Siri AI, just not on my iPhone

I watched the same keynote you did and got quietly excited about Siri finally growing up. Then Apple’s own newsroom told me most of it won’t reach my iPhone.

If you’re in the EU, here’s the short version. iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 will ship without the dedicated Siri app, the expanded Visual Intelligence, the integrated writing tools, Siri in the Camera, and “other advanced Siri AI capabilities”. macOS 27, visionOS 27 and watchOS 27 get them. There’s no timeline for when the iPhone and iPad catch up.

Why, according to Apple

Apple points at the Digital Markets Act. Its argument: the DMA would force it to give virtual assistants near-unlimited access to your device — reading and sending your messages, making purchases, touching your files, acting without your oversight — and that’s a security risk it won’t ship by default.

Apple says it offered a fix: a “Trusted System Agent” to sit in the middle, plus an 18-month rollout. The European Commission rejected the proposals. Craig Federighi’s line was the quotable one: “their refusal to engage constructively on solutions that preserve privacy and security means we do not currently have a timeline.”

Who’s right doesn’t help me

I bought the phone. The feature exists. I can’t have it. That’s the whole story.

You can read that two ways. Either Apple has a real security objection and the Commission is being rigid, or Apple is using EU users as leverage and dressing a business decision up as privacy. There’s a version of the truth in both.

I’ll be honest: I don’t care enough to pick a side. I bought the hardware. The features exist. They’re running on iPhones a few hundred kilometres west of me. And the device I use most is the one left out.

So I’ll live on the Mac

There is one bit of luck in this. macOS 27 gets the features in the EU. So the device Apple built its whole mobile AI story around — the iPhone — is the one that loses here, while the Mac quietly wins.

That suits me better than it should. Most of the writing and the real work happens on the Mac anyway. I’m not going to switch my Apple Account region for this; the friction and the risk aren’t worth a Siri app. I’ll use the smart version where I’m allowed to, and wait for the rest.

For now, my iPhone stays a little dumber than my Mac. Not the split anyone planned.