Siri actually showed up.

A note from the studio

Thank you, as always, for being here. Last Sunday Apple opened Tim Cook's last keynote as CEO, dropped the first iOS 27 beta that night, and handed those of us who test these things a week of work and a lot to talk about. I have been living in that beta since, both as a developer and as someone who has wanted a Siri that works for about a decade. So this issue is the recap I owed you, written from a phone that has actually been running it.

The new Siri is real, and it is good

I will say the thing I did not expect to say. After two years of delays and one very public embarrassment, the rebuilt Siri in iOS 27 is the first version in years that feels like it was built on purpose. It is now a real app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, a back and forth thread you can talk or type to, with history that carries from one question to the next and syncs over your iCloud. You pull it up, ask, and the answer pops out of the Dynamic Island before the full app even opens.

The part that won me over is context. Open a calendar event, say "reschedule that to next week," and it just does it, no need to restate what "that" is. Ask a follow up and it remembers the last thing you said. It reads what is on your screen, summarizes it, and pulls from your Mail, Messages, Photos, and Calendar to actually answer instead of handing you a web search. Early hands on reactions have landed in the same place mine did, the word going around is "legitimately impressive," and for Siri, that is a sentence I have not been able to write before.

Write with Siri is the other standout. It drafts emails, messages, and notes in something close to your own voice, then lets you nudge the tone. Point your camera at an object, an animal, or a landmark and it tells you what you are looking at. None of this is a tech demo on a stage, it is on the beta on my desk right now.

Two honest caveats. First, access is gated. Apple put the new Siri behind a waitlist, the same move it pulled when Apple Intelligence first shipped. You update, open Settings, find the Siri section, tap Join Waitlist, and wait for the nod. Second, it carries a beta and preview label that Apple has been using internally for months, its quiet way of saying do not expect it fully finished in the fall. It needs an Apple Intelligence capable device too, iPhone 15 Pro and newer. And under the hood, as Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has reported, this Siri leans on a large Google Gemini model that Apple licensed, so the more ambitious answers are doing real work in the cloud, not all on your phone.

From today's Power On

In this morning's Power On, Gurman's read is that Apple's pitch for the new Siri is going to be privacy, that it can do what ChatGPT and Gemini do while keeping your conversations yours, including an option to hold memory for only a limited time. He also reiterated the cautious framing, the beta label and the waitlist are deliberate, a hedge so that a Siri which is genuinely good but not yet bulletproof does not get marketed as a finished product and then judged like one.

My own take, having used it, is that the caution is fair and the product is still the best Siri has ever been. The thing I am watching as a developer is the seam, which answers run locally on Apple silicon and which ride out to Google's model, and whether the private half is private by design or private by branding. One week in, the honest verdict is good with an asterisk, and the asterisk is mostly about polish, not direction.

The beta calendar, so you can plan

If you are deciding when to jump in, here is the rough map. Developer beta 1 is out now. Beta 2 is expected around the week of June 22, with new developer betas landing roughly every two weeks through the summer. The first public beta, the one most people should actually wait for, is expected in mid July. And if Apple holds to its usual pattern, the final iOS 27 ships to everyone in mid September, likely alongside the new iPhones.

One housekeeping note worth knowing, reporting points to the 2019 iPhone 11 dropping off the iOS 27 support list. If that is your phone, this is the year the update train likely leaves without it.

A note for fellow beta testers

If you are running the beta, one ask, report the bugs. When something breaks, do not just post about it, file it with Apple through the Feedback Assistant app that ships on every beta. A real report, with what you did and a screen recording, is the single most useful thing a tester can do, and it is how rough edges actually get fixed before September. Bugs you only complain about on social rarely make it to the people who can fix them.

And the standard reminder, a first beta is a first beta. Battery runs hot, some apps misbehave, and the new Siri will occasionally trip. Put it on a spare device if you can, and keep a backup before you install.

Markets, in one breath

A green week. The S&P 500 rose about 1.8 percent to close near 7,394, the Nasdaq jumped about 2.5 percent, and the Dow added roughly 1.9 percent. The mood was helped by easing tension with Iran, which pulled oil prices down, and the week's headline was SpaceX going public, a debut that popped close to 20 percent on its first day.

The studio view has not changed, and it is the same one baked into Holdwise and DayCast. A good week and a bad week are both noise if your plan is measured in decades. Boring, automatic, and diversified still beats clever on most days. None of this is financial advice, just the lens I read the week through.

What I have been building

A new wave of apps is close, and a couple of you have asked what is next, so here is the honest status.

Renewl is the next to land. It is a subscription and free trial tracker that never asks for a bank login. You snap a screenshot of a confirmation email, an App Store receipt, or a bank statement, and on device AI reads the merchant, the amount, and the renewal or trial end date, then warns you before the charge hits. Insights show your true monthly and yearly spend, what is charging in the next 30 days, and the overlaps where you are paying twice for the same kind of thing. It is submitted to the App Store and waiting on Apple's review now, so it should be live very soon. I will send the link the moment it clears.

VitalCast and FlickDrop are both in TestFlight, the last stop before the App Store. VitalCast reads your Apple Health on your iPhone and writes you a plain language briefing of what changed and what is worth a glance, with every research backed line traced to a real, named, peer reviewed study.

FlickDrop is the fun one. It tracks the price of the movies and shows you want to own across iTunes and Apple TV, then pings you the moment one hits an all time low, with trailers, cast, and critic scores on every title.

If you want to help test either one, reply to this email and I will get you a TestFlight invite.

Talewright is the one I am holding for later this year, on purpose. It is a choose your own adventure your iPhone writes as you play, fully offline, with optional scene art drawn on device. Because it leans on the newest on device AI, I am lining its release up with iOS 27 shipping in the fall, so it arrives on the strongest possible footing rather than the earliest one.

Eight apps are live today, all privacy first, all free to start. You can see the whole lineup, with what is live and what is next, at jcmobileappstudio.com.

Help spread the word

Hasta la próxima

That was issue 04. Issue 05 lands next Sunday, June 21, and if the calendar holds we will be staring down beta 2, the first real test of whether Apple is fixing the rough edges or papering over them. With luck I will also have a live Renewl link to share. Until then, if you are on the beta, file those bug reports.

Thank you again, sincerely, for reading and for sharing. It keeps the lights on and the apps coming.

— JC Mobile App Studio