Apple’s long-promised overhaul of Siri is slipping yet again, with the company preparing a slower, staggered rollout instead of a single splashy debut. According to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, features expected in the next iOS point release are being redistributed across subsequent updates, with some marquee capabilities now unlikely to land until the major iOS 27 cycle.
What Bloomberg reports about the Siri overhaul timeline
The updated assistant—pitched as a core pillar of Apple Intelligence—was initially anticipated to arrive broadly with an upcoming iOS 26.4 update. Gurman now reports Apple will ship pieces over time, deferring higher-risk functions to later releases. Internally, testing surfaced reliability snags that forced a rethink of timing, pushing certain features into a May update window and others into the fall’s next major OS.
The revamp is designed to make Siri feel closer to modern large-language-model chatbots, with more conversational responses, better on-screen awareness, and the ability to execute multi-step tasks inside apps. Notably, the cloud side of Siri is reportedly leaning on Google’s Gemini for some requests, reflecting Apple’s evolving strategy to blend its own models with best-in-class third-party systems where it benefits users.
Why the Siri overhaul rollout is slipping and delayed
Three pressure points stand out. First, Siri’s legacy stack and years of SiriKit intent cruft make it hard to guarantee predictable, safe actions in every app scenario. Turning natural language like “Send Friday’s deck to the team and book a 30-minute follow-up” into precise, reversible actions touches mail, files, calendar, contacts, and notifications—each with its own permission model and potential failure modes.
Second, Apple’s two-tier architecture—running models on-device for speed and privacy, and escalating to the cloud for more complex queries—adds complexity. Private Cloud Compute, which Apple has said will be auditable and tightly sandboxed, must meet security and latency targets without degrading accuracy. Getting the handoff logic right, so a request stays local when possible and goes remote only when needed, is nontrivial.
Third, global scale raises the bar. Siri spans dozens of locales and accents, and new generative behaviors must work consistently across languages and right-to-left scripts. Add regulatory oversight—particularly in the EU under the Digital Markets Act—and Apple has to validate not just model performance, but also transparency, consent flows, and data minimization before flipping the switch widely.
What it means for users and developers during rollout
For users, expect a drip of new capabilities rather than an overnight transformation. Conversational improvements and on-screen awareness are the types of features likely to appear first, with deeper app control and multi-step automations following as Apple hardens reliability. Some experiences may arrive as “previews” with clear labels and opt-ins before they’re enabled by default.
For developers, the message is to double down on App Intents and the newer Shortcuts integrations. Apple has steadily moved toward a declarative model where apps describe their actions, entities, and parameters for assistants to invoke. The richer and more semantically precise those definitions are, the better Siri’s upgraded models can plan and execute tasks without guesswork. A staged rollout also gives third-party teams time to test edge cases and localize intent vocabularies.
The competitive clock is ticking as rivals advance
Apple’s caution is understandable, but the market won’t wait. Google is pushing Gemini deeper into Android and Workspace, Microsoft continues to expand Copilot across Windows and enterprise apps, and Amazon is reworking Alexa for richer, generative interactions. Meanwhile, standalone assistants like ChatGPT remain just a tap away on iPhone and Mac.
Scale magnifies the stakes. Apple disclosed more than 2 billion active devices in use, which means even small regressions or hallucinations can affect massive cohorts. That scale also means trust—on privacy, safety, and reliability—remains a differentiator. If Apple can marry its privacy posture with truly useful, low-latency assistant behavior, it can shift perception that Siri lags rivals. If it stumbles, users will keep routing complex tasks to third-party apps.
The road ahead for Siri and Apple Intelligence features
Delays aren’t the story Apple wants, but a phased release may be the right call if it avoids a public retrenchment later. Watch for signs that momentum is real: broader beta access to new Siri behaviors, expanded language and locale support, deeper developer documentation around App Intents and action safety, and fresh technical papers detailing Private Cloud Compute’s safeguards.
The destination is clear—a more capable, context-aware Siri that can navigate your device and apps with less friction. The question, once again, is timing. For now, Bloomberg’s reporting suggests the finish line is moving, but not disappearing; Apple appears determined to ship the assistant it has been promising, just not all at once.