It’s one of my favorite times of the year: Apple beta season. This year has been a little different for me. Since joining the developer program and shipping my first app last year, I’ve actually been running the developer beta on my M4 iPad Air as well as my M1 MacBook Pro. Once the public beta dropped, onto my iPhone it went. While I don’t suggest installing a beta on a mission critical device, the only way for me to truly test the new iteration of Siri is to use it as much as I can. In my case, that would be on my iPhone and Apple Watch. Both are on betas and honestly both have impressed me.
I was recently late diagnosed with both Autism and ADHD (making me AuDHD). I’ve had a lot of trouble with executive function and it became clear to me if I’m ever going to get out of where I am, I need to make changes because nothing changes if nothing changes. I don’t remember where I heard that but I believe it was in a recent newsletter I read.
That meant accepting some hard truths, including that I need my device to yell at me right now so I can build good routines and balances in my life. I will admit that I didn’t have Siri help me come up with the stuff for my list, I did have discussions with Anthropic’s Claude models. I really needed to make sure I didn’t overload myself. We came up with a good starter plan: necessary self-care, such as showering; Mindfulness/Breathing, including Apple Fitness+ mediations, Apple watch breathing sessions, or writing in my journal. In addition, I added some cleaning goals and fitness goals to get back into working out, though I admit with the heat and added intolerance to it from my antidepressant that I haven’t had the energy to do that one, but once it drops a bit I can get back to walking as a start.
What really caught me the most, however, was the incredible bump in competence Siri as gotten in iOS 27. Anyone who knows me in real life has heard this story, but there was a time where Siri, on my HomePod, stationary, in my home, NEVER LEAVING THE SPOT IT’S IN, a little way outside of Atlantic City. Well somehow Siri decided that I didn’t mean the weather in Atlantic City, New Jersey. There’s no way that I ever could have wanted that. Why would I? What did Siri give me? The weather for Atlantic City, Wyoming. I’m gonna drop a link to the Wikipedia page here because frankly it is educational.
The TLDR is a population of 37 people as of 2010.
I’ll fully admit that in the past I didn’t use Siri for a daily assistant in the morning to help me start my day. That has actually changed recently given my new diagnoses. Every morning when I sit down to my desk to drink a Celcius and get my brain woken up with a few rounds of Fortnite, I find myself actively asking Siri about my day, more confident than ever in it.
For me, it’s very easy for calendar events to get lost in the shuffle and that’s not something that I pride myself on. I have run into the occasional moment where Siri made a second calendar event or wasn’t entirely clear on what it’s intention was, but never to a point that it turned me off of my increased use of the product.
I also love the fact that Siri has a dedicated app with history in it. I hate having to ask Siri the same information multiple times if something slips my mind, so having the ability to go back and reference our conversations is fantastic.
Apple has also, smartly in my opinion, decide to limit the token window of Siri to the point that while it CAN write code, it won’t be able to write enough to be actually useful. While I fully admit its frustrating to be typing and suddenly run out of space, I do think I prefer that to giving Siri so much that it starts to lose track of what it’s doing.
If you’re not an iPhone user, please understand that when new Siri says “I am an AI and may make mistakes”, I laugh my ass off. The reason? Even before AI, Siri made a bunch of mistakes. Don’t sell yourself short, S.
As beta season continues, I’m excited to see how the product improves before it launches this fall. It’s not what Apple originally said it was, but honestly, I’d rather have a Siri that just works for now.
If you’ve been using the iOS 27 beta and Siri AI, what are your thoughts? If you’re not on the beta, are you excited to try it out this fall? Let’s talk about it down in the comments below.
Dan Stransky 