's devices in the name of profits. My signature says it all.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

I jumped to Apple when I began to lose confidence in Microsoft and it's lack of innovation compared to Apple around 2005, and for the first time I'm feeling this way about Apple. It's hard to leave the whole Apple ecosystem - there is no way all things being equal I would still have an iPhone otherwise - but it seems more and more likely every day, and maybe more because my Apple stuff no longer "just works" - IOS18 has broken my Mail and my Notes - even more than the lack of innovation.

Yup, I jumped ship on iPhones 2 years ago. All the Android flagships are in the ballpark. Some features better, some not as good, most more or less similar. Anytime I get someone to take a group pic with my phone for me, they always comment, wow, this camera is good!

I still love my M1 Pro MBP, and will probably update it if and when they do a major design update (after I've waited at least 6 months to see if there are any major flaws - I skipped the entire butterfly generation debacle from 2016-2020).

As for ecosystem, pfft, it's a scam. There is nothing that locks you into the so called ecosystem.

My new phone is a Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, and it integrates smooth as butter with the MBP. Google's version of iCloud blows Apple out of the water. With their massive ecosystem of cloud based apps (Drive, Photos, Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Keep Notes, etc), all of which are native apps on the phone, and automatically sync to the cloud, and thus to the Mac via Chrome (or any browser).

You also get to discover the joke that is automatic switching of AirPods, as you realise that there is a standard Bluetooth codec that allows dual connect. Thus any non-Apple ear buds with that bluetooth codec, automatically connects to both your Mac _and_ your phone simultaneously. There is no switching required. Playing a movie on your Mac, and then answer a phone call... the ear buds auto stop the movie, and pick up the call. No delay, no switching, it just... works. Plus, you also discover that AirPods have a woeful range, and that other earbuds are still connected and pickup up audio from further away, wtf?

The only thing keeping me on the Mac is that Windows is worse, and the PC laptop hardware is atrocious.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

I'm not at all surprised to hear that Apple TV+ is losing money.

I've suspected it has always been Tim Cook's little cultural engineering project.

Good luck to him, but I wouldn't be too happy about it if I was a shareholder.

 

[bluespark]

For Apple Music, growth could easily be achieved by letting hardware manufacturers (car companies, audio companies, etc.) include a stand-alone Apple Music app. Apple does this right now for Mercedes -- one can run Apple Music without CarPlay -- but there aren't many other examples of this. Imagine if every car manufacturer could add an Apple Music app to their own system -- instant growth opportunity. Also, Apple should be making it easy for manufacturers of receivers, streaming boxes, etc. to include an Apple Music app. These devices almost invariably include Spotify, but never Apple Music. Among other things, that make it incredibly convoluted to send lossless files to a home audio system, even though Apple did such a good job with their lossless files. For whatever reason, Apple makes its users jump through tons of hoops to use Apple Music on anything other than an Apple device, and that's not a recipe for growth (or user satisfaction).