Transcription
Do you remember that exciting time that Apple used the AI word for the first time in the keynote back in 2024 for the complete new Siri? It didn't ship. They announced it again next year, still didn't ship. And today at WWDC 2026, they announced it again for the third time. But this time with Google's help and $1 billion a year on the table. The question is not whether the new Siri looks impressive in the keynote demo. It always does. The question is why should you believe them this time? To fully understand what happened today, you need a full timeline.
2024, Apple promises a context aware Siri as a part of Apple Intelligence. People buy the iPhone 16 specifically because of it. It never ships. Then Apple quietly removes the feature from its website. No explanation, no timeline, no apology. Then comes the lawsuit. A $250 million settlement paid to iPhone buyers who felt misled by Apple's own advertising. $250 million just because Siri didn't work. And today on the same stage where those promises were made, Tim Cook announced the new Siri again. This is after the beat. Tech questions simply explained.
So, what did Apple actually ship today? It revealed Siri powered by a custom Google Gemini model. 1.2 trillion parameters run through Apple private compute so Google doesn't see your data. Cost to Apple? Roughly $1 billion per year. The new Siri can hold a real conversation. It remembers context across the session. It moves between your apps without losing the threat. It can read your emails, calendar, and messages to find relevant answers. That's what people expected 2 years ago.
But today, there's also standalone Siri app now. A direct competitor to ChatGPT and Claude. Apple built it because those apps been quietly dominating AI category on the App Store, Apple's own platform. That stinks. Let's be honest about what this deal actually means. Apple, the company that built trillion-dollar brand on privacy, control, and doing everything in-house, just handed the brain of its most important product to competitor. Not a startup, not a neutral research lab, Google. The same Google that Apple has been legally scrutinized for paying to be a default search engine, now also powering default assistant.
The privacy arguments holds for now. Gemini queries run through Apple's own server, so technically it means Google doesn't see your data, but Apple doesn't own the model, they rent it. If Google changes the terms, raises the price, or pulls the deal, Apple has no fallback. They burned 2 years trying to build their own, but they couldn't. So, they wrote the check.
Practically, what does this mean for you today? Nothing yet. Public beta arrives in July, full rollout comes with iOS 27 in the fall. So, you won't feel any of this until October at the earliest. But, here's what actually watch for when it ships. Does it work on day one or does it need 6 months of patches? Does the context memory works across apps or just in demos? Apple ship everything they showed today or quietly drop half of it by September. Those are three questions. The keynote is not the product, the product is what lands on your phone in October.
One more thing worth to know. iOS 27 let you set a third-party AI as your default assistant, so you could replace Siri entirely with ChatGPT or Claude if you want. Apple built the exit door on their own operating system. That's either a confidence or a hedge. I think you know which one is this. Okay, at the end, Apple did not fix Siri today. They hired someone to fix it for them. That might be the right business decision, probably is, but it means the AI running on your iPhone, the one learning your habits, reading your emails, managing your apps, is built and maintained by Google, not Apple. So, when Apple talks about privacy, they're talking about infrastructure. The intelligence itself belongs to someone else. Whether that bothers you is a personal call, but before making that personal call, you should know the full picture. The new Siri might be generally good. iOS 27 drops in the fall. Wait for the reviews, not the keynote. If it helps, subscribe to After the Beat. I'm Ahura. See you after the beat.