On Friday, Apple officially delayed the release of its promised iOS 18 Siri features.Those features, including personal context, on-screen awareness, and in-app actions, will now release “in the coming year.” We had already received hints that these features would be delayed, but now we know for sure.This leaves the question, what went wrong? Apple’s statement never gave a clear answer.
The company said said that it’s going to take longer than it thought, but never cited any specific reasons for the delays.However, some insights from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman give us some potential answers for what went wrong.Poor Siri infrastructure While developing new Siri features for iOS 18, Apple didn’t have the time to create one unified backend for handling all Siri requests.
As a result, theres two systems, one for legacy commands, and one for more advanced ones.That complicates development, per : Apple plans to release a unified system for iOS 19, but obviously that doesn’t do anything for the iOS 18 features that it promised.Given Apple’s usage of “in the coming year” rather than “in the coming months”, this likely means that the company wants to wait on the new Siri backend in iOS 19 to release these more advanced features.
Internal problems Additionally, reports that development for these new features hasn’t necessarily gone smoothly, as one could assume.The report describes Apple engineers as “racing to fix a rash of bugs”, and states that engineers believe the features won’t be ready until next year at the earliest, likely iOS 19.3 or later.Apple software executive Craig Federighi also voiced concerns over the features, in their current form, not aligning with how Apple had marketed them to work: Lastly, some Apple employees question whether or not the AI teams need better leadership, and that the company will continue to fall behind without a change in leadership: Overall, Apple is facing a heap of technical challenges headed into this, and the company likely would’ve been better off not rushing into the AI craze.
I’m sure the allegedly poor leadership isn’t helping the teams as well.My favorite Apple accessories on Amazon: Anker 25K Compact Power Bank with retractable cable MOFT Magnetic Wallet Stand, fits up to 3 cards AirTag 4-pack (on sale for 30% off!) Anker MagSafe 2-in-1 Wireless Charging Stand with Qi2 AirPods Pro 2 (USB-C) SanDisk Extreme 2TB USB-C SSD, up to 1050MB/s You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day.Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop.
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