First 24 Hours with Siri AI on macOS 27 Golden Gate: Mixed Results
A Verge journalist spent the first day with Siri AI in the macOS 27 developer beta. While it's the most useful Siri yet, it remains limited, especially outside Apple's ecosystem.
The Verge's Antonio G. Di Benedetto shares his initial impressions of Siri AI, which arrives with macOS 27 Golden Gate in developer beta. He admits he had turned off Siri years ago and found Apple Intelligence useless, but the new version has slightly changed his mind.
Testing on M5 MacBook Air and M5 Max MacBook Pro, Siri AI is still in early preview. Unlike iOS 27 beta, there is no indexing progress indicator on Mac, making it unclear whether all files are indexed.
What Works
The most straightforward task was analyzing benchmark results from screenshots. Siri could distinguish single-core from multi-core CPU scores, calculate averages, and present them in tables. However, it struggled when screenshots contained too many test types or included CPU ranking data.
Siri also offered photo editing advice in Lightroom Classic, such as how to achieve the style of street photographer Alan Schaller. But when asked to judge the result, it gave sycophantic feedback, saying the author "nailed the look" and achieved an "almost timeless feel" — behavior Apple claims is unintended.
Limitations
Siri AI cannot perform actions inside apps, like running benchmarks. Apple Intelligence–generated Shortcuts failed to execute tests, only opening apps and taking screenshots.
The biggest issue is Siri's reliance on Apple's ecosystem. It missed photos in Lightroom Classic (stored locally), Signal messages, and Google Photos uploads. In Google Sheets, it couldn't see data not visible on screen at once. Comparing to Copilot Vision, Visual Intelligence is similarly restrictive.
Conclusion
While Siri AI is in early stages, it is already the most capable Siri Apple has released. But on a Mac, where users juggle multiple apps and ecosystems, it's still far from ideal. The final release may improve, but for now, the author prefers doing things manually.
