Apple releases iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate 27 with Siri AI and Liquid Glass refinements

Apple released iOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27. The headline is Siri AI: an LLM-based, context-aware overhaul that can explain what’s on screen, search personal history like old emails and texts, and drive apps when developers add support.

Hardware gates matter. iOS 27 runs on iPhone 11 and later, but Siri AI needs iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16 and later. Golden Gate requires an M-series Mac and is the last macOS to support Rosetta for Intel apps.

We’re reading this as Apple finally putting a conversational assistant at the center of the OS — with a clear on-device vs cloud split and a hard sunset for old Intel software.

We’re glad Apple is shipping the Siri rebuild instead of another year of promises. A dedicated Siri app, prompt-built Shortcuts and Safari extensions, and deeper photo tools make Apple Intelligence feel like a product surface, not a footnote.

The model stack is unusually explicit for Apple: AFM 3 Core at 3 billion parameters on device; AFM 3 Core Advanced at 20 billion with a sparse design activating 1–4 billion at a time; plus AFM 3 Cloud, ADM 3 Cloud for images, and AFM3 Cloud Pro on servers. That is a pragmatic hybrid — keep sensitive context local when you can, burst to cloud when you must.

tvOS skipping Siri AI is a tell about where Apple thinks the assistant earns its keep. Liquid Glass getting an opacity slider and a polish pass shows Apple heard the design backlash without ripping up the language.

Useful on-device AI is a win for latency and privacy when it works. The downside if this scales: a two-tier install base where older phones get the OS shell without the assistant, and a Rosetta cliff that will strand unmaintained Intel Mac apps after this cycle — with a carve-out for older games. I’m watching developer adoption of app actions and whether Siri AI feels discoverable enough to matter daily.

watchOS adds the Siri app plus health features such as perimenopause and menopause tracking and more accurate step counting, while removing Walkie Talkie. visionOS adds Siri AI, a Thórsmörk environment, and improved screen recording.