THIS WEEK’S UPDATE

The best version of iOS ever?

I'll come straight out and say it: I think I underestimated this.

I've just spent a week back from WWDC, running iOS 27 and Siri AI as my daily driver on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and the more I use it, the more it sinks in just how far Apple has actually moved the needle. The polishing updates are of course welcome β€” a proper Liquid Glass slider for those of you who've made your feelings known there, noticeably faster AirDrop, and photo tools like extend, cleanup and reframing, the latter of which is really quite cool.

But it's Siri that's the story here. I handed over a list of deliberately awkward, vague questions for it to work on, find this email, work out my travel history, book me into a gap in my diary, and, rough edges aside, it handled all of it without any missteps. It really is Siri as we’ve never seen it before, but it’s also an AI system that feels distinctly β€˜Apple’. And that in turn makes iOS 27 stand out significantly from the Android operating systems around it that were striding ahead in terms of AI.

It's still beta and it still stumbles occasionally, as you can see in my video on it this week. But after years of being promised this exact thing, I'm genuinely struggling to find much to complain about. That's not a sentence I expected to write about Siri a year ago!

MUST WATCH

iPadOS 27 Beta Review: I Wasn't Expecting This...

Can you guess how I feel about iPadOS 27 from my iOS 27 thoughts? It’s safe to say that I think Apple has done a pretty good job here too…

SOMETHING NEW

The Next Drive Newsletter Is Live!

A quick reminder that my new newsletter is now live in collaboration with journalist Alistair Charlton! It features exclusive insights into the automotive industry from us, cool second-hand cars we’ve found, news, and, most excitingly, contributions from our readers!

We want to create a community of car lovers (motorcyclists welcome too!) that meet via email every week. So sign up, have a read and consider contributing, see you there!

WHAT YOU SAID

When all is said and done, you guys are pretty much split down the middle when it comes to Siri AI. And that’s fair, it isn’t anything particularly ground breaking but I promise once you use it you’ll be impressed!

ON THE β€˜GRAM

Ok, Samsung Galaxy XR is REALLY impressive…

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. See you here next week!

~ Mark

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