Apple Ships iOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate 27 With Siri AI and Liquid Glass Refinements

As reported by Ars Technica on September 14, 2026, Apple has released its annual platform updates: iOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, visionOS 27 and tvOS 27. The flagship feature across all of them except one is Siri AI, a large-language-model-based, context-aware overhaul of the assistant.

What the new Siri does

Siri AI responds in natural language to requests such as explaining what is on screen, can search a user's past personal context and history (old emails and text messages), and can directly interact with applications where developers have added support. Other AI features include generating Shortcut automations or Safari extensions from a prompt and additional photo editing options. There is now also a dedicated Siri app, which the author compares in some respects to the classic ChatGPT or Claude apps.

The models behind it

The report lists a handful of Apple-developed models, most labeled AFM 3:

• On-device: AFM 3 Core with 3 billion parameters, and AFM 3 Core Advanced, a 20-billion-parameter model that "uses a sparse architecture, activating just 1 to 4 billion parameters at a time depending on the request".
• Server-side: AFM 3 Cloud, ADM 3 Cloud (Image) and the more powerful AFM3 Cloud Pro.

What each platform got

• iOS and macOS: a slider now controls how transparent or opaque the Liquid Glass design looks across the OS. macOS adds numerous small design tweaks responding to user feedback accumulated since Liquid Glass shipped; the review calls it a much-needed polish pass rather than anything radically new.
• macOS also gains HDR support for all system UI elements and more robust support for a wider range of external display modes.
• tvOS 27 has none of the new Siri AI features, focusing on Podcasts and Music changes plus larger interface text options.
• watchOS 27 adds the Siri app and Siri AI, a new watch face, design updates and expanded health and fitness features (including perimenopause and menopause notifications and tracking, and more accurate step counting), while removing a few little-used features such as Walkie Talkie.
• visionOS 27 gets Siri AI and the Siri app too, a new virtual environment (Thórsmörk), improved screen recording and small UX tweaks.

Device cutoffs and the end of an era

All updates are available to supported devices from September 14. iOS 27 supports the iPhone 11 and later, but Siri AI requires an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 16 or later, and Golden Gate requires an M-series Mac. Notably, Golden Gate is the last version of macOS to support Rosetta, so many older unmaintained Intel applications will stop working after this cycle — with an exception Apple carved out for older games built for Intel Macs.