Can Apple really fix Siri, or is it too far gone?

Lots of exclusives on Macworld last week, as our tireless code-breaker Filipe Esposito turned up clues to a mystery Apple smart home accessory, HomePod mini and AirTag upgrades, a new display, and much more. All the secrets of the future were laid bare. But the Esposito scoop that caught my eye concerned a rather older story.

Siri, poor hapless Siri, has been the laughing stock of voice assistants for years. Some of the time it fails to hear you; other times it dives unwanted into the conversation even though nobody mentioned its name. (Surprisingly often this is triggered by dialogue on Apple TV shows; you’d think they’d check for that sort of thing.) It mishears the name of songs to an almost comical extent, it refuses to do what it’s told, and it behaves constantly with the infuriating confidence of the very stupid.

Given that Siri is baked into pretty much every Apple product, you’d think that fixing it would be a top priority. Sure enough, back in June 2024, Apple announced that it was going to release a new enhanced version of Siri, powered by AI, to address all these problems. Although, of course, Apple didn’t actually acknowledge the problems, instead using vaguely positive phraseology about becoming “more natural, more contextually relevant, and more personal.”

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that enhanced Siri still hasn’t arrived, a mere 18 months on; there are no signs of it becoming more natural, it remains blithely irrelevant, and the only personal thing about it is my choice of language when it gets a simple command wrong yet again. So it was… I won’t say pleasing, but I will say interesting to hear last week that it’s now looking likely to land in spring 2026 alongside the so-called HomePad. Which is better than nothing, as they say; at least the project hasn’t been completely cancelled, like AirPower or the slimmer and lighter version of Vision Pro. But another phrase that springs to mind is “Too little, too late.”

Most obviously, Apple has squandered a great deal of trust and goodwill over the past couple of years by promising things that aren’t ready (and which may never have existed at all) and then failing to deliver them. Trust in a tech company’s honesty and competence is a vital asset. Do you trust Apple to provide worthwhile software updates for the life of your products, and to safeguard your security and privacy? If there’s a bug on your Mac, do you trust Apple to patch it in a timely fashion? Probably less so than was the case five years ago.

It might seem entitled and fanboyish to take it personally when a corporation fails to launch an expected product. But in this case, it is personal: Siri’s performance, and Apple’s continued failure to address that performance, affects our daily experience with the iPhone, the Mac, the Apple Watch, and of course the HomePod. Siri 2.0 isn’t a new product we’ve been having to wait for, but a needed fix for the products we already have. And anyone who stayed inside Apple’s walled garden in hopes of the voice assistant getting better was kept there under false pretences.

It all could have been so much better. Siri should be the user’s entry point to the Apple ecosystem, and the culmination of the company’s intuitive philosophy. No matter which device you’re using, no matter the operating system or the app, you simply say out loud what you want to happen. What could be more user-friendly? Almost anything, it turns out.

For years now, customers have been trained to regard their Apple products with suspicion. If I use this device in the way that is theoretically the most convenient, they quickly come to understand, there is a good chance it will go wrong. Which is hardly the message Apple wants to send. And while spring could represent a new beginning for the beleaguered voice assistant, it will also mark the start of a very long and difficult process of reputational recovery.

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

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