Apple Ships iOS 26.4 Without the AI Siri It Promised

Apple pushed iOS 26.4 to iPhones worldwide on March 23. It brings AI-powered playlists through Playlist Playground, eight new emoji, expanded CarPlay AI chatbot support, and a keyboard bug fix. What it does not bring is the one thing everyone was waiting for: the reimagined, Gemini-powered Siri.

This is the feature Apple teased at WWDC and that Bloomberg reported would ship with this exact update. A context-aware Siri that understands what’s on your screen, acts across apps without you manually copying information, and handles multi-step tasks through natural conversation. The kind of AI assistant that Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic have been building for the last two years.

Instead, Apple shipped emoji.

The Gemini Partnership

The partnership itself is real and significant. Apple is paying Google roughly $1 billion per year to use Gemini’s 1.2 trillion parameter model. The deal gives Apple access to Google’s reasoning and language understanding capabilities while keeping everything wrapped in Apple’s privacy architecture through Private Cloud Compute.

On paper, this makes sense. Apple gets world-class AI without building everything from scratch. Google gets distribution to a billion iPhones. Users get an AI assistant that’s genuinely useful while maintaining the privacy guarantees Apple is known for.

The problem is execution. Or rather, the lack of it.

Why This Matters

While Apple delays, the competitive landscape keeps moving. ChatGPT’s app integrations already let users order food, book rides, and manage apps through conversation. Google’s own Gemini assistant is deeply integrated across Android. Claude’s MCP protocol is connecting AI to real-world tools through an open standard.

Apple’s bet is that when the new Siri arrives, the combination of Gemini’s intelligence with Apple’s ecosystem integration and privacy will be worth the wait. They might be right — no other company has the hardware-software-services integration that Apple does. An AI assistant with access to your contacts, calendar, messages, photos, health data, and HomeKit devices, all processed with genuine privacy guarantees, would be genuinely differentiated.

But right now it’s vaporware.

What to Expect

Reports suggest the new Siri will arrive either in iOS 26.5 this spring/summer or get punted to iOS 27 in September. Key capabilities expected when it does launch:

• On-screen awareness — Siri reads what’s on your display and acts on it
• Cross-app actions — Book a restaurant from Safari, add flight details from Mail to Calendar
• Multi-step planning — Handle complex requests that span multiple apps
• Personal context — Understand your patterns, preferences, and relationships

For now, if you want an AI assistant that actually does things today, check out our Claude complete guide or explore how ChatGPT’s integrations work.

iOS 26.4 is a fine update. It’s just not the one Apple promised.