Tech experts analyze Siri and Apple Intelligence updates from WWDC 2026

Andrew, what did you think of the AI that we got to see, considering, I guess to some people, this is brand new

Like, look at this new image playground stuff. Or look, I can ask a follow-up question to Siri

How did you take that information in? So most of it is, yeah, it's fairly similar to what we've seen on Gemini

and a lot of it, like the contextual awareness and like picking up context from a picture and

being able to break down like nutritional info and food and things like that. That's been on

Gemini for a while. That said, I mean, they're nice to have. It's good to bring it over to Apple

and it's better late than never that Apple does get these features. They did have one feature

I've never seen anything quite like that reframing picture thing where they you know he the the the

demoer had the picture of his kids and then he kind of like moved the frame around and to the

side and it looked like the image was actually 3D and it just filled in around the edges and I

thought that the little poster they were holding up got clearer afterwards that could just be my

imagination. So I haven't, you know, Google has a ton of image editing stuff, but I didn't see

I don't think I've seen that specifically. Everything else I think Google's already done

where Apple's trying to set themselves apart is, is they draw, drew a clear line with like

hey, this is going to be on device as much as possible. This is going to be on private cloud

as much as possible. And, and so I think that's what they're trying to do is use Google's tools

and add their own kind of walled garden. But yeah, a lot of it for so much of this presentation

it wasn't brand new AI tools for sure. And we were seeing the new interface for Siri

which it basically pops out of your dynamic island on iOS, and you can have a conversation up there

And if you want to continue conversing with it, you can drag from a corner for it to take up the full screen

for the dedicated Siri app. Timothy what did you think of I guess the AI stuff on Apple Do you think that this is something that the general public is going to be excited about I mean the spatial reframing that Andrew was talking about was really cool

Taking a 2D image and then turning around, having different perspectives on an image that was already taken from multiple different cameras

They weren't just saying, like, it had to be shot on an iPhone 12 or later

They said any photos. So that's, I thought, pretty neat. But, Timothy, what do you think

Yeah, there were some interesting AI features I'm excited to try. So why don't I start with what I'm excited about. Spatial reframing definitely seems cool. Another big advantage Apple has is, of course, their in-house silicon, so they can run a lot of these AI processes on device, which makes them more secure. They also emphasize, hey, we're not going to use any of this for training, which people always like to hear

The other feature that I thought sounded really interesting was describe a shortcut

Now, I've had trouble setting up shortcuts and getting them to work

I don't think the average person uses them at all, but it's actually a really useful thing that Apple does

And the ability to just say, hey, Siri, I want you to make this shortcut and have it go out and build that for you

I think that's really cool. I'm excited to try that. But overall, most of the AI features they announced, like the contextual awareness, I was like, hey, that's magic cube

Google introduced that a year ago. And that's basically the vibe of most of the new features

Like, yeah, it's great that this is here. I think iPhone users especially are going to be excited they can do this

But we already have all that. Yeah, you're right about describe a shortcut might be more exciting when you actually end up using it in real life

and the demo they showed, the version was make sure that text Pedro when I leave work

like give an ETA when that happens. So yeah, when I'm leaving work, message Pedro with an ETA

I don't know why you have to do that, but that's a version of automation you could make. Now, Apple for the longest time has had these tools for just regular users

They've had AppleScript for ages. They had Automator as a newer version of it

So theoretically, it was easier to automate your own stuff. And they have shortcuts which is kind of like automators son of Automator But this version of making it simpler by just describing what you want could make it much more useful to people day by day

I don't know if Apple had the ability to show extremely narrow cases

that it's going to really be awesome for you and you and you, but not for everyone because everyone's a little different for what they need

Because maybe I don't want Pedro knowing once I'm coming home. Maybe I want something else to happen

but those are just done by person by person. So it's really hard to get excited about

look at all these shortcuts we could make and we have no idea what they could be because we don't know which apps are going to work with it

Do I have to use all of Apple's apps to make this work? Do I have to use Mail to use this to work? We don't know that yet

Now there are APIs, theoretically, the apps, other apps, third-party apps will be able to integrate with Apple's world

But the question is, do I have to keep using Siri to talk to Mail

or can I have it talk to Gmail? Can I have it use Google Calendar or Fantastical or any other calendar

Or does it have to be Apple Calendar? I don't know if Apple made that clear very much, unless I read it wrong

Andrew, what was your feel on that? Yeah, some of it, I mean, I think is going to stay Apple specific

like their thing in Safari, right? Where you can now, I like the idea of organizing tabs by topic

and they I think they they even took a shot at Chrome in there without ever mentioning Chrome

but I doubt like that will get spread to other platforms and you're right in terms of like

these tools and how widespread they're going to be like they barely even this is a developer

conference so we didn't get a lot of hardware but they didn't even mention APIs that much until the

very end, at least as far as what I was catching. So unknown, I mean, my guess is the tools are going to be available for folks to develop on

And I like the idea that at the very least, the base level of the tools is going to be

free for people to use But how Apple specific it is I think that remains to be seen in terms of what the developers are actually going to do and it remains to be seen so they said it going to

be free but you need the more powerful most recent iphones to do the best stuff so what's that mean

what you know they're mentioning it's going to roll back to iphone 11 which is really cool

but what are you going to be missing which of these new things are so so i have some concerns

about how wide it's going to spread and whether it's going to stay Apple specific

And I think some stuff very clearly isn't, but I like they're at least approaching it

from the base of let's make the stuff free. So that's good

For clarity, Andrew's talking about how iOS 27 will support the same hardware as iOS 26

So it goes from iPhone 11 to the most current iPhone will be able to support iOS 27

However, there are features that will not be available to every iPhone in that list

So you have this strangeness going on of certain devices can do more

certain devices do less, but they're running the same operating system, which I think can cause a lot of confusion, frankly

Because if you think, hey, does my iPhone do this? It's like, yeah, an iPhone does that

but not your iPhone. So Timothy, what did you think of this kind of

we're going to support you all kind of attitude and then saying, well, not really

Yeah, the not really of it all kind of sums up the vibe of the show for me a little bit

Yeah, I mean, it's long been the case that only certain devices support Apple intelligence

So I guess I'm not surprised that as they're moving much more heavily into AI

it's not going to be supported on some of those older devices. it is kind of a bummer for people with those older macbooks or iphones but the whole like we're

gonna tell you about this new thing but not everyone can try it kind of sums up the feel

for me i mean especially when it comes to the new siri i mean i was i was very surprised uh that you

can't try that anytime soon um yeah like i said it all just left me wanting a little bit more