Why Apple's iOS 26.4 Siri Upgrade Will Be Bigger Than Originally Promised

[Fraserpatty]

All I want from Siri is for it to understand my voice consistently, and to be able to use that to control my iphone. Nothing fancier. Something akin to the crew of the Enterprise conferring with the ship's computer.

What I don’t understand is if Siri is just programmed to respond to your voice when you are asking personal questions like read my new emails or calendar entries, why is it ever saying you need to unlock your iPad first? If you are the one that is asking, and voice recognition recognizes your voice, why does that have to be unlocked first? On my iPad mini when I first wake up in the morning, I want to know if I have had any text messages before I even get up, but I don’t wanna have to unlock the iPad first.

 

[michaelant]

This all sounds fine, but I hope it will work for someone not named Eric.

 

[indefinite]

I will uninstall OpenClaw and eat a crab raw if Apple Intelligence beats OpenClaw’s imperfections with automations and understanding context. I don’t see Apple Intelligence having any personal intelligence features besides for indexing contacts, emails, etc

 

[F-Trunks]

I'll believe this when me **** turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.

 

[mattkally]

Today marks the 5230th day we’ve been waiting for Polish Siri. Tim Apple, please make it happen before you head out. Also Steve Wozniak, Greg Joswiak, Joanna Hoffman.
Apple is kind of Polish😁

 

[Sami13496]

Artificial Intelligence is not coming to Apple devices in 2026 or 2027 or even 2028. Apple Intelligence might.

People call systems like ChatGPT and Siri “Artificial Intelligence” because it’s a convenient umbrella term, but strictly speaking they aren’t intelligent in the way humans (or sci-fi AIs) are. They don’t understand, reason, or have awareness. They recognize patterns in massive amounts of data and generate statistically likely responses based on that training. There’s no intention, beliefs, goals, or real comprehension behind the words. Just very sophisticated math predicting what comes next. Researchers often prefer terms like “machine learning model” or “large language model” because they’re more accurate, but “AI” stuck in popular culture since it sounds exciting and captures the idea of machines doing tasks that once required human intelligence, even if the mechanism is fundamentally different. This use of term “AI” is super annoying. And actually for this reason Apple Intelligence is more accurate than Artificial Intelligence.

 

[Nicky G]

I’ve been using Alexa Plus for a few months now, and IMO it’s pretty impressive. Its ability to go back and forth between tasks and conversation, as well as intertwine those things, is well executed. I think it offers a glimpse of what iOS 27 Siri promises.

We’ve arrived at the movie Her. Interesting times…

 

[macduke]

How, exactly, is this a bigger upgrade than originally promised? This all sounds like exactly what they said we would get over a year ago. Just the technical details changed because they suck at this. Same result for end users.

None of this is sustainable and the bubble is starting to burst already.

 

[extrachrispy]

Sorry Apple, but I don’t give a crap about AI in my cellphone.

You will:

• Trying to remember a combination; e.g., to unlock your car when the keys are in it:
  "Hey Siri, show me all Notes that contain a five-digit numeric code."
• Trying to find a particular text message from a particular person:
  "Hey Siri, find the message from so-and-so that contains this-other-person's address."
• Trying to set up some complicated workflow in Shortcuts:
  "Hey Siri, using the outside temperature from my-connected-thermometer, disable auxiliary heat on my-connected-thermostat when the outside temperature is above 26 degrees Fahrenheit."
• Trying to find a very important photograph:
  "Hey Siri, find the picture of my late mother when we visited the Royal Gorge Bridge for her 75th birthday."

 

[extrachrispy]

From what I can tell, the LLMs people use today are economically unfeasible and won't be around for long. They require huge data centers, huge amounts of water, tremendous amounts of electricity and cost trillions of dollars. Right now they're running these things on hopium.

They do require lots of resources, but they will get better, as everything does. Hell, I can remember a time before anyone even knew what "performance per Watt" was--the concept did not even exist.

Whether or not they are commercially viable is a two-parter: part 1 asks the question "For what?", and part 2 is "This remains to be seen."

 

[svish]

Siri needs to improve by a lot. Hopefully some of the features at least will make it to iOS 26.4 instead of being pushed to iOS 27. Looking forward to trying it.

 

[zenmacx]

Sorry Apple, but I don’t give a crap about AI in my cellphone.

Yes indeed.

Worse is their incessant unfulfilled promises over and over again.

 

[FyrStrike]

Sorry Apple, but I don’t give a crap about AI in my cellphone.

Especially anything Google in my iPhone.

It’s ironic that a company claiming to value privacy relies on a company notorious for exploiting it.

 

[Karma*Police]

It really is mind boggling how clueless and out of touch Apple execs are. How do they spend north of $35 BILLION a year on R&D with absolutely nothing to show for it? Not only are they way too late, but using Gemini to fix Siri is akin to Apple relying on MS for apps back in the day, and anyone who knows Apple's history knows how that turned out.

 

[CATiNTHESTORE]

So, iPhone 15 era finally begins?)

 

[hybra]

Will the new Siri 100% locally available on Apple Watch and not needing a “near iPhone” to delegate requests to? At least the cellular version should have it.

 

[robvalentine]

I feel sorry for that lady in the advert, I wonder if she doesn't get invited to things because she might be a no show.

 

[Taq'aix]

First they promised the world and delivered a village. Now they aimed for the world and accidentally created the universe. They clearly have no idea what they’re doing, and it’s beyond embarrassing. Apple gets more cringeworthy every year.

 

[Elohim369]

Most important Siri AI feature: Off button

 

[Elohim369]

From what I can tell, the LLMs people use today are economically unfeasible and won't be around for long. They require huge data centers, huge amounts of water, tremendous amounts of electricity and cost trillions of dollars. Right now they're running these things on hopium.

Sure but all the issues are getting fixed, the world doesn't stand still

China built out solar like crazy and produces more than the entire world now

US solution is to let data centers just build their own power plants - pretty interesting

Elon's solution is to have giant solar farms in space where they bother no one

DeepSeek showed you can actually just low level optimize the software and use 100x less power just like that, just by putting a few good engineers on it

Apple has built neural processors in all devices, which I think still might pay off - there might be local models small enough that are still very useful in the near future for example offline translation of any language into any other language in real time won't take long IMO...

 

[hagar]

I don’t believe this until it actually happens.

And you better be sure the new Siri will be picked apart on the internet. She better deliver.

 

[Parowdy]

We’ve been promised a better Siri, specifically for iOS 26.4?
Was that promise made by the same person that’s responsible for „Apples AI strategy“ and why it „pays off in 2026“?

Honestly, if their second (or third) go at this is successful, I‘ll be very surprised, maybe even pleasantly.
Since I see what Gemini can’t do on my gf‘s Samsung Flip 5, I hope it will work as expected.

 

[Philg5150]

How, exactly, is this a bigger upgrade than originally promised? This all sounds like exactly what they said we would get over a year ago. Just the technical details changed because they suck at this. Same result for end users.

None of this is sustainable and the bubble is starting to burst already.

they are saying 26.4 is a larger upgrade

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Will Personal Context work with third party apps ? Like bear app for notes

 

[cicalinarrot]

I see anti-AI people in top rated comments.
Are you the same people who called Siri too dumb for 15 years?

I mean, there's a lot to criticize about AI but I'm glad if talking to Siri stops feeling like asking my Nokia "CAAALL DAAAD!" in 2002.