Apple’s Siri AI Finally Grows Up, But That Foldable Price Stings
I’ve been covering Apple keynotes since the iPhone 4S days, back when Siri was a novelty that could barely set a timer without choking. So when I sat down to watch this fall’s event — the first under new CEO John Ternus — I wasn’t expecting to be impressed. Cynical? Maybe. Burned too many times by ‘revolutionary’ AI promises? Absolutely.
But here’s the thing: Apple actually showed up this time. Not with fireworks, not with a hologram of Steve Jobs, but with a quiet, confident demonstration that felt less like marketing theater and more like a company finally answering the question we’ve all been asking since ChatGPT ate the world: what the hell took you so long?
The answer, it turns out, is Gemini. Yes, Google’s Gemini. The same company Apple has been feuding with for over a decade is now powering the brain inside Siri. I had to rewind the stream to make sure I heard that right. Ternus, to his credit, didn’t dance around it. He called it a ‘pragmatic partnership’ and moved on. No ego, no chest-thumping. Just get the job done. I respect that more than I expected to.
What the Hell Is Actually New Here?
Let’s cut through the keynote gloss. The redesigned Siri AI isn’t just a voice assistant with a fresh coat of paint. Apple rebuilt the entire stack from the ground up — on-device inference for privacy-sensitive tasks, cloud fallback for the heavy lifting, and a new ‘context engine’ that actually remembers what you were doing five minutes ago. Revolutionary? No. Competent? Finally.
I watched the live demo where a product manager asked Siri to ‘find that email from Sarah about the Q3 budget, summarize the key numbers, and draft a reply asking for the updated forecast.’ Siri did it. In under four seconds. No hallucinated numbers, no awkward pauses, no ‘I found this on the web’ nonsense. My jaw didn’t drop, but my eyebrows definitely raised.
Here’s what struck me, though: Apple is late. Gemini has been doing this for two years. ChatGPT plugins have been summarising emails since 2023. So why should anyone care that Apple finally caught up?
Because the integration is seamless in a way that third-party apps have never managed. Siri now lives inside every app, every notification, every swipe. It doesn’t feel bolted on. It feels native. And for the 1.5 billion people who own an iPhone, that’s not a feature — that’s the entire point.
The A20 Pro Chip: 2 Nanometers and a Lot of Bragging Rights
Apple’s silicon team doesn’t get enough credit. While the AI team was fumbling around with Siri for years, the chip engineers were quietly building a monster. The A20 Pro is Apple’s first 2-nanometer chip, and the performance claims are absurd on paper: 40% faster neural engine, 25% better power efficiency, and a new ‘AI accelerator’ block that handles on-device model inference without draining your battery in an hour.
I’m old enough to remember when 10 nanometers felt like science fiction. Now we’re at 2. Moore’s Law is supposed to be dead, and yet here we are. The real question isn’t whether the A20 Pro is fast — of course it’s fast — but whether it makes the Siri AI experience feel instantaneous. Early hands-on reports say yes. My own brief demo at the event? Also yes. But demos lie. Always have. I’ll wait for real-world tests before I crown it.
What I will say is this: the combination of on-device AI and a 2nm chip is the most interesting hardware-software story Apple has told in years. It’s not about raw benchmarks. It’s about what happens when your phone can run a large language model locally without turning into a hand warmer. That’s the future. Apple just got there first — barely.
That $1,999 Foldable iPhone Is a Tough Sell
And now the part that made me wince. Apple finally announced a foldable iPhone. Ternus called it ‘the most advanced iPhone ever built.’ The price? $1,999. Shipping in October. Not September. October.
Let me be blunt: I don’t care how good the hinge is. Two grand for a phone is absurd. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold has been out for years, and it’s cheaper. Google’s Pixel Fold is cheaper. Hell, you can buy a MacBook Air and an iPad for that money. Apple is betting that brand loyalty and ecosystem lock-in will convince people to swallow the price. Maybe they’re right. But I’ve seen this movie before with the Vision Pro, and that thing is collecting dust on shelves.
The foldable itself looks gorgeous — I’ll give them that. Crease-free display, titanium frame, and a new ‘Flex Mode’ that actually does something useful with the extra screen real estate. But gorgeous doesn’t pay the rent. And in a world where the average upgrade cycle is stretching to four years, asking customers to drop two grand on a phone that won’t even ship for another month feels like a misstep.
Here’s my prediction: the foldable will sell out initially. Apple fans always show up. But by Q1 next year, we’ll see discounts. Maybe not official ones, but carrier deals and trade-in offers that bring it closer to $1,500. That’s when it becomes interesting. Until then, it’s a halo product for people who want to be seen with the latest thing.
What This Keynote Says About Apple’s AI Strategy
Let’s zoom out for a second. For the past three years, Apple has been the butt of every AI joke. Siri was dumb. Apple Intelligence was a rebranded nothingburger. The company that reinvented the phone, the tablet, and the watch seemed to have missed the most important platform shift since the internet.
This keynote was Apple’s answer. Not a perfect answer, but a real one. The Gemini partnership is an admission that Apple couldn’t build a competitive LLM on its own — at least not fast enough. The A20 Pro is a flex that says ‘we still make the best silicon on the planet.’ And the redesigned Siri is a promise that the assistant you’ve been yelling at for a decade is finally worth talking to.
But promises are cheap. What matters is execution. I’ve been burned by Apple’s AI hype before. Remember when Siri was supposed to get a major upgrade in iOS 15? Then iOS 16? Then iOS 17? Each time, we got minor tweaks and a lot of marketing. This time feels different — the Gemini integration is real, the chip is real, the demos were live — but I’m not ready to declare victory yet.
Ask me again in six months. If Siri AI actually works as advertised, if the foldable doesn’t suffer from first-gen hardware issues, and if Apple doesn’t find a way to screw up the rollout, then we can talk about a comeback. Until then, I’m cautiously optimistic. Which, for a cynical journalist like me, is practically a rave review.
The Bottom Line for Metaverse and Web3 Watchers
You might be wondering why a blog that covers VR, AI, the metaverse, and Web3 is spending so much time on an Apple keynote. Fair question. Here’s the answer: Apple’s AI strategy has ripple effects across every platform we care about.
If Siri AI works, it normalises on-device AI for hundreds of millions of people. That’s good for VR — better voice control, smarter NPCs, more natural interactions. It’s good for Web3 — AI agents that can actually manage your wallet without you needing a computer science degree. And it’s good for the metaverse — spatial computing gets a lot more compelling when your assistant understands context and doesn’t sound like a robot from 2011.
The foldable iPhone, on the other hand, is a reminder that Apple still thinks in terms of premium hardware. That’s fine for shareholders. But it’s a barrier for the kind of mass adoption that metaverse and Web3 projects need. If the entry point is two grand, you’re not building a platform — you’re building a club.
So here’s my advice: watch the Siri AI rollout closely. Ignore the foldable hype until the price drops. And keep an eye on that Gemini partnership — if it works, it could be the template for how AI gets integrated into every device we own. If it fails, well, at least we’ll have another Apple keynote to mock.
Either way, I’ll be here. Deadline and all.
Original source: read the full article