Almost six months after its beta release, Apple Intelligence is still struggling with major delays. With its first major feature expected for early next month with iOS 18.4, it seems Apple has pushed this away for May with iOS 18.5. Nonetheless, it’s almost irrelevant when comparing the pace at which the company’s competitors reveal AI improvements almost weekly.
Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter, reveals that it’s going to take at least two extra years before Apple Intelligence gets somewhat similar to the capabilities OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot can deliver today—and, honestly, for at least a year now.
According to the journalist, Apple has a long schedule to finally revamp Siri and make it an essential part of the Apple Intelligence platform. This is what you can expect:
- iOS 18.4: Expected for early April, Apple is expanding the languages available with Apple Intelligence;
- iOS 18.5: Expected for May, Apple might make Siri tap user data to make it more personalize and help you find “a podcast episode a friend sent you on iMessage a couple of weeks ago,” for example;
- iOS 19.4: Expected around April-May of 2026, Siri is getting a new architecture that can operate legacy Siri commands while handling more advanced queries in the same flow;
- iOS 20: Believe it or not, Gurman’s forecast goes up until 2027, when Apple might be finally able to fix Siri and deliver the LLM Siri, which was technically supposed to be revealed this June.
Apple can’t afford to wait two more years for a proper Apple Intelligence platform
Even though Apple is the most valuable company on Earth, it has already lost the AI race. While its devices are somewhat important to run to these LLM competitors, it’s only a matter of time before someone unveils a true AI device that will make our iPhones, iPads, and Macs obsolete.
Amazon’s Alexa+ presentation was impressive, and OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft always introduced breakthrough features. The Chinese are also way ahead of the curve, making Apple look silly when you think it has billions of dollars to spend on R&D and Apple Intelligence can only do weird emojis.
With Apple focusing on major releases once every year, it’s also time for the company to hold more WWDC-like keynotes or completely change how it makes announcements. After all, Gurman now expects iOS 19 to not “include any significant consumer-facing changes to Apple Intelligence.”
If that’s the case, I really think Apple can’t afford a light iOS 19 update. This time, cosmetic changes or even a UI revamp won’t be enough to make this update worth it. And, again, if someone else introduces a device that makes iPhones obsolete, Apple might fade to be just another company, not the one other firms look up to.
