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What to Expect From iOS 26.4

capamac said:
I don't see how Siri can be great any time soon.

Look at all the problems with Gemini and ChatGPT et al. That's as good as anything's gonna get for the near/mid-term future. Siri won't be any better. Keep expectations low.
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I think it will be better than current state (which is pretty pitiful) but I’m also keeping expectations/wishes low. None of the current conversational aspects of ChatGPT Voice/Gemini Live really make me excited. Just the whole voice command/conversation dynamic is really not that appealing to me as it is. As long as Siri can handle basic commands and inquiries with precision and reliability, that will be a step in the direction for me.
 
My experience with Siri has been limited to some testing. I was so disappointed with the results I didn't continue using Siri any further. I think it's not worth thinking about or using, ever. Just totally ignore it is what I do. Pretend it's not on your iOS device/Mac. It's a superb example of a company hyping up something it cannot deliver upon. I view Siri as a marketing bamboozle. It's there to sell widgets, to look good in marketing material, to look useful in TV ads. All sizzle and no steak. Apple is a capitalist corporation with the primary goal of getting money out of your wallet. That's Siri's primary job; getting your money.
 
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If Siri were soon able to evaluate and operate every installed app as an agent, that would be a very good step in the right direction.

The apps would probably have to use an AI kit for this, but Apple will then make this mandatory at WWDC.
 
As both a Mac user when I had the choice and Windows user when required by employers, and always iphones, I have always had Siri totally turned off. Take away the voice recognition and it's underlying functional equivalent at Microsoft included Clippy and Cortana, which have been even worse, and both are dead. All of them are annoying.

Folks who think Siri is falling behined seem to be confused about that purpose of Siri. It was never meant to be a LLM and never will. At best it will be a Small Language Model (SLM) focused on intra-Apple environment and an interface to LLMs similar to how it's an interface to search engines today.

Folks also seem to think AI = LLM. Ultimately, LLM will be a tiny fraction of AI.
 
Fallforward said:
As both a Mac user when I had the choice and Windows user when required by employers, and always iphones, I have always had Siri totally turned off. Take away the voice recognition and it's underlying functional equivalent at Microsoft included Clippy and Cortana, which have been even worse, and both are dead. All of them are annoying.

Folks who think Siri is falling behined seem to be confused about that purpose of Siri. It was never meant to be a LLM and never will. At best it will be a Small Language Model (SLM) focused on intra-Apple environment and an interface to LLMs similar to how it's an interface to search engines today.

Folks also seem to think AI = LLM. Ultimately, LLM will be a tiny fraction of AI.
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All true, but Siri has been lagging behind Amazon Alexa for years, and Alexa isn't an LLM either. Let's not kid ourselves: Apple has let Siri starve at arm's length! It was only then, 2.5 years ago, that LLM solutions came along, and now using Siri is just embarrassing.
 
Dark-Signature said:
All true, but Siri has been lagging behind Amazon Alexa for years, and Alexa isn't an LLM either. Let's not kid ourselves: Apple has let Siri starve at arm's length! It was only then, 2.5 years ago, that LLM solutions came along, and now using Siri is just embarrassing.
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Agreed, but I will say that my experience with the new Alexa+ rollout was pretty brutal. My family all but stopped using our Amazon devices because it was so bad.
 
Dark-Signature said:
All true, but Siri has been lagging behind Amazon Alexa for years, and Alexa isn't an LLM either.
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Agreed, and their purpose is different. The only overlap with Alexa in terms of purpose/function is smart home/homekit.
Dark-Signature said:
Let's not kid ourselves: Apple has let Siri starve at arm's length! It was only then, 2.5 years ago, that LLM solutions came along, and now using Siri is just embarrassing.
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I'm no expert, so here is an amatuer opinion...

Has Siri lagged in voice recognition? Sure. Has it lagged in use of SLM? Absolutely and embarrassing when compered to their unrealistic promises.

Again, the underlying purpose of Siri and LLM is different. LLM provides zero value for the underlying function of Siri. Building an LLM costs hundreds of billions and years of data collection to do something Apple does not need, analogous to not needing its own Google Search. So, Siri has no reason to become an LLM and Apple is not building an LLM.

Apple is doing two seperate activities:

1. Bulding an internal SLM to accomplish the traditional intra-apple Siri functions. It will be under total Apple control, trained by apple (because they cannot expose it's internal funtions and it's customer data etc to outside parties) on Apple-owned cloud and no Google.

2. It needs the ability to interface with multiple LLMs. While analogous to Google Search, integrating to Siri is much more complex. It's building an orchestration layer to route non-intraApple requests to Genini. In such cases, Siri may be the "face" of that LLM capability, but in reality is just the UI.
 
Qubelek said:
iOS 26 bin Lagin like shown on video since day 1. Maybe fix damn bugs ? iPhone 7 works better today than iOS 26. Cmon Apple. Who you hired as software developers/testers?
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Man that UI looks not only buggy but just aesthetically _bad_, even if weren't' buggy.
 
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macOS 26.0 broke a lot of stuff in the macOS Music app that primarily effects people like me who have a large library of local music files that they play locally and sync with iphones/ipads. I've submitted plenty of bug reports on each issue, and I'm sure others have as well, but as of macOS 26.2, none of it has been fixed. So, at this point I'm not too hopeful that 26.3 or 26.4 are going fix any of these issues either. I'm afraid that as non-streaming service users with local libraries and manual device sync'ing, we're just too small of a minority these days to get any attention. At this point I just hope that the functionality of maintaining a local libraries of files, tagging songs, playlist creation/editing, local playback, and sync'ing with other apple devices doesn't get completely removed from the app, as I have no alternative to go to.
 
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A new validation system that will check the “integrity” of the device? That’s creepy

I don’t want new features. I only want fixes.
 
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roklanhavok said:
It's interesting how the big companies, Apple, Google, Microsoft are all cooperating and in emergency mode because of the AI revolution. The next 5 years are going to be amazing.
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Microsoft is packing because the bubble is poised to burst. There’s no business model. Open AI is planning ads because they have no idea what else to do

It’s over
 
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if they care so much about emojis maybe update that ugly art syle. samsung's emojis look so much better.

1769320068077.png
 
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boswald said:
I don't use emojis often, but when I do, I wish they look this good! The emojis on my Pixel look anemic.
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So you must have strange tastes, but purely in terms of quality, Apple's emojis are significantly better than Samsung's. My only issue is that the inflation of emojis is getting on my nerves!

Less would simply be more for the whole world! With this mass of emojis, misunderstandings in interpretation increase every year! It was much better and clearer when there were fewer emojis!
 
capamac said:
Man that UI looks not only buggy but just aesthetically _bad_, even if weren't' buggy.
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Man, unlike others I don’t treat my phone as some king of paint or art. The phone was bought to do the job. I dragged & dropped app icons on my Home Screen that I use the most.
I hope you didn’t try to justify buggy software.
 
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