I've got to hand it to Apple. The new Siri app works much more like a chatbot, saving Siri interactions as conversation threads. You can reopen a thread, keep asking follow-up questions, and, in some cases, view the sources Siri used.
I tested Siri in more situations than I can cover here, but two improvements stood out immediately: it is much faster and more responsive, and it handles context far better. That seems to reflect the models running locally on the iPhone, and despite my skepticism, Apple deserves credit. The real breakthrough in iOS 27 is Siri's combination of on-screen awareness and personal context. Since 2024, I had mostly dismissed Apple Intelligence as marketing hype meant to sell more iPhones. This new Siri changed my mind. Many familiar tasks now work better and faster. I used Siri to send WhatsApp and Telegram messages; create, name, and revise notes; describe someone's WhatsApp status; assess whether an image appeared to be AI-generated; and explain an app's controls, layout, features, and uses. On Instagram, where a minor issue had hidden my follower count, Siri read it directly from my profile without any trouble. I also asked Siri to find specific photos. With a precise request, it can pull up the exact image or a set of likely matches, which makes location details and keywords especially useful. The results appear in a separate image picker. There is also a new "Ask" button on each photo in the library; it was not there before the new Siri was installed. On-screen awareness opens up a lot of possibilities within almost any app or webpage. In Safari, for example, I asked Siri to summarize a page into key points, give me language-learning examples based on it, and then create a flowchart illustrating the theory. Siri announced the generation progress, displayed the image right away, and saved it to the Playground app. Siri can also search email across multiple accounts. I asked it to find my oldest invoice, and it located and read one from 2020, when I was still in college and pandemic restrictions forced us to handle payments by email. It can also find other messages based on a topic or detail you remember, answer follow-up questions, and summarize a long email already on screen. Its understanding of the Files app impressed me too: after explaining the contents of a folder, it immediately recommended which files could help me better understand culture and society. One final moment was funny, ironic, and maybe a little dystopian. While I was testing Siri, it made a sound that suggested it was still thinking. I asked, "Siri, what are you doing?" It replied: "If string theory is correct, I could be dancing the Macarena for you in a parallel dimension. That could also happen in this dimension, by the way. You just have to ask." Maybe it was a hallucination, or maybe Siri was trying a little too hard to be funny. Still, the exchange showed strong contextual awareness: it knows English is not my native language, my settings allow it to read Spanish text, and it has probably indexed at least some of my previous interactions. I tested all of this on an iPhone 16 Plus. The added expressiveness and content awareness expected on the iPhone 17 Pro and later models should appeal to a lot of users. Goodbye, typewriter-style assistant. Cheers, Leo Bado -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor. Mark can be reached at: [email protected]. Your list owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/viphone/09b201dd4630%24c0d39850%24427ac8f0%24%40gmail.com.
