Apple Is Reportedly Having Trouble Smartening Up Siri
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Over the past few years, the beta cycles for iOS point releases have run at a fast and furious pace. Often, betas for the next point release show up only days after the preceding public release — and with iOS 18 they’ve sometimes appeared even sooner.
For example, Apple released the first iOS 18.1 beta for Apple Intelligence-capable devices six weeks before iOS 18.0 was released to the public. That rapid-fire release cycle continued with the iOS 18.2 beta, which landed only two days after the Release Candidate of iOS 18.1 — a week before the public release of that version. Things got a bit more normal with iOS 18.3, but the first iOS 18.3 beta still showed up less than a week after the iOS 18.2 release.
This makes the lull between iOS 18.3 and the first iOS 18.4 betas all the more unusual. Apple released iOS 18.3 on January 27 and then iOS 18.3.1 earlier this week, yet there’s still no sign of iOS 18.4.
Today, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman offers a possible explanation for what’s taking so long. The short answer? Siri.
By all reports, iOS 18.4 is supposed to be the version that adds the last set of promised Apple Intelligence features, smartening up Siri with new AI capabilities and giving it personal contextual awareness. This is the really magical stuff that Apple showed off at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last year — the ability to ask Siri simple questions like “What time does my mom’s flight land?” and have it ferret out the answer by scanning your email, messages, calendar, maps, and more to gather all the details.
Sadly, it seems that Apple is taking longer than anticipated to figure this out. Earlier today, Gurman reported the company is still facing “engineering problems and software bugs” that could “postpone or limit its release.”
Inside Apple, many employees testing the new Siri have found that these features don’t yet work consistently.
Mark Gurman
It’s likely that Apple has already delayed the release of the first iOS 18.4 developer beta, but now it’s coming down to “crunch time,” and the problems are severe enough that Apple may need to rip some features out to get the iOS 18.4 beta out in time. These would be delayed to iOS 18.5, sources say, leaving the iOS 18.4 update primarily focused on delivering new languages for Apple Intelligence and unlocking it in the European Union, where it’s not currently available on the iPhone or iPad in any language.
Apple could also choose to leave the features in the iOS 18.4 code but have them switched off by default — or even disabled entirely — enabling them automatically when iOS 18.5 is released.
The company has already promised an April timeline for expanded language support, so it can’t afford to delay the iOS 18.4 beta cycle for much longer. A later iOS 18.5 update could arrive as soon as May, which means the Siri features wouldn’t be delayed too much, but it still represents a setback for Apple. Many folks have observed that Siri is actually dumber in iOS 18, which puts more pressure on Apple to get its new AI improvements rolled into the voice assistant so that it can prove its mettle.
Meanwhile, Google kicked off “the Gemini era” last year by adding Gemini Live to its Pixel 9 lineup, and Samsung recently followed suit with the Galaxy S25 series. Gemini is already a capable chatbot, and Gemini Live expands on that by providing interactive conversational responses. Siri has a lot of catching up to do, and Apple has recently brought in the big guns to make that happen. Nevertheless, iOS 18.4 (or iOS 18.5) is only expected to be the start. Gurman and others have already predicted that a truly conversational Siri won’t arrive until sometime in iOS 19 — likely in a similar iOS 19.4 release in early 2026.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
