Hi all,
Looking closely at what Apple put out at WWDC this year—and specifically looking at all the asterisks and footnotes attached to the new features—I am, quite frankly, furious. I say this as someone who actively uses an iPhone 16E, so I do actually get a majority of these features. This isn't just blind criticism; it’s an honest look at a very anti-consumer direction.
First, let's look at Siri and get it out of the way.
If you own anything older than a base model iPhone 15, you don't get even a sliver of the new Siri AI improvements. This is true despite the fact that a massive portion of the heavy lifting and processing is handled via Apple's Private Cloud Compute. If you have an iPhone 11, 12, 13, or 14, your Siri is going to remain just as underpowered as it has always been. Ask it virtually any question outside of simple math or opening a local app, and it drops right back into what I call "potato mode" (e.g., "I found this on the web for how to change contrast settings, check it out").
Let’s compare that to what the team over at Google has been doing. You can run Gemini—a highly competent, deeply conversational assistant—on pretty much any device running Android 9 or newer. That means you could pull out a smartphone from the early 2010s and still get a fully capable cloud-based AI assistant. Meanwhile, Apple is gating the flagship feature of iOS 27 behind premium-tier, near-thousand-dollar hardware. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Next is dictation and audio. It is a well-known issue that Apple has historically struggled with dictation accuracy. I am glad they are finally addressing it, but requiring an iPhone 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, or the new iPhone Air just to access advanced systemwide dictation accuracy and the new expressive voices is ridiculous. I completely understand that running massive models requires serious hardware, but standard, highly accurate dictation is a core accessibility foundation that Apple should have been perfecting years before this update cycle.
I sincerely feel bad for the people who bought an iPhone 16 Pro Max last year under the heavy marketing banner of a device "built from the ground up for Apple Intelligence," only to find themselves gated out of the next tier of voice and input capabilities just one year later because the system now demands 12GB of RAM. If these devices were truly "built for intelligence," Apple should have future-proofed them to meet those baseline technical requirements. I also feel for everyone with older iPhones who are getting almost nothing of substance in this release cycle.
To give credit where it's due, Apple did step up with accessibility image models. A couple of weeks ago, I was defending their AI image descriptions, and the execution on the new on-device Image Explorer models, online image descriptions, and cloud-powered live recognition is genuinely solid. But that success makes the restrictions on basic system mechanics like voice and text input sting even more.
In conclusion, Siri—a feature that desperately needed a core overhaul back in 2015—has finally received its big update. The problem is that unless you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, the update is practically a wash.
P.S. Don't even get me started on the Apple Watch compatibility cuts. Dropping support for five different models in watchOS 27—including the original Apple Watch Ultra and the SE 2—is unprecedented. This is, by far, the most anti-consumer WWDC I have watched since I started tuning into them back in 2018.
Curious to hear what the rest of the community thinks.
Comments
Siri
We'll have to wait and see how useful Siri AI ultimately is. It doesn't sound very interesting right now. I don't care about an AI chatbot. I don't use voice systems very much due to my stutter and would much rather type and have responses spoken, but that doesn't seem to be working right now.
My best advice is to wait for the iPhone 18 line. They better have 12 GB RAM across the board unless they once again plan to upsell, which let's be honest is a very high possibility given their track record.
Oh yeah, and just as a little tidbit, the S9 and S10 chips in all these watches once again appear to be using the same CPU architecture, so expect another massive hardware purge with watchOS 29 or 30. Are we having fun yet? You play by the rules in Apple land or you go home, and I'm getting ready to ditch Apple entirely. They make great products and their software would be great if they'd spend the time to optimize it, but all this upselling is getting ridiculous!
chris
I wholeheartedly agree with you! well, I am ditching apple products entirely. I can't wait till next year, I'm guessing apple's going to do the great iPhone purge. iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14 and base 15? bye!
Chris
It suppose to have access to your info in the phone, can check for anything you have or let you know is someone birthday is coming or if you need something done. I will probably install it when beta 6 is out.
Re: a sample of new siri Voices
@singer girl, no new siri voices, or expressive voices for South Africa. I am using iphone 17Pro Max, and with 12 gig ram, it should handle those voices. Unfortunately, we don't have the expressive voices in South Africa!
Re: Sample of the new Siri Voices
You can hear a sample right here.
A14 and later
I suspect iOS and iPadOS 28 will require the A14 chip or later. Dropping a ton of iPhones all at once would be a really stupid move. Then again, you never know with Apple, but at least there was a somewhat valid reason to drop all the watches this time around, even if it isn't a very good one. If anything, all watches that supported 26 should have also supported 27 given this is supposed to be a bug fix update.
talk Forward
a little off-topic, but since this was being discussed; in a pixel device using the talk forward screenreader and the eti-eloquence voices, I find the combo as responsive as the voiceover with espeak voices in my Iphone 14 pro, and that's saying something. I was actually considering upgrading this year, not because of the apple intellegence features, but more like generally, but this combination is making me rethink. I mean, apart from the general responsiveness, what does IOS/apple intellegence offer me that android 17 doesn't at this point of time?
@Gokul
Apple branding. That's pretty much it.
True story. 🤨
update: apple's price hikes
well, folks... where should I start with this? Almost every single apple product, except for the apple watches and iPhones, have just received a price hike, ranging between $30 for the homepod mini and $300 for the m5 macbook pro. if you want to see them in action, just go to apple's websites and check out the new prices! This just confirms why I'm moving out of the apple ecosystem and to a pixel.
I mean...
With the Pixel 10 Pro having specs close to a standard PC laptop, I can't really blame you. 🤨
https://www.techadvisor.com/article/2942354/i-switched-to-google-pixel-10-pro-fold-laptop-replacement.html
Those voices sound way too human for me
Those new voices sound way too human for me. I’m actually kind of glad I’m not getting them. Are they only available for Siri, or are they also going to be available for use with voiceover? It’s only the US English that’s getting them? Go figure. I definitely want to be able to hear a difference between a machine talking to me and a human. Like I said those voices sound way too human for me. I actually don’t like the 11 laps reader up because of this as well. I want to be able to be very clear that I’m using phone or my computer to talk and then it’s coming out of my machine because I’m a voice sounds too much like a human to mean it’ll be really creepy. I think it’s because I grew up with so many computerized voices. My first computer had the keynote gold synthesizer, and they went from that eloquent and then from eloquence to the localizer voices, I’m actually happy that I am still keeping the older voices and not getting the newer expressive ones.
Re: price hikes
Everyone is raising their prices, not just Apple. The demands on RAM and other components from AI is driving up the prices everywhere unfortunately. I don't think Android is going to be immune to this.
Re: Ram
No doubt prices are going up everywhere across the board. Still, when it comes to technology, people are going to see the comparable prices, and they're gonna want the.. "more".. option. In other words, which one has.. more.. storage, more.. processing, more.. RAM, etc. Since the rampocalypse was mentioned, currently Google is in the lead here, as their flagship models support 16 GB of RAM, over apples 12.
Just some food for thought. 😇
It’s going to continue happening everywhere
It’s going to continue happening everywhere. As there is more demand for the product, the prices were going up. It happens every industry, not technology dude as I said before this right I will continue to keep my devices that I have now.
16 RAM
Most android phones have 16 RAM that will cover AI for a nice long time compare to iPhone 12. The price of the android are good and some of them consider flag phones. For more info about them, check Flossy Carter. He reviews phone that he purchases and not giving to him. Was planning to get the 18 but money issues.