Apple releases iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate 27 with Siri AI and Liquid Glass refinements
Ars Technica Samuel Axon ● Covered by 4 sources
Apple shipped iOS 27, macOS 27, and the rest of its yearly OS updates. The big push is a rebuilt Siri, plus some long-needed cleanup for Liquid Glass.
Based on reporting by Ars Technica, Samuel Axon — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
Apple has rolled out its yearly operating system updates, including iOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27. The headline feature is Siri AI, a large language model-based rewrite of Apple’s assistant that spans everything except tvOS.
This new Siri is meant to do more than answer questions. It can look at what’s on the screen, pull in a user’s past context such as old emails and text messages, and act inside apps when developers have added support. Apple is also tying in more AI features, including prompt-based Shortcut automations, Safari extensions, and extra photo editing options.
There’s even a dedicated Siri app now, which makes the assistant feel a little more like the standalone ChatGPT and Claude apps people already know. Under the hood, Apple says these Apple Intelligence features are driven mainly by its own models, most of them in the AFM 3 family.
Those models split between on-device and cloud. Apple lists AFM 3 Core with 3 billion parameters, plus AFM 3 Core Advanced at 20 billion parameters, with a sparse setup that activates only 1 to 4 billion parameters at a time depending on the request. On the remote side, there are AFM 3 Cloud, ADM 3 Cloud (Image), and AFM3 Cloud Pro.
The other big change is visual, not generative. Across iOS and macOS, users now get a slider that changes how transparent or opaque Liquid Glass looks, and macOS in particular gets a batch of smaller design tweaks based on feedback that’s been piling up since Liquid Glass arrived. So this update is less a reinvention than a cleanup job, and Apple clearly needed one.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Apple keeps proving that closed models can be polished, expensive, and very product-y, which is exactly the point. The company isn’t chasing the loudest demo; it’s trying to make AI feel like a native part of the operating system, with just enough restraint to avoid the usual circus. And the Liquid Glass slider is the quiet admission that users still like control more than a glowing brochure.
Read more about this at: Ars Technica