You May Need to Wait in Line for iOS 27’s New Siri
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If you’ve been itching to get your hands on the new Siri that Apple is expected to unveil at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), you may want to temper your enthusiasm. Not only is it unlikely to come to the public until iOS 27 is officially released in September, but you may find yourself sitting on a waitlist even once it does.
That tidbit comes in a new eleventh-hour iOS 27 rumor roundup from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, in which he reminds us that the new Siri is likely to have a “beta” or “preview” tag even after iOS 27 officially launches — but also that Apple could implement “a waitlist of some sort” similar to what it did with the early Apple Intelligence launches in iOS 18.1 and iOS 18.2.
Apple has labeled the new Siri as a “beta” and “preview” internally, suggesting that the assistant won’t be marketed as fully finished software when it’s released later this year. The original Siri held the same description for two years. There is also the possibility of a waitlist of some sort for people who want to try new features, an approach used with the initial launch of the Apple Intelligence platform in 2024.
Mark Gurman
When Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, it promised a wealth of new features, and while its failure to deliver on the promised Siri improvements has dominated the headlines since, everything else the company showed off arrived more or less on schedule, including Writing Tools, Image Playground, Genmoji, ChatGPT integration, and more.
Still, even those didn’t arrive quite as soon as expected. There were indications that even Apple had hoped to deliver more at launch than it actually did; the company took the unprecedented step of releasing a parallel iOS 18.1 beta cycle six weeks before iOS 18.0 was released, effectively moving all the AI features into that version. When iOS 18.1 finally arrived, we got baby steps into Apple Intelligence, with only Writing Tools, transcription, and AI summarization making the cut — and even those required users to get on a waitlist after installing the update.
This was followed by the graphical AI features in iOS 18.2 — Image Playground, Genmoji, and Image Wand — and another waitlist. However, unlike the first one in iOS 18.1, which admitted some users in only minutes, the wait for Image Playground stretched into days and weeks for many.
To be fair, these initial Apple Intelligence rollouts were not only stamped “beta,” but were already gated by being limited to users in the United States with their devices set to US English, although iOS 18.2 expanded that to English in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
This makes it easy to imagine Apple doing something similar with the iOS 27 Apple Intelligence features — particularly the new Siri chatbot. The waitlist will also likely extend to developers for whatever beta it first shows up in (we’ll be pleasantly surprised if it’s ready for the first iOS 27.0 preview next week, but we’re not holding our breath).
Similarly, while we’ve heard no word about geographic or language limitations, it’s a safe bet that Apple will roll this out in English first — and likely only US English — as it did with the first wave of Apple Intelligence features. Some of that is a matter of scaling the service out slowly, but there’s also the pragmatic aspect of ensuring that Siri is ready to communicate in the nuances — and the vernacular — of other languages and dialects.
There’s a good chance at least some of these limitations will also apply to other Apple Intelligence features coming in iOS 27, such as generative AI photo editing, expanded visual intelligence in the Camera app, the AI-powered grammar checker, and possibly even the bill-splitting tool in Apple Wallet.
To be clear, these are all rumored features — nothing is certain until Apple shows it off on Monday — which also means Apple is under no obligation to release any of them, much less debut them globally in iOS 27.0. Gurman has already hinted at a few things that may be delayed until iOS 27.1 or beyond, including using natural language prompts to edit photos and new Health features for “improved blood sugar-related tracking and the ability to use a device camera to monitor a person’s workout.”
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
