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Apple just delayed Siri's big AI upgrade. Again.
This is the fourth time since they first announced it in June 2024. Originally supposed to launch in late 2024, then pushed to spring 2025, then sometime in 2026, and now maybe late 2026. Or possibly 2027.
But here's what makes this delay different from the others. Apple actually said why.
Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief, said the feature "didn't work reliably enough to be an Apple product." Greg Joswiak, Apple's marketing VP, was even more direct: "We never want to ship something that had an error rate that we felt was unacceptable."
That's a pretty stunning admission from a company that almost never talks about internal problems publicly.
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What's Actually Broken
The problems aren't small technical hiccups. They're fundamental issues with how the new Siri works.
According to internal testing, error rates approached 30% in some situations. That means nearly one in three times, Siri either gave the wrong answer, misunderstood what you wanted, or just failed completely.
The new Siri struggles with multi-step tasks, can't integrate properly with on-screen content, and has trouble being proactive. It's also too slow, interrupts users mid-sentence, and sometimes requires a complete restart when given complex commands.
Apple realized they built it wrong the first time. Federighi admitted they were working on two versions simultaneously, and the first architecture just couldn't handle what they needed it to do. So they had to start over with a completely different approach.
The Gap Between Demo and Reality
Here's what bothers me about this whole situation.
Apple announced this new Siri at WWDC in June 2024. They showed demos. They advertised features to customers. They made it a centerpiece of their iPhone marketing.
All of that happened before they knew if it actually worked reliably.
This isn't unique to Apple. Every major tech company does some version of this. They announce what they're building, not what they've finished. They show the best-case scenario, not the average experience.
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But what makes Apple's situation interesting is that they're usually the company that doesn't do this. They're famous for announcing products only when they're ready to ship. "One more thing" followed by "available today" is their signature move.
With AI, they broke that pattern. And now they're paying for it with repeated delays and public explanations about why things don't work.
Why This Matters Beyond Apple
This isn't just an Apple story. It's a warning about where the entire AI industry is right now.
We're in this weird phase where companies can demonstrate incredible AI capabilities in controlled settings, but those same capabilities fall apart when real people try to use them for real tasks.
The demos look amazing. The error rates tell a different story.
Apple's not alone here. Google's Gemini has had accuracy problems. Microsoft's Copilot has struggled with reliability. Amazon's Alexa overhaul has been delayed multiple times for similar reasons.
The pattern is consistent: AI tools can do impressive things sometimes, but they can't do those things reliably enough to trust them with important tasks.
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The Standard Nobody Can Meet Yet
What Apple is trying to build with Siri is genuinely hard.
They want an assistant that can understand context across multiple apps, execute complex tasks without supervision, and do it all reliably enough that you don't have to double-check its work.
That's a much higher bar than "answer questions" or "write emails." It requires the AI to understand what you want, figure out the steps to get there, execute those steps in the right order, handle errors along the way, and deliver results you can trust.
Right now, no one can do that consistently. Not Apple, not Google, not anyone.
The difference is Apple admitted it publicly instead of shipping something half-broken and calling it a beta.
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What Happens Next
Apple is now planning to spread Siri's new features across multiple updates through 2026 and possibly into 2027. Instead of one big launch, they'll release pieces when each piece actually works.
That's probably the right approach. But it also means we're at least another year away from seeing if Apple can deliver what they promised in 2024.
In the meantime, Siri will keep being what it's always been: functional for basic tasks, frustrating for anything complex, and a reminder that making AI look good on stage is a lot easier than making it work in your pocket.
The real question isn't when Apple fixes Siri. It's whether any company can close the gap between what AI can do in demos and what it can do reliably in real life.
So far, the answer is no. Not yet.