Apple’s WWDC went about as expected for 2026. While it’s a tiny bit disappointing, Siri AI turned out to be worth the wait, but with some painful app-based gaps.
WWDC 2026 was on Monday, and it was expected to be a bit of a slow one this time around. As predicted by the rumor mill and countless reports in the weeks ahead, it certainly wasn’t an event that shouted about many new features.
Actually, that’s not quite true. Apple did harp on about one big thing, and that was its whole artificial intelligence push.
Sorry. Apple Intelligence and Siri AI.
Before the event, we knew full well that the main beats would basically be Siri and AI stuff, and a bit of periphery. I even asked for there to be something that wasn’t AI to talk about.
Admittedly, Apple did bring up other things that weren’t AI. Except they were not things I could excitedly tell my mother about when explaining the significance of Apple’s launches.
Making things more reliable and responsive? That’s nice, but that’s also what we expect from updates throughout the year anyway.
There was more talk about parental controls and Screen Time updates. This again is great for parents, as now little Timmy can be protected from blood and gore as well as unsolicited nudes.
But neither are things that can be enthused about to friends or people curious about what happened. “Hey, you’ll like how you’ll see confirmation codes on your iPhone screen when you phone a business number” is neat, but not sexy enough to enthuse about.
Really, the only subject worth discussing is the whole AI thing.
Shockingly more intelligent
Apple went into a whole spiel about its artificial intelligence work, complete with handy circle-based graphics explaining the whole ecosystem. The whole thing of using Apple Foundation Models, a “System Orchestrator” connecting stuff together, and the “Systemwide Experiences” with Siri and Apps.
All very nice and showing in a public-friendly way how everything is interconnected and works as a giant whole, without explaining how. For Joe Public, that’s explanation enough.
An explanatory circle-in-circle explanation of Apple’s AI strategy. At least, it looks explanatory…
The main thing is that Apple’s two-year-late Siri upgrade has finally turned up. It’s late, but surprisingly, it wasn’t disappointing.
What Apple promoted heavily in 2024, the entire contextual-awareness thing, actually works properly. After reaching the end of the waitlist to use Siri AI, as well as the lengthy indexing process, I was able to ask some questions that could easily be troublesome for Old Siri.
The first one was simple. “Where was I born?”
Cue Siri coming up with the correct response of my hometown. What was unexpected was that the detail was picked up because I had a photo stored in iCloud of my passport for identity validation purposes.
Being greeted by the mugshot-like images of my passport and personal information as evidence of where it got the answer from was a bit of a shock.
A second query asking when I last went on vacation was similarly fast. This time, it used a combination of photographs and messages with my partner.
It understood we travelled to Rome in early April 2025, how long we were there for, and that we visited places like the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. Again, providing links to sources for context.
This is quite impressive, as is using the camera to photograph far-away slides in a presentation and asking Siri to summarize it all. The lengthy tiny print became something much easier to digest for my at-the-time tired brain and eyes.
Sure, we wanted it two years ago after Apple first demonstrated the idea. The two-year delay was made worse by seeing other AI firms developing quickly and leaving Siri in their dust.
That said, it was certainly worth the wait.
This is all something that you can enjoy in the fall if you’re not installing the developer betas. Unless you wait for the public betas, or don’t care about any risks to your data.
Except if you’re in the EU. That’s still a mess that Apple needs to clean up.
Massive blind spots
That said, there were some gaps in its capability. For example, it couldn’t generate a list of recent messages in Slack, nor could it work out what my mother last said in Facebook Messenger.
While my AppleInsider email is handled in the Mail app and could be accessed by Siri, my personal email in Gmail could not.
As impressive as Siri AI is, private third-party data sources are probably going to be the stumbling block. Unless apps like Gmail provide access to the data troves in some way, they will be areas that Siri won’t be able to use to help the user.
These data blind spots may be opened up by Google and other sources in the future. But there’s also the temptation to keep them locked off from Siri completely, if only to make their own AI services provide the same functionality.
Google Gemini already has the capability of accessing your Gmail email if you have a supported AI plan. There’s no incentive for Google to let Siri AI do the same and miss out on those consumer subscriptions.
The only bento box that mattered in WWDC 2026.
Money is always a factor in business decisions, and the massive potential of Siri could influence other big tech rivals not to play ball with Apple’s vision.
I may not be able to access communications from my personal email, but at least Siri can tell me what the lowest-calorie but highest-protein option available at my local KFC is for a post-gym workout.
That would be the grilled chicken salad. It was OK.
Last week’s Sunday Reboot discussed the inevitable Intel hardware and software support changes arriving this fall.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
