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Updated a bit ago to give Siri AI a go for some basic stuff I've been wanting it to do with personal context. It had some false positives in there, but it's notably better now, pretty fast, and handled context well. It allows you to see where it got the context from, which is great considering that doesn't sound like a very Apple thing to do.
Are they still using Gemini? Curious to see how fast all these AI features will feel.
They've never used Gemini, and they are not using Gemini here. Gemini and Siri AI are both based on Google technology though.
Apple themselves says it's a combination of on device and hosted Gemini models. But it seems Apple is hosting Gemini models themselves with far better privacy than the regular Gemini product.
I'll stay w/ Sequoia as long as I can.
Same. In addition to UX regression, we’re two major revs in, there’s nothing that’s a compelling enough value-add to be worth the trade-off, let alone the risk of unexpected side effects on any OS upgrade.

On my Xcode dev machine, I’ll be biting the bullet soon out of necessity, but my personal machine will stay Sequoia until they course-correct on “style over substance” (and not holding my breath).

At the bottom of the press release they have links to individual OS pages:

* iOS 27: https://www.apple.com/os/ios/

* iPadOS 27: https://www.apple.com/os/ipados/

* macOS: https://www.apple.com/os/macos/

* watchOS: https://www.apple.com/os/watchos/

* visionOS: https://www.apple.com/os/visionos/

* tvOS 27: no link.

* Overview: https://www.apple.com/os/?version=no-hero

Poor tvOS :(
I was at WWDC for the Vision Pro launch and asked someone a technical question about tvOS. He said, 'ah, [Jim] could answer that, but he isn't here today'. When I asked if anyone else from tvOS was here the reply was, '[Jim] is the only person on tvOS' and I am pretty sure he was serious.
I’ve heard this kind of thing about Apple fairly regularly (the iTunes Remote app comes to mind). While there are issues to large teams, I feel like there is a middle ground that doesn’t result in a single point of failure. What happens when Jim wins the lottery?

It seems like Apple could very easily turn the AppleTV into a proper game console, but not with only one person on it. I guess it’s still just a “hobby” for them.

No disrespect to you for posting this, but those iOS/iPadOS/MacOS are almost identical launch pages. Feels like a waste of time even having them be separate.
Can we please have a 1 release focus on fixing bugs? not more ai but fixing bugs, 1 release where you can disable AI... 1 release to make it faster again, 1 release to polish... not to push the next "game changing UI design..."

the "upgrade to 18.4" took my iphone to 26.whatever and siri got even worst... siri set an alarm for 10:40 (creates one at 12:08)... NO, delete that one, 10 40 (does nothing)... hey siri... (ajum), delete the previous alarm... (done!) now set an alarm at 10:40 (alarm at 4pm....)... eventually you get tired... you go to the alarms app.. and then there is the previous "deleted" alarm and the other one...

Usually I wait until december to install the new iOS on my phone, since most of the time I don't care about the upgrades. This time I installed iOS 27 beta on my phone since the public beta was out, and I had 0 new bugs compared to iOS 26, but it hasn't been the big relief that I hoped for.

Now I am worried about what the new versions of iOS will bring us, I hope that the "we removed the crap" wasn't just a thing of this year, and that iOS will go back to high software standards. Phone prices are really high for me now, and I would like for my poor little iphone 13 to survive another couple of years.

Are you exaggerating? I tried the latest beta about a month ago and experienced multiple bugs within half an hour. Had to downgrade back to 26.
No, not exaggerating at all, but I'm not a power user of the phone. I just do really simple stuff, and I didn't find new bugs, just old ones. But obviously that's my experience... The most noticeable stuff was the app launch speed.
Interesting. Bugs on mine were from using core apps, IIRC. I wonder if bugs manifest on some iPhone hardware versions? Or maybe even which iOS version the phone was upgrade from?
I take it this is the one that tosses out Rosetta 2 on macOS?
New Siri is not available in the EU. And no plans to change that.

I'll probably switch to Android once my phone and watch batteries degrade enough to annoy me

There's approximately zero chance Google would go along with the changes that Apple would have had to make to support EU's DMA.
As a European, and Apple household: no new iPhone Duo, Watch or iPhone 18 Pro Max purchases in this house until Apple desists with its malicious campaign to break the DMA. I'll get by fine with other AI products in the meantime.
You do know that Google is fighting the same DMA rules as Apple?

They need to similarly make Gemini hot-swappable to anything on Android and don't want to.

Apple was just first because they're a bigger and more visible target.

Safari does in fact feel snappier.
Reminder to wait a couple of months before upgrading macOS! Every single time issues are found after a new macOS version, give it a little bit of time before jumping right away on your work machine :)
In theory that makes sense, in practice I've never had any issues with updating on day one and it's often necessary if you want to develop for iOS / macOS anyway unless you have a dedicated developer machine.
I’ve been running it for a couple months, I’d say we’re pretty much out of danger.
Good advice.
You don't have to! I always update the day of. So far, no regrets!
I feel pretty good about the 27 series in a way I haven't in the past (I've been running iOS 27 and it's working well), except for one thing, they remove x86 support (no more Rosetta), so just keep that in mind in case that might disrupt anything for you.
Rosetta is still present in 27.
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The fact that you're nearly faded because people are downvoting you is fucking diabolical. What the fuck is this website now? What you said is an objective and easily verifiable statement of fact lol.
People have already replied in part, but to clarify:

macOS 27 itself won't run on Intel chips, just Apple Silicon

but it does still have Rosetta (macOS 28 will drop it completely though)

you’re right, thanks for clarifying!
yes. I have been waiting 12 months already because Tahoe didn't convince many people, and I dread the moment I upgrade my mpb m3. Maybe I should just keep the factory OS
I just updated my Mac Studio from Sequoia to Tahoe.

Gotta say, a massive downgrade.

why did you do that to yourself when an alleged fix is coming in a few months?
I used to always do this but I hate liquid glass with such passion that I even upgraded to an iOS beta just to get any improvements to it. Worst UI update in the history of the company.
Normally I’d agree.

But my experience with 26 hasn’t been great. From the top of my head: Random repeated flashing window chrome in the background, notifications that keep on showing while everything is disabled, Finder tooltips from four windows down, tooltips that don’t disappear, Java update interruptions that hijack your flow - just when you where about to hit enter for something else the pop-up shows and bam: you’re installing it. There is nothing right about the update process of Java anyway. Spotlight search has completely stopped working. People I’m mailing with for over a decade are not suggested when drafting a mail. Clicking on the dock icon does not reveal the app. The list goes on and on. It has been a total grueling experience. Worst in all my experiences since System 7.

I’ve shut down the notification system at some point, which alleviated the constant reminders of non-compatibility with the next OS version. Being reminded of that four times a day for months on end is just insulting, even if I used compatible versions. There was no way to shut it off. Notifications are lazily designed and completely uninspired, as they could also adjust the app icons and so on and actually do it right.

I promised myself to update once it came out and then just screen record everything to collect residual garbage to help the Apple team make this stuff work well for everyone.

Sorry to let this all out, but it has been on my mind for a while and I’m happy they say they focussed on quality. Therefore I’m upgrading asap this time.

You do you. I backup and install once the RC goes live. Have done for years. Only problem I recall was a few years ago Homebrew got in a tizzy for a day.

One exception maybe is for music producers. For some reason AU/VST/DAW developers don't seem to take part in the beta programs and their software can take a while to get updated. But I've happily been playing with Bitwig (with some Arturia VSTs) over the weekend on Golden Gate without issue.

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I normally suggest the same, but 26 has been universally bad. This is the "point release" or "Snow Leopard" edition of 26.
I'm still on Sequoia (which took me ages to jump to from Ventura). :)

For anyone jumping versions: remember that Apple messed with the login keychain not being able to be backed up in the most recent Tahoe release [1], which means that issue will be around in Golden Gate.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49651046

I was on Sequoia as well, and just updated ... first thing I noticed is LaunchPad is gone.

The Tahoe "App View" / Spotlight just lists my 30 installed apps intermingled with Apple System Apps, which I hardly ever use. Hard coded categories, no way to re-order as far as I can tell.

Seems like the closest is dragging ~/Applications to the Dock.

Me too. I was just thinking recently about updating from Sequoia, now I've got to take a while and reconsider everything.
This seems to be the consensus viewpoint but outside of a few highly specific and known-in-advance incompatibilities on work laptops, I have been essentially a day-one adopter since Leopard and I cannot recall any issues that rose above a minor annoyance.

There have certainly been changes like Liquid Glass that were for the worse overall (though the degree of which had been highly overblown). But outside of directional disagreement with a release, I can’t say I’ve ever seen an issue where I’ve regretted pulling the trigger on an update.

yep last time it completely broke Internet but fortunately there was a workaround available via cellular
I don't understand this viewpoint. So, the release version is 27.0 build 26A428. That build is static, how can it get more stable than it is right now? Lets say 27.1 comes out in 2 weeks - do you update to 27.0 instead of 27.1? When is it snappy enough?
Taking this at face value they say wait for the incremental updates. I think some big rollouts have had fringe issues and they are saying to minimize the probability you get a random bug it's better to wait for a 27.x or 27.0.x before upgrading, and to upgrade to that one, not 27.0
I don’t understand what you mean by snappy. Apple is notorious for releasing buggy macOS major versions. You wait 6 months, then upgrade without having to be their tester. Snappiness has nothing to do with that, any macOS version on apple silicon is snappy
I have updated macOS and iOS around day one of release since 2008 and have yet to experience meaningful issues, AMA.
I wish they allowed iCloud subscribers with older hardware to use cloud-only Siri AI.

I imagine they wouldn't shift as much hardware that way though.

Same. Siri has been so bad for so long, and this announcement gave me a brief glimmer of hope that it would finally get better. However, every phone in my family is a 15 or older, and there is no support for our newer HomePod either. Boooooo Apple, booooo.
Even for iCloud subscribers with newer hardware, as the cloud version should be faster. You’d have the choice between privacy and better performance.
I've been using it for several months since the developer beta came out; overall I'm extremely positive on it. One of their better releases that seemingly focused more on quality and refinements than new-features.

Siri is definitely worth using now, even if it remains still a work-in-progress/needs continued refinement. It can surprise you in good ways, but it isn't consistently good yet.

The keyboard remains unfixed, as is tradition. The same issues they've "fixed" like three or four releases now, seemingly are identically broken, and I'm lost faith they CAN fix it.

The iOS Keyboard and Search on Windows, are like the perpetually broken things that both companies have "fixed" every year for the last ten+ years and yet... It is almost farcical as this point.

What's better about it in your usage?
If the iOS keyboard is broken in terms of auto correct suggestions, try resetting its dictionary. I found it was much improved after that.
I had issues with the Siri Beta. I would ask it to open the garage door, and often it just... failed.

Un-enrolling from the beta fixed it.

Any improvements to voice to text? I use iPhone 13 Mini and so keyboard has always been hard to type on. But voice to text..man..it is an absolutly miserable experience that I wish I could swap out for any other competitor.

I normally don't complain that iOS/MacOS isn't customizable because the defaults are good enough to work for me but that voice to text man its like they completely forgot about it.

Hear hear. The insistence upon prioritizing names in my extensive contacts list as well as certain geographic names leads to so many unnecessary manual edits.
i’ve been using the beta for a few months now, and the speech to text is significantly better. Put in parentheses using apple speech to text

Some stuff, as you can see, isn’t perfect :-)

I don’t think it is parakeet v2 level, but it’s good enough to not be frustrating

There is also a new, larger voice to text model available... but not for an old iPhone like the 13 mini. Only like the iPhone 17 Pro and above.

The best workaround is a third party app that lets you run Parakeet V3 or Whisper on your phone. There are quite a few.

It’s by far the best speech to text I’ve ever used so I’m a fan
Can you clarify, you like third party? Or you like the larger Apple model
I use it constantly and it mostly works well for me since as long as I can remember. My biggest gripe with it is all the random ass commas it puts.
> Siri is definitely worth using now, even if it remains still a work-in-progress/needs continued refinement. It can surprise you in good ways, but it isn't consistently good yet.

I really wish we could add our own custom prompts for the new Siri. My most common usage of Siri is "Remind me at XX:00 to do XYZ." The most common response from Siri now is, "Sorry, did you say XYZ or XZY?" Two very similar things, the difference between which is inconsequential. Dealing with this "Sorry" has made reminders take too many steps. Wish I could throw in a "If I'm setting a reminder and you don't quite hear me, just put both things in one line and I'll figure it out myself"

In my experience new Siri has been better only marginally. Still tons of I didn’t understand the query responses
Apple's search is so comically bad. For example, I can click on my applications, and I have an app called Chess. I can often type letters C-H-E-S-S and have it not show the Chess app. This is inside the applications folder!

Many people have complained before. Honestly I ONLY search for app names in spotlight search or application window, it should be trivial to make it actually work. Maybe i just need to vibecode some alternative search bar :(

A common one I hit is "blu" showing bluetooth settings, but "blue" does not. Very frustrating to see the thing you are hoping for popup, but then go away as you type more if its name.
Just tried this on iOS 27 and both blu and blue showed me bluetooth settings. I saw someone in a different thread of this discussion mention resetting dictionaries helping with autocorrect, I wonder if there is something that would apply to this situation which helps.
Just do a fresh install every two weeks.

Aah those were the days.

These are too, but those were as well.

It’s so much worse than that. This happens to me on a daily basis with both MacOS and iOS. Say I’m searching for Chess, I’ll get to the C-H and it’ll show the Chess app, but enter that next -E and it’s totally gone. It feels like the system is designed like “Well, I showed them Chess when they entered CH, but they kept typing, so they must not actually want Chess.” This ends up breaking for me like 95% of the time, and the only way around it is to search like “C”…wait for results…”H”…wait for results…etc. It’s maddening.
This, and then, if you notice, and backspace to remove the 'e', it doesn't put chess back into the search results, since it figures that everything that matches 'che' also matches 'ch', and so doesn't update it. Sometimes, if you add the 'e' again, it _will_ find chess, sometimes you need to type the 's', or even the final 's' before it gives you chess back again.

And sometimes, it finds what you want, but before you can select it, it decides that it has found something better, and places that in the place where you wanted to select, causing you to select the wrong thing. And then it thinks that because you selected this, it must be what you want, and starts to push it to the top…

Search is definitely frustrating.

Weird, the same stupid crap happens with Windows. I’ve had to learn the exact N character search to find the things I use often; any more or less and the result with that name is buried. It’s like Microsoft and Apple are just pip installing same broken search package.
On Windows I use PowerToys' Alt+Space command bar which does a much better job. In fact, it's the only search I use on Windows.
'calc' used to bring up calculator, but now it becomes some widget to calculate distance inside the spotlight box. The worst thing is you can't even backspace out of it.
For me the big one is whenever I type "sys" to get system settings, it pops up for a half second and then for some reason the top result is like "reset some system setting" and then I invariably get flashbanged because it turns off dark mode and there's no confirmation dialogue lmao. Maddening.
It's worse than this! You Type C-H-E then you go to press enter, and it changes the results as you're pressing it, opening the wrong thing! I've turned off all the search targets, except for applications and folders.
Turn off all the web search and other domains that the index uses. Apple took a really brain dead decision to include web search in the results, and they are the worst. It is completely useless, and even though the recall has expanded, the precision is abysmal.
I struggle daily with Finder's search. It cannot find files in my Downloads folder even if I type the exact name. Do I need to rebuild some index or some other setting?
It couldn't hurt. I don't have problems like that.

mdutil -E -a

That command will erase and rebuild Spotlight index on all volumes.

Since Tahoe, Spotlight has multiple modes. You might have better luck forcing it into folder & files mode. That's command-2. So command-space, spotlight UI appears, keep holding command key, press 2. There's also 1 for applications only, 3 for "actions" and 4 for clipboard history.

Same example: I search Spotlight for “Voice Memos,” a built-in Apple app. Nothing. Ask Siri? It’s horrible.
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I’ll have it not show Xcode. It’s apples main developer ide. Most of the time it works. Then it gets into some weird loop. Only shows the Xcode website. Very helpful.
At some point I got the damn Chess app every time I wanted to switch to Chrome. You know, typing cmd-space, ch and enter. I've learned I can't remove Chess from my computer. After numerous incantations of various spells and reboots and updates I think it started working normally again.

Breaking interfaces, Linus Torvalds had something to say about it that Apple should heed.

I got so annoyed at this recently I turned off spotlight entirely and replaced it with 3rd party software. I couldn’t be happier with my choice.

Check out Raycast / Alfred.

FWIW, I find if I’m pushing the disk limit, Spotlight search becomes unusable. So I free up ~100GB (easy to do with iOS/Android dev artifacts, emulators, etc.) and then force a Spotlight re-index from the command line:

sudo mdutil -E /

You can check indexing status with:

mdutil -s /

After that it’s usually fine again until I start pushing the disk limit.

Every sibling comment's issues I've experienced. But a reindex after freeing enough disk space seems to be a semi-stable solution for me. If only I could write a tool to remind me to free disk space before it screws up spotlight. It would be nice if MacOS put the index on its own partition.

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Search feels like it used to be much better in finding a balance between showing app vs files vs web - feels really broken somehow and I wonder if there’s any setting I can change.
Is Gemini-backed siri active ?
Wait what was so bad about siri before? I've been using it for years on homepod, asking it for weather and setting timers.
How’s messages? Oh still 2008?
one day we'll find out they have only one QA person on the team which develops keyboard among other things, and they have comically alien fingers.
Would you say that it's ready for prime-time on a developer machine?
It’s really sad, because they mostly aped search from BeOS and had best in class search for a decade or so. Now indexing frequently breaks or works when an external disk is not attached, but won’t find local files after it’s connected.
Anyone else accidentally upgrade to 26.7 first?
I did that too! The update servers are hammered as is tradition.
Things are or were labeled wrong... I clicked a button for "upgrade to iOS 27" but then follow up dialogue is talking about upgrading to 26.7. When supposedly I'm already running 26.7. It's very weird.
same, I saw the exact same weird transition from 27 -> 26.7... def seems like a bug
It did both. I didn’t get offered 26.7 until noon. I did it. Then it offered 27. I did it. But instead it showed that it was updating to 26.7.

Except when it was done it really had done 27.

Lots and lots of Reddit posts with the same bug. It’s not just you.

Yep. You could choose "26.7" or "upgrade to iOS27" but after tapping "upgrade to iOS 27", the next option was JUST 26.7 I think it did both upgrades in series though, I don't think I had to manually select 27 again later.
In moments like this I kind of assume that I should do 26.7 first because probably they test incremental transitions more thoroughly? I wish I had more faith in software updates.
Is it just me or is clicking “iOS 27” on iPhone showing upgrade screen for 26.7?
Same, but I clicked it, awaited the update, and I'm on iOS 27 proper now-- so just a visual bug.
> just a visual bug.

Out of the gate, that isn't a good sign.

Yes, it does 26.7 -> 27 sequentially, IIRC.
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Finally Apple has a screen time that allows different configurations for different time segments. What took them so long? /j
Nice. Can't wait for all my binaries to suddenly stop building.
So if you don't want to use Apple's AI, this brings... faster app launching on iOS? I guess I'll use the Liquid Glass controls, but otherwise this is a dud.
> Otherwise this is a dud

This comment is a dud. The whole point of this update was to focus on fixing bugs and improving stability. They literally rewrote the CPU scheduler to improve UI performance. Safari UI and page rendering is no longer shit compared to how it was on iPadOS 26. There’s an insane amount of under the hood changes for this release, something people have been asking for them to do for a while — focus on making things run better instead of adding endless new half baked features.

Updates don’t always have to bring shiny, flashy new features. Holy shit.

Snow Leopard was one of the most celebrated Mac OS X updates for a reason.
Not updating from Sequoia until the Liquid Glass era is over.
It's really not that bad.
I just upgraded last week. For the most part, I really don't care. It was not a noticeable change.
The thing that I disliked the most about Tahoe is that they made light mode extremely bright, so it was a lot more uncomfortable to look at than Sequoia. I had to switch the computer to dark mode as a workaround. Did they fix this in Golden Gate or is light mode still too bright?
There's a fix on the keyboard, it's got a little sun icon, next to the escape key.
It's fine on iOS, it's painful on macOS. The "squircle jail" is one of the worst design crimes Apple has shipped in a long time and another step back for Mac iconography.
They literally give you a new slider to increase or reduce the Liquid Glass effect to align with your personal preferences.
And fixed the dumb sidebar design
Unfortunately the slider does not fix Liquid Glass. Notifications are still unreadable even when you go full opaque. You need to also toggle Reduce Transparency to actually get the UI to be opaque enough to be readable.
Jeez, it's an accessibility feature and they just turned it off!

I don't mind liquid glass and can handle the transparency mostly, but the notifications are just god-awful and difficult to read. But reducing transparency is a much harder setting now, I don't like it, the previous setting was just right for me. And I can't find that slider anymore...

That's certainly not what the reviews say:

> I’ve been happily using the totally frosted look (slider all the way to the right) for a few weeks now. While I didn’t mind Liquid Glass as much as other folks, the frosted setting ensures I can read and see the text, menus and icons properly.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/ive-been-usi...

You’ll probably be waiting around a decade, then (about the amount of time Apple has between these refreshes), and won’t be able to upgrade your Mac hardware (because they never support OSs older than what they ship with). For people developing for Apple platforms, there are even more restrictions.

All of that is fine, of course, just as long as you’re aware. I also hate Liquid Glass, but unfortunately don’t think I can avoid it for another year. I just hope that the stuff they rolled back makes it bearable.

Still daily driving the 6s after almost 11 glorious years, and I can't imagine software ever being painfully slow on M series hardware. But if you need, well, are forced, to be on latest MacOS, then you are out of luck and you have my sympathy.

(My relatives iPhone updated and its just bad all around. And with increased font size for accessibility, elements don't cover all the text. Feels rushed and not the promised Apple land.)

The 6s was great, I had mine until it literally came apart.
Did they remove the rounded corners mess?
I’m adding representation to an issue that I hope is fixed:

for the last couple months I’ve been able to record videos and watch those videos but am unable to share them, whether on instagram, whatsapp, airdrop or imessage. some limited luck saving the same video to the file system and sharing from there

searching this issue is notoriously difficult, and there is one partially related thread on Apple support forums talking about spacial h264 and spacial h265 video codecs further complicated by being wrappers, with something suggesting the latter is the issue, the final post having a bewildered user asking for clarification that the iphone can create videos that even it cant use

I looked in my camera settings and there are soooo many switches and file formats now, that its impossible to know which edge case has been run into, and there’s no reset button to put the settings back to their most compatible

I hope this OS refresh fixed that

> unable to share them

What does "unable" mean?

Update: IOS 27 fixed it

(while IOS 26.7 did not)

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Was just looking over the Safari 27 release notes (§) and noticed this:

Web Driver

New Features

- Allow your agent to connect to a Safari browser for development and debugging via the Safari MCP server. (176038457)

Related:

Introducing the Safari MCP server for web developers

https://webkit.org/blog/18136/introducing-the-safari-mcp-ser...

(§) https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-not...

This MCP server for Safari is pretty neat. I think I'm going to start automatting some tasks for our corporate websites.
It's really powerful. I have been using it in Chrome for a while.

This is how to enable: chrome://inspect/#remote-debugging

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How are you getting around bot detection shutting you out? I tried exactly this but for stop and shop.
Given that Safari needs the most debugging and automation tooling for Safari was hardest to come by, this is a welcome change. I wonder if it works with pages on a connected iPhone though? Anyone tried it? Because debugging on iOS Safari is the most maddening. (No responsive design mode doesn't cut it, iOS Safari has its own special bugs that don't manifest in desktop Safari merely emulating a phone viewport.)