Apple Finally Fixed Siri: What to Try Right Now

If you have an iPhone, this one is for you. Apple just held its big annual event — WWDC 2026 — and for the first time in a long time, Siri actually delivered. Not a small update. A real overhaul. The kind that might actually change how you use your phone every day.

 In this episode, Ginny walks you through everything that happened at Apple’s developer conference — including a goodbye to someone who made Apple what it is. You’ll learn exactly what changed with Siri, what Apple Intelligence means for your iPhone, and — in the biggest news of the event — why Apple is now letting you choose which AI you want to use: ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, or others. Ginny covers what you can try right now and what you’ll need to wait for this fall, with honest, practical guidance and no tech jargon required.

 Also in this episode: one billion people are now using ChatGPT every single month — Ginny explains what that number actually means for the rest of us. Plus, President Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders just agreed on something involving AI, and it’s one of those stories you won’t see coming. And Ginny wraps up with a recommendation that has nothing to do with AI: Season 2 of The Four Seasons on Netflix just dropped, and it is worth every minute.

 Whether you’re an iPhone faithful or just AI-curious, this episode will leave you knowing exactly what to do next. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

SHOW LINKS:

🔗 ChatGPT 1 Billion Users — Quartz: https://qz.com/chatgpt-billion-monthly-users-rivals-gaining-061226

🔗 Trump + Sanders on AI Ownership — Fortune: https://fortune.com/2026/06/05/trump-partnership-openai-anthropic-xai-nationalization-bernie-sanders-altman/

🔗 The Four Seasons on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81750702

CHAPTERS

00:00 Welcome and Preview

01:17 ChatGPT Hits One Billion

03:06 Trump and Bernie on AI

05:13 WWDC Big Moment

05:54 Siri Frustration Era

07:26 Tim Cook Steps Down

08:59 Siri Rebuilt With Gemini

11:11 Choose Your AI Brain

13:20 Try Now vs Fall

16:25 New iPhone Features

18:33 Privacy and Policies

20:51 Netflix Four Seasons

22:41 Final Wrap and Advice

aiGED: AI for the 65+ crowd

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Well, hello everybody. It's Ginny Dearan, and I am here with my sidekick Bitsy, and we are getting ready to deliver episode 41 to you guys. We are a podcast that's all about AI for the 65 Plus crowd. And we're going to start out with some news. I got a couple of stories I think you'll want to hear about. The first has to do with how many people are using AI. And we're going to talk about whether the numbers really mean anything or if they're just too big to think about. Then there's a story that really made me do a little bit of a double take. President Trump and Bernie Sanders agree on something. Yep. And it involves AI, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that. After that, we're going to dive into the main topic, which is Apple Siri and what just happened at their big annual event last week. If you have an iPhone, I do, and I know a lot of you do, this episode is for you. I'm going to tell you what actually changed and what you can try right now and what you're going to have to wait for until the fall. And I'm going to wrap up with a recommendation that has absolutely nothing to do with AI. So you're welcome. Okay, so AI in the news. Let's get started. Chris Ptolemia, Writing in Quartz, which is an online business and technology news site, on June 12th published a piece called ChatGPT Reaches One Billion Monthly Active Users in Record Time. The subhead reads OpenAI's ChatGPT became the fastest app ever to reach the milestone. But Claude and Meta AI are growing their user bases more quickly. So think about it, one billion people using AI every single month. To put that in perspective, it took Google Maps, which pretty much everybody uses, about five years to reach that same number. Chat GPT got there in three and a half. So I want to ask, hey Bitsy, can you put this billion users number in context? How many active users does Claude and Google Gemini have? Do you know?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Hey there. So a billion sounds massive, right? But here's the thing: Claude and Gemini don't publish their exact user numbers, which honestly tells you something. What we do know is they're both growing fast, but Chat GPT still dominates the market share. It's less about the raw number and more about what people actually use day to day.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Okay, well I guess if you're using AI as I am, we're all part of this story, and if you haven't yet used an AI, a billion people just made a pretty compelling case that it might be worth a look if that many people are using it, or at least tapping into it. So the second story I want to bring up is that Washington wants a piece of the AI companies. So this is a news story that I was what? I did not see that coming. But the headline in Fortune magazine, published June 5th, reads, MAGA hates AI, but Trump agrees with Bernie it might be time for partial government ownership. Here's what's happening. President Trump said the U.S. government might take equity stakes, meaning actual ownership shares, in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk's company XAI. The idea is that if these AI companies make enormous profits reshaping the American economy, the American people should get a cut, like a shareholder, a dividend. And at the same time, and this is the part that made me do a double take, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced something called the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. His version would impose a 50% tax on those same companies and use the money to fund a government investment pool, which could fund a lot of things that we need, like health care and education, and taking care of our environment. Anyway, different methods, but the same basic idea. Washington from both the far right and the far left is circling AI money. To me, us getting a share makes sense since all these companies are profiting from all the knowledge and information that humanity created, and the AI's just swept it all up into their AI models. I have no idea how this ends up, but I find it fascinating that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are for once pointing in the same direction. Now, as always, I'm going to put links to the articles mentioned in today's AI in the news in our show notes. So let's get to the main topic for this episode: Apple's big moment and a big goodbye. So every year, Apple holds what they call WWDC, the Worldwide Developers Conference. It's their big annual event where they show the world what's coming to our iPhone, iPad, Mac. Think of it as Apple's version of a very dramatic reveal. This year's was held last week, June 9th, at Apple Park in California. But this one was different, and not just because of the announcements. I'll start with a question for you. How many times has Siri, Apple's voice assistant, the one you've been talking to on your iPhone for years, completely let you down? You asked it something totally reasonable, something like, Siri, what time does the pharmacy close? Or maybe you said, Siri, remind me to call my daughter when I get home. And instead of helping you, it either searched the web for something random, misheard you entirely, or gave you that little, sorry, I didn't get that. Well, you're not alone, not even close. Siri frustration is practically a national pastime. People have been complaining about it for years, and here's the thing: Apple knew it too. And last week, they finally did something about it. Something big, they say. Those of us who grew up with Apple know that Steve Jobs had a signature move at these events. I mean, I remember I wasn't even a tech person, but I used to watch those big events with Steve Jobs. And he'd walk out in his black turtleneck, work through the whole presentation, new software, new features, the whole thing. And just when you thought it was over, he'd pause and he'd get a little smile and he'd say, one more thing. And then he'd pull out something nobody saw coming. That's how we got the original iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007. It became so iconic that one more thing meant, hold on, this is the one that matters. Anyway, as we know, Jobs died in 2011, and since then Tim Cook has been the lead. 15 years is a long time, and I think he did a good job. It was disappointing when he groveled up to the White House to hand Donald Trump a gold statue in hopes of getting a tariff break. I mean, come on, Apple, you are better than that. Anyway, at this big annual event, Tim Cook announced he's stepping down as CEO in September, handing the reins to a man named John Turnus. At the end of the keynote, Cook gave a farewell. He said getting the best products in the world to deliver experiences that enrich people's lives has always been our North Star. It's been the honor of a lifetime, and I bet it has. I think he did a really good job. But that's a chapter closing, and I thought it was worth acknowledging the change of leadership. Now, let's talk about what was said during Cook's keynote address. One tech writer summed it up perfectly. Apple structured the whole thing, fixes before features. Fixes before features. In other words, they didn't lead with shiny new things. They led with, we heard you, we fixed it. That alone tells you something. Apple is behind in the AI race. They know it, and last week was their very public attempt to catch up, to talk about how they're going to catch up. So let's talk about the big news. It's all about Siri. Apple's not just updating her, it's a complete rebuild. The engine underneath is now powered by Google's Gemini AI, which is Google's most advanced artificial intelligence system. And along with that, Siri now has its own dedicated app. So instead of just holding down a button and firing one command into the void, you'll be able to open the Siri app and have an actual back and forth conversation, like you would with Claude or with Google AI or with ChatGPT. But here's what's really different. The old Siri was basically a one trick at a time situation. You asked it, it answered, and then it forgot everything the moment the conversation ended. The new Siri is what they call context aware. Context aware. That means it knows what's on your screen, it knows what's in your calendar, it can look at your recent emails, and it connects all of that together. Here's an example. Let's say you're driving to your doctor's appointment and you ask Siri for the address. Instead of making you dig through your phone or repeat yourself three times, the new Siri can find the address from the email the doctor's office sent you last week. It does the connecting. You don't have to. Hey Bitsy, why do you think Apple took so long to fix Siri? They're usually way out in front of everyone else.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Great question. Honestly, I think Apple got comfortable. Siri worked well enough for simple stuff, and they were busy dominating hardware and ecosystem lock-in. But the AI arms race caught them flat footed. Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini all leapfrogged them with smarter, context-aware assistance. Sometimes the best doesn't stay best if you're not pushing yourself.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

And I haven't really heard anyone else explain it this way for regular people. Apple announced something called the extensions system. And what it means in plain English is that for the first time ever, your iPhone is going to let you choose which AI brain it runs on. You'll have three options, at least for now. The first is Google Gemini, that's the Apple default. It's already baked into the new Siri under the hood, and if you use Gmail or any Google products, it's already familiar with how you work and the data that you have. The second option is ChatGPT from a company called OpenAI. That's the one that sort of kicked off this whole AI revolution a few years back and made headlines everywhere. For a long time, it was my primary AI. ChatGPT and I were very close. The third option is Claude from the company Anthropic. Claude is known for being particularly good at reading and understanding long, complicated documents and having a very natural conversational style. And now it's my primary AI. Now I'm not here to tell you which AI to pick as your primary. I imagine most everyday users might pick the Apple default, which is Gemini. But I wanted to talk to you about this and why this is such a big deal. Apple has never, never let another company this deep inside your iPhone before. They are famously protective of their ecosystem. The fact that they're now saying, quote, we trust you to pick your own AI is a fundamental shift. It's like the difference between being assigned a doctor and getting to choose one. So we're going to be able to choose, which is great. So, what can you try right now versus what you have to wait for? Now I know some of you are thinking, all right, this all sounds great, Ginny, but can I actually do anything with this today? Fair question, and let me break it down. Right now, Apple's released what's called a developer's beta of iOS 27. That's a preview version of the software, but it's meant for software developers, not for the rest of us. It's early, it can be buggy, and I would steer clear of it for now. That said, there is something you can do today. You can go to your iPhone settings, scroll down to Apple Intelligence and Siri, and take a look around. Apple has been quietly improving things over the past several months, and you may find features you didn't know were already there. I looked on my phone and honestly, I didn't see anything new. But you may have more because you may have a newer iPhone. So give it a look. This summer, probably July, Apple will release what's called a public beta. That's a preview version you can sign up for. It's free, it's more stable than the developer version, but still early software. If you're curious and adventuresome and don't mind the occasional glitch, you can Google Apple Public Beta Program. So Google Apple Public Beta Program and sign up. I'll put the link in the show notes. And then this fall, right around when Apple announces the new iPhone, iOS 27, will come to everyone.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Hey Jenny, this is a massive shift for Apple. They're essentially saying, We built the best phone, now you pick the smartest brain. That's confidence or desperation. Either way, it's good news for us because competition between Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude means they all have to keep getting better. The real winner here is you.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

And Apple said that this update is going to be available to every iPhone 11 and newer. And it's going to be available this fall. That's a good thing for all of us. I have an iPhone 15, I think. So at any rate, if your phone is less than six or seven years old, you're in. We're all in. It's a free update. As I said, mine's an iPhone 15, so I'm good. And I'll be really looking forward to checking out how good Series AI is. And I will probably, because I've gotten so used to using Claude, I will probably use it and select it as my default AI, the brain that I want my phone to use. So I find that to be really, really super great. So let me give you just a couple of concrete examples of what's coming that I think will genuinely make our lives easier and more fun. First of all, dictation will actually work. Apple is rolling out a new system-wide dictation feature that doesn't just transcribe what you say, it cleans it up, gets rid of the ums, the ahs, you know, all of those sort of filler words. And it also autocorrects punctuation and capitalization as you go, and it supposedly is going to do a really great job. And if you've ever tried to dictate a long text message on your phone and it ended up with something that looked like gibberish, you're gonna like this improvement. And so I'm optimistic that the dictation function is gonna be really helpful. The next improvement, search that actually finds things. Apple completely rebuilt search from scratch. Finding an old email, locating a photo from two summers ago, digging up a document, you don't even remember saving, all of that is supposed to work dramatically better. I am cautiously optimistic. And the photos app is getting smarter. There's a new tool called Extend that can use AI to expand old photos. If you have a picture that's cropped a little too tight, the AI photo feature is going to fill in what was likely just outside that frame, and that is so great. And the existing cleanup tool, the one that removes things from the background of photos, is getting a major upgrade, which is great because I think the most recent upgrade was super. We used it in Italy a lot. You're trying to take this beautiful picture, and all of a sudden, this tourist starts walking across your picture, and then you take it and you can get rid of that tourist. So it's really a great feature. So as I will wrap this main topic up, let's talk about Apple's privacy promise. Because privacy is obviously on our minds. Whenever we talk about AI on your phone, AI that knows your calendar, your emails, your photos, the natural question is who's reading all of this? Was Apple snooping around in my personal life? Am I going to have no privacy? Apple addressed this directly at the keynote. They said, we believe privacy in AI is non-negotiable. He said your data is only used to carry out your specific request and that outside experts can verify this at any time. Not exactly sure how this is going to work, but we'll just have to believe Apple or not. I will add one caveat to that. Apple's privacy policy applies to Apple's own processing. If you choose to use ChatGPT or another AI option, like Claude, as your extension, as your brain in your theory, then that AI company's privacy policy applies instead. So make sure you're comfortable with your AI's privacy policy. Although, as I say that, I've never read Claude's privacy policy, my AI's privacy policy, I've never read it. And I bet I'm not alone. As my grandson says, boring. Anyway, hey Bitsy, where does one find their privacy policy? And for Claude, what are the basics and how many pages would I have to read?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Ha. Most privacy policies are a snooze fest, but here's the quick version. You'd find Claude's at anthropic.comslash privacy. The basics are pretty straightforward. Anthropic doesn't train on your conversations, doesn't sell your data, and you can delete chats any time. As for pages, maybe three or four of actual readable stuff before your eyes glaze over.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Alright, that's not too bad. I I might be able to force myself to read that, but I have to say I do trust Claude a lot and think he has good ethics. At any rate, time for recommendations. This week's recommendation has absolutely nothing to do with AI. Zero Zilch, and that's the point. My recommendation for the week is to watch the four seasons on Netflix. It's based on the 1981 Alan Alda movie. I love that guy. And it was the movie that he did by the same name. And anyway, this Netflix series, The Four Seasons, stars Tina Faye and Steve Carroll together in a comedy. That should be enough to get us all watching, right? But I'd never stumbled across it. It's pretty new. Season two just dropped at the end of May, so barely two weeks ago. So the timing couldn't be better. It's all about three couples who've been vacationing together for years. I mean, they're not the 65 plus crowd, but I don't know, maybe 60. So it's pretty relevant. Anyway, one of them shows up in the spring trip that they take and announces he's getting divorced from someone they all love and have vacationed with forever. And suddenly a friendship that worked perfectly for decades starts to wobble. It's funny, it's warm, it's a little bittersweet in the ways things do when you've known people forever and life keeps changing anyway. Perfect for anyone who needs something to watch that isn't about AI, the economy, or whatever the heck is going on in the news cycle. So, at any rate, one more thing about this Four Seasons series on Netflix. One of the characters is named Ginny. So I consider this a personal endorsement. The Four Seasons, Netflix, go find it. Alright, well, that is a wrap. Thanks for listening and encouraging others to follow the Aged Podcast where we live on the helpful side of AI. But we do know that AI can be hazardous, so please be sure to protect your info, double check advice, and most important, trust your judgment. And remember, it is never too late to learn something new, especially something that might make life easier and especially more fun. Cheers!