Field Note: WWDC26 Keynote Thoughts
Lately I’ve been reaching for Gemini more than I expected to. Not for everything — but enough to notice it’s getting better at the non-coding bits of work that I do. So when Apple showed off its rebuilt Siri on stage yesterday, the bit that mattered was what’s underneath the demo.
The new Apple Intelligence — the brain behind the new Siri — is built on Google’s Gemini. Apple co-developed its next-generation models with Google, using Gemini’s technology. Bloomberg reckons it’s a 1.2-trillion-parameter model, and that Apple’s paying Google somewhere near a billion dollars a year for the privilege.
Why getting into bed with Google makes sense
Apple was always going to have to partner with someone already doing this properly. They’ve been behind the ball with Siri for years — they promised this exact assistant back in 2024, only just shipped it, and settled a class action suit over the bits that never turned up. And of all the partners to pick, Google’s the obvious one as these two have been doing business for decades — Google pays Apple handsomely to be the default search on every iPhone, so the plumbing’s already there. Leaning on Gemini is the pragmatic move, and I think it’s the right one.
What it does to the privacy story
Apple spent a minute on stage knocking the other AI companies — the ones that keep your conversations by default and leave it to you to delete them or switch them off. “Privacy in AI is non-negotiable,” Craig Federighi said. And to be fair, a lot of it holds up. The small, fast model runs right on the device (depending on how new your hardware is!). Private Cloud Compute — the bit that handles the heavier jobs — is genuinely clever engineering, and Apple lets outside experts inspect it to check it’s keeping its word.
Then there’s the wrinkle. Google co-built the model doing the heavy lifting, and Google’s own Gemini app keeps your conversations by default — the very habit Apple had just been knocking. Apple’s official line is on-device plus its own Private Cloud Compute. But the reporting says the biggest jobs actually run on Google’s cloud, on Nvidia chips, because the model was too large to run fast enough on Apple’s own kit.
So Apple is selling the strongest privacy story in the business — and the brain underneath is from the company whose habits it had just been knocking. That may well be completely fine. But it’s a long way from “it never leaves your phone.” Privacy-focused is great — but only when you can trust the hardware and the companies behind it, and we’re nowhere near 100% AI on-device yet.
What I’m actually watching
The generative stuff — the photorealistic image maker, the writing tools — I can mostly take or leave. Generating fun images and videos doesn’t get work done. What I’m watching is whether Siri finally does the thing Apple promised two years ago: reach into your apps, understand what’s on your screen, hold the thread of a conversation, and actually act on it.
And the question I’d want answered before I got excited is a simple one — which apps? In the demos, Siri reaches happily into Apple’s own: Messages, Photos, Calendar, Mail. Your third-party apps only come along if the developer has wired them up through Apple’s App Intents — and even then they don’t seem to be the default. So if you live in WhatsApp, or Google Calendar, or a notes app that isn’t Apple’s, the honest answer today is: we’ll see. That’s the hard part, and it’s the only part that would change how I use the phone.
The new Siri ships as a beta later this year. Proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
Chalk another one up for the EU
One more thing which will sound familiar if you’re reading this from this side of the channel: the new Siri isn’t launching in the EU at first. Apple is again citing the Digital Markets Act, saying that the rules would force it to give rival assistants the same deep access to your phone, and it can’t square that with the security model.
So chalk another one up for the EU. It’s not for me to say whether Brussels is being overprotective to the point of getting in its own way. But it does fragment the market a bit more — and it means a good chunk of you won’t get the headline feature for a while yet. Me included.
That’s where we’ve landed. Apple’s caught up by borrowing someone else’s brain, wrapped it in the best privacy story in the business — and over here we still can’t use the best of it, and still can’t quite call it on-device.
We’ve got a long way to go.
Until next time
— Jim
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