00:00 Speaker A
Apple intelligence debuted last fall with features like writing assistance and AI generated emojis, but users will have to wait before getting an AI enhanced upgrade to Siri with Apple saying in a statement, quote, it’s going to take longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year. Unquote. Joining me now, we’ve got Yahoo Finance tech editor, Dan Howley. Dan, what kind of features are users waiting for here?
00:39 Dan Howley
Yeah, Brad, I think that the big thing here is the smarter Siri. Right? Siri is was kind of the first kind of smart assistant and it just doesn’t live up to those expectations anymore and it hasn’t for quite some time, frankly. It it kind of petered out when, you know, we saw Alexa and Google really kind of come into their own. And how many times you said to to Siri, set a timer, set a timer, set a timer and finally it sets a timer. And what else are you doing with it besides that, right? Like so that’s the idea of what this new Siri is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be context aware, supposed to understand your information, so you can say things like, okay, when do I have to go pick up mom from the airport? Let me know that and then show me the the correct route and it’ll do all those things. kind of a a gentic AI uh asking. So, you know, it’s it’s one of those those kind of features that we were kind of expecting to see by now at some point. Uh there’s, you know, the ability to control apps. Uh that kind of goes into the gentic AI and then the analyzing what’s on your screen. Something, look, Google can already do, Samsung can already do. And so, you know, we’re we’re waiting on this, but one uh analyst I spoke to, let me just get this right, said that uh it’s been a debacle ever since they launched uh Apple intelligence. Another said that there’s no short-term fixes here and they might not have this capability for the new Siri until something like 2026. And you know, 2022 is when we saw Chat GPT really pop off. Uh the the end of it just to be fair, but 2026 to kind of get Siri and upgraded Siri then not too great.
03:24 Speaker A
I got to hustle to our finish here, but I got to ask about this. We got reports that Apple is planning on a massive overhaul of its software interface. What do we know about that so far?
03:37 Dan Howley
Yeah, this is from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and essentially it’s supposed to be the the biggest overhaul for iOS, iPad OS, Mac OS in in years. And so that would just mean kind of a a newer fresher look. Uh if it goes along with the new iPhone that’s expected to come later this year, the iPhone 17, it’s supposed to be a much thinner design. Uh the the overall look is supposed to kind of fit with what they have from the Vision Pro, the Vision OS, the operating system that runs on the uh the Vision Pro headset. Uh it’s just a general direction that they’re looking at. We will find out more at WWDC that usually happens in June. I get to sit out in the hot sun, melt for a few hours and then, you know, send reports back here. But that’s usually when we find stuff like that out. Maybe we’ll get more about the AI capabilities that Apple is hopefully going to bring forward, but it was that time last year that they talked up Apple intelligence and it’ll be a year and we still don’t have that new version of Siri.
05:06 Speaker A
Meta has called this the pivotal year for the metaverse. Do you think the same holds true for Apple?
05:16 Dan Howley
Uh I think, you know, for for Apple, what it comes down to really is outside of, you know, the the headset that they have, if they want to play in that space, it’s got to be a new pair of smart classes. And that’s something that, you know, there’s been talk about uh Mark Gurman again at Bloomberg has said that they’re they’re working on that actively that it’s something that, you know, they they want to see, but I mean, the the Vision Pro is great. Technologically, it’s incredible. It’s not the volume seller. It’s not going to get them there.
06:07 Speaker A
Dan, thanks so much for breaking this down for us. Really appreciate it.
06:11 Dan Howley
Sure.
