Two years ago, at its own Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple announced a suite of AI features lumped under “Apple Intelligence.” It wasn’t Genmoji, Image Playground, or Writing Tools that floored everyone. It was the revamped and more intelligent Siri capable of “contextual awareness,” a technical way to say the assistant could understand what was happening on your iPhone’s screen and also pull information from across your apps so you didn’t need to look for it yourself.
Apple promised the new Siri would launch in the fall alongside the iPhone 16 series. It never arrived. The company delayed the Siri reboot several times from that fall to spring. Then at WWDC 2025, Apple senior VP of software Craig Federighi finally admitted that work on the new Siri “needed more time to reach our high-quality bar” and that “we look forward to sharing more in the coming year.” To paper over its massive fumble, Apple rolled out Liquid Glass to all of its platforms. The strategy worked; besides the most vocal tech enthusiasts, most consumers forgot all about the new Siri. Apple’s failure to launch the new assistant had next to no impact on iPhone or Apple device sales. Well, it’s been two whole years since it was announced, and Apple still hasn’t released Siri 2.0, but that’s supposedly finally, finally happening this year. Needless to say, the WWDC 2026 spotlight will be on the assistant. How much of what was promised at WWDC 2025 will Apple deliver on thanks to its new Google Gemini brain?
