It’s not Apple’s finest hour, as the company is going through one of the most humiliating periods of its recent history. Apple had to admit a few days ago that the smarter Siri it advertised as coming this year to iPhone via Apple Intelligence is delayed indefinitely. It’s unclear how long it’ll take for that Siri upgrade to come to iPhone 16 and other supported devices.
The realization that the smarter Siri in Apple Intelligence is just vaporware prompted plenty of backlash from Apple fans unhappy with how Apple handled the delay.
I said at the time that I still want the Siri vision Apple unveiled at WWDC 2024, but I want Apple to be honest about what it can and can’t do. Yes, Apple is well behind ChatGPT and Gemini, considering this massive setback, but it has time to catch up and deliver the product it advertised. Personal AI assistants are the future of computers, and Apple will eventually get there.
Now that we’re used to the idea of Apple Intelligence being a huge letdown, we can go back to using iPhones as if Apple Intelligence doesn’t exist. Without the smart Siri that should have been here, Apple Intelligence is really nothing to write home about. I’ll continue to ignore it, even though it’s finally available in Europe. It offers nothing I need right now.
However, it looks like Siri, available outside of Apple Intelligence, is somehow getting dumber. People have noticed the iPhone assistant can’t answer simple questions like “What month is it?” and that’s bad news for Apple.
Siri was the key iPhone 4s feature that Apple unveiled all the way back in 2011. That was nearly 15 years ago. It was extraordinary, teasing the sort of iPhone functionality that seemed taken out of a sci-fi movie. You could issue simple voice commands to the assistant, and Siri would provide assistance.
Since then, competitors have overtaken Siri’s capabilities, with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Google Assistant being two good examples, despite Apple improving its own voice assistant.
In 2025, you’d expect Siri to understand your question when you ask it what month it is and answer it. Or, at least, Siri could start a web search for your query, which is what it used to do in the past when it couldn’t quite catch what you asked.
That’s not the case. Siri says it doesn’t understand your question when you ask it what month it is. Apple enthusiast John Gruber, who made waves last week pointing out the deeply misleading Apple Intelligence Siri development and marketing, found a Reddit thread where multiple users posted their experience asking Siri what month it is.
Gruber says he reproduced Siri’s “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” on his iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 18.4 beta 4. I asked Siri the same question on my iPhone 16 Pro Max and got the same bewildering answer.
Truth be told, I have no idea whether Siri ever knew what month it was. I never asked that question because it’s not something I need assistance with. I usually know what month it is. But a phone voice assistant should, at the very least, know what month it is.
I even tried to text Siri the same question and got the same response. Dumb Siri can’t answer a basic question. It does know the date, so that’s something. But it can’t extract the month from there.
One Reddit user tried to ask, “What month is it currently?” and got the answer, “It is 2025.” My Siri didn’t understand this question either.
This is just embarrassing for Apple, especially in light of the Apple Intelligence fiasco. I can’t wait to see how and when Apple will address these matters publicly.
