Not just in iOS 18.4: The new Siri could arrive soon

The biggest surprise that buyers of the iPhone 16 & Co. are likely to experience is the fact that Apple is publicly advertising its AI system Apple Intelligence, but it will only hit the market with iOS 18.1 in October at the earliest – even substantially later in the EU. And that’s not all: the update brings only a few functions, with more planned in the coming months. Now things should be at least a little faster with the voice assistant Siri. This is the claim of a typically well-informed Apple journalist.

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Are partial functions already available with iOS 18.3?

How Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes in his newsletterAt least some parts of the new Siri features should already be available in iOS 18.3. Previously, these were only expected (later) in the spring with iOS 18.4. Siri already has a new look in iOS 18.1 with a nice animation and aims to capture conversation content longer – so that users can refer to previously asked questions, which usually works relatively well. You can even correct a sentence that has already started.

But really smart features such as capturing the current screen view to interact with it, as well as access to the user’s context, are initially missing. Apple is already promoting the latter extensively. Siri should know the user better than before, for example by being able to access previous conversations, pictures or other personal information. According to Gurman, although iOS 18.4 will still receive “many new Siri features,” “some” are already being discussed for iOS 18.3. He did not specify exactly what they were.

Frequent questions about the screenshot tool in macOS 15 can be answered

Time taken in current timeline

iOS 18.3 is currently expected to be released in January, with iOS 18.4 likely to follow at least February, if not March. That’s when the full Apple Intelligence Suite, which Apple announced over the summer, will be available.

First up are new writing tools, photo cleanup, and notification aggregation in iOS 18.1 (as well as iPadOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1). Image generators are not expected before iOS 18.2, nor is ChatGPT integration for Siri (upon request). All new Siri features will not arrive until 2025, as well as other languages. US English remains the only one for a long time.

(B.Sc.)