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Last year, Apple announced iOS 18 with huge fanfare. Months were spent detailing just how Apple Intelligence would save Siri from being the clumsy bot it is known as. The promise was that it could read your screen, understand context and navigate between apps to get real tasks done. Six months on, spring 2025 has arrived and that all still appears to be hanging together by a thread.
The tech giant this month was forced to announce it had abandoned its original timetable. A spokesperson informed Daring Fireball back in March that its latest and greatest Siri capabilities are delayed until next year, removing its flagship functions from the iOS 18 release (the 18.4 update has apparently lost its ability to offer context awareness on a screen, as well as inter-app functionality). It looks like Apple is struggling to exterminate the persistent bugs and internal testers are even said to be worried Apple may need to re-do the Siri’s underlying intelligent functions from scratch, putting the sophisticated assistant in2026 at the earliest.
What Did We Really Miss?
The tools that were meant to save Siri are in limbo. The ability for Siri to view the contents of your phone and act upon what it sees is a high-level casualty, having missed the release. This could have enabled users to save the new address to a contacts app for example by simply telling Siri: “Save this address to so-and-so’s contact card.” Or to just say to the assistant: “ Send that picture of our holiday to Mum.”Cross-app capability that could have been used for a variety of tasks such as “Copy that email I’m writing into an iMessage”or “Draft that into an email to Steve, then grab driving directions to his place” is also in limbo. What did we get instead? “Apple said its new assistant would learn your preferences, know when to use specific apps, understand the context of where you are on your phone screen, help you compose messages using generative AI and allow you to use an array of third-party AI tools on-device and in the cloud. What did we get instead? Basic ChatGPT web-searching, an animated glow around the sides of the display, and a basic, though somewhat faster, text-based assistant with a built-in chat tool.” The assistant’s underlying brain is still much the same, according to early reviews.
Phones Slowed, Users Agitated
The features which did make it have been proving somewhat problematic, namely battery drain. In recent weeks, iPhone users running the very latest iOS 18 have been complaining that they are experiencing the ‘worst battery drain yet,’ along with general system ‘sluggishness’. Artificial Intelligence in any form requires power, and running the models on the hardware – to keep a level of on- device intelligence – requires significantly more juice than Apple’s existing system processors were designed to handle. This seems to be contributing to tasks such as starting a morning podcast now taking notably longer to complete than before. ‘The system stutters. The visuals and the motion for the system itself seem delayed,’ said one user who was “sick of my iPhone not working.” The extensive background work involved in Apple Intelligence, which requires updating apps and re-indexing documents, is consuming far more memory, making overall performance even worse. Many are experiencing keyboard input lag, meaning typing on a text feels jerky and disjointed. The ‘hack’ is turning off interface motion effects and disabling background app refresh from the general settings menu – essentially crippling an expensive handset to make it perform acceptably.
The Digital Markets Act in Europe
Apple’s struggles don’t stop with its technical bugs, though it’s facing further problems with EU regulators which led to a complete halt on its major Siri updates for iPhones and iPads across the EU, indefinitely. The company is taking on the continent over the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which compels it to open up its core operating systems to third parties.
Siri, as any smart assistant, relies on system-level access to read your texts and know which files it can access and edit to provide the smart functionalities being introduced by Apple. Regulators argue that if Apple allows its own assistant this kind of access, it must grant an identical level of access to third party AIs installed on the App Store. Apple refuses, citing significant security implications if a malicious third-party app was given open-access to all user files. In light of this impasse, EU consumers won’t be able to try out Apple’s new writing aids, on-screen search functions, or chat history.
Falling Behind Android Ecosystem
Apple’s recent inability to deliver what it promises is proving a sharp contrast to what we’re seeing across the divide. Vendors of the Android ecosystem, are rapidly rolling out smarter devices with in-built AI functions already. This year, the S25 range launched from Samsung with what was reported to be the most powerful set of on-board AI functions available on a handset. Likewise Google, is continuously weaving Gemini more and more tightly into the Pixel OS. A report this month from TechInsights indicates that what might initially have been viewed as a carefully paced rollout by Apple in an effort to avoid their competitors pitfalls, could now be interpreted as a sign of the company being in turmoil, by missing its own development benchmarks. A push-back to 2026 for its most advanced Siri functions indicates that Apple may have, in the eyes of the world, vastly underestimated the challenges of creating such a high-level of an artificial intelligence on a consumer handset.
