Inside every iPhone there are two Siris

One Siri sets timers. The other promises to understand context across your apps and be super smart, someday. Which one wins? The one Apple ships.

At least as of iOS 27 public beta 2, and to segue from a Cherokee parable to Conway's Law, you can almost feel the org chart at Cupertino when you use your iPhone now.

Crack open the new Siri app and you have ... new Siri. Wired up to the new search index, newly powered by Gemini ... This seems to work as promised. Or at least "meets expectations".

I use Claude Fable and Opus all day, so it's not really impressive in capability, but it's pretty fast, more than smart enough to answer the kind of throwaway questions that I would normally just fire into the Safari address bar and let Google answer. It does seem to know some useful stuff from what it's wired into on your phone too.

But the original Siri features we all know and love (hate)? Oh boy. Somehow, these have gotten worse, which I didn't even think was possible.

The things I used to use that worked fine, and are now some version of broken, often in a different way each time I use it.

Now, I realise that they're not going to fire off every request to turn your lights on to Gemini, much of this has to happen, or at least start, on device, but there is just such a disconnect between the hype of the new AI Siri and the reality of this stuff that I kinda wonder if I'm losing my mind when I haven't really seen anyone talk about this. Is it just the soft bigotry of low expectations for Siri?

So here's my short list of unscientific observations:

Working at all in the car

Before ★★★★★ → Now ★★☆☆☆

Just getting it to fucking work at all when in the car. A 2/5 success rate, maybe. Once it told me I had to unlock my phone which is weird but ok. The rest of the time it just silently does its glowy orby thing for a while then nothing happens.

Playing the podcast I actually asked for

Before ★★☆☆☆ → Now ★★☆☆☆

To play the podcast I actually want it to play, not a song that sounds kinda like the name of the podcast I asked for (but different every time). Honestly about as shit as it always was, but I was promised new super smart Siri so I get more angry?

Sending an Intercom message to the house

Before ★★★★★ → Now ★☆☆☆☆

And this is TRULY maddening because I don't think there is any other way to use this except via Siri?

My use case is when no one else is home and I go for a walk the dog just starts barking, so I would intercom back to the house "stop barking" and it would. Magical. Anyway, a couple times it's worked the way it used to (and before it really was flawless) but now it seems like there is no connection between invoking it and what I say next — it tries to send messages, open contacts, other random stuff it's decided I was asking for. Totally crazy.

Doing quick maths

Before ★★★★★ → Now ★☆☆☆☆

Before it was like using a calculator but in the search box you pull down on the homescreen for. Now, mainly because it is fucking slow as - I assume it runs through the AI pipeline before it gets to a 'tool use' flag and gives you an answer or boots you (sometimes) to the calculator - it's just pointless, I don't bother. Might be improving my mental arithmetic skills as a side effect though.

Setting a timer

Before ★★★★★ → Now ★★★★★*

Still 5/5, because if my phone never does it if I am within 20km of a HomePod. I don't know if you know this but HomePod's LOVE setting timers like you would not believe. There is no way it's going to let your iPhone have that kind of fun ... So no idea if this works on iOS 27. Probably not.

Conversational Siri

New in iOS 27 → Now ★☆☆☆☆

This was like a headline new feature wasn't it? The "conversational" Siri capabilities where you can converse back and forth, like you can with every other AI thing released in the last two years. Well, one half of this seems to work - Siri loves asking you follow-up questions but it doesn't actually listen to the answer?! And then if you wake it up again with the reply, it has no fucking idea what you're talking about. So, just like before but with the extra maddening behaviour of asking YOU a question, then not listening to the reply! I could just talk to my kids if I wanted that experience...

Writing this one out made me think maybe that's why the 'Intercom' feature has gone backwards. The old one clearly had a mechanical gate there where it would enable and if you talked quickly enough after it, it sent that as the Intercom message — if you didn't say anything, it would ask you for it and connect it back to what it was doing. That seems like what it tries to do now, but when you reply, it's forgotten what it asked you, so treats the second thing you say as a completely new voice prompt to interpret as an action — not the voice message you want to send.

So anyway. I realise it's not really fair to rant about all this based on the beta. Maybe they will fix it all. But I suspect this Siri just hasn't gotten much focus as the shiny new Siri that Apple is feeding and all the reviewers are talking about. This Siri, the one I think should pleasantly delight long time (and new) users with how smart it is now, and through that exercise of building your trust, encourage you to do more with it, sucks worse than it ever did. That's a shame.