iOS 27 is out with the new Siri - a waitlist, English only, and nothing at all in Europe

In March we wrote that Apple would turn Siri into a full-blown chatbot with its own app. On Monday, September 14, that Siri rolled out to the public, together with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, watchOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate. It is Apple's second big day this month, five days after the iPhone Duo launch.

What the new Siri can do

Apple describes it with four phrases: personal context understanding (Messages, Mail, Calendar, Notes), broad world knowledge, onscreen awareness, and app actions. Siri has a separate app with conversation history, it writes for you in your own style, and it recognizes whatever you point the camera at. While driving, Dan Moren of Six Colors asked it for a podcast episode about the American Revolution and got it. Ivan Mehta of TechCrunch asked about World Cup lineups and the oldest player on the pitch. Underneath, as Apple puts it, are models "custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models": simple requests run on the phone, harder ones go to Private Cloud Compute servers.

Where does it fall short? From a screenshot with a list of conference panels, Siri added exactly one to Moren's calendar, at the wrong time and in the wrong time zone. Federico Viticci of MacStories writes that it "undeniably is a better Siri for Siri-type tasks than it's ever been," but "the new Siri is not an agentic product," and for deeper questions he goes back to ChatGPT. In a June test on the beta, Tom's Guide had Gemini on a Galaxy S26 order coffee through DoorDash; Siri could not. On Hacker News someone described Siri claiming it could not find any photos from Italy, because the phone was still indexing the library.

Who gets it

This is where the fine print starts. Siri AI is a beta, English only, on the iPhone 15 Pro and newer, for users 13 and up. French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese arrive in October; other languages are not on the list. After updating you go into Settings, pick a voice, record a sample and join a waitlist. Apple only says that "wait times can vary." On X and Reddit some report access within an hour, others were still waiting after more than a day. Server-side features have daily limits with no numbers attached, and "expanded access to such features will be available for a fee in the future."

For iPhone users in Europe, none of this matters. Apple: "Siri AI will not be available initially in the EU on iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS." No date. The reason is the Digital Markets Act: Apple wants to give Siri a level of system access it does not give competing assistants. In June, Apple said it had proposed a broker for third-party assistants with an 18-month rollout, and the Commission said no. Craig Federighi added that the company has no timeline for the EU. The Commission's spokesman replied: "The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple's and Apple's only." On the Mac and Vision Pro there is no block: in Europe you switch the system and Siri to English, join the waitlist and wait. Per reports on X, an Apple Account set to a U.S. region also helps, but nobody has shown it working on an iPhone in Europe.

What every iPhone gets

Everything else, on every model from the iPhone 11 up. Liquid Glass now has a slider from fully clear to heavily tinted, the icons are sharper, alarms and timers have their own volume. In Apple's own measurements, apps launch up to 30 percent faster, photos load up to 70 percent faster and AirDrop transfers up to 80 percent faster, with tests run on an iPhone 11 Pro Max, 15 and 16 Plus. From the iPhone 15 Pro up, you also get Apple Intelligence: Safari groups tabs by topic and Photos cleans up objects better. The catch: the AI package takes up to 8 GB, and up to 14 GB on the iPhone 17 Pro and Air, and iOS 27 dropped the switch that turned it all off. On Hacker News, the advice is to set the Siri language to something other than U.S. English, which brings back the old Siri.

On the Mac, the end of an era: macOS 27 will not install on any Intel machine, four models from 2019 and 2020 fell off the list, and Rosetta, which runs old apps, is included for the last time in this release (older games aside). Five iPads with A12 and A12X chips fell off the iPadOS 27 list. One more thing: when you turn Siri on, iOS 27 asks whether to share recordings and transcripts "to improve foundation models." It is off by default. Consent to improve Siri has existed for years, but this is the first time Apple has asked outright for data to train its own models.

The most interesting part, though, is in the code. A developer known as pdfu found private APIs in iOS 27 and macOS 27 that let you swap the model behind Siri for one from another provider. Marcel Pociot showed Claude answering inside the Siri window on macOS 27, though it "requires disabling SIP/AMFI." Apple does not confirm any of it and users can do nothing with it today. But the top comment on Reddit points out that you can already pick a default mail app, browser, maps app, and keyboard, so "why shouldn't we also be able to choose the default AI Model?" If Brussels gets its way, that choice may show up in Europe first. Europe would get Siri AI last, but with Claude inside.

Beta - a version before the final release, tested with users. DMA (Digital Markets Act) - the EU regulation on digital markets that requires the largest companies to open their systems to competitors. Private Cloud Compute - Apple servers that run the heavier AI work, with a promise that Apple cannot see the data. Rosetta - the macOS layer that runs software written for Intel chips on Apple silicon.