At 1 AM on June 9th, Tim Cook took to the stage of the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple's Cupertino campus in California for the 15th and final time as Apple CEO, opening WWDC 2026. He is scheduled to officially step down on September 1st, to be succeeded by John Tenus, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering. This conference is widely regarded as Cook's "farewell performance."
After a long two-year wait, Apple finally unveiled its "answers" in the field of AI at this conference—launching the largest overhaul of Siri since its inception in 2011, officially naming the new voice assistant **Siri AI**.
The new Siri AI is no longer just a "voice remote control," but boasts three core capabilities: **personal contextual understanding**, capable of extracting information from personal data such as emails and text messages; **screen awareness**, able to recognize on-screen content and act accordingly; and **cross-app execution**, seamlessly integrating across multiple apps to complete tasks. Apple also launched a standalone Siri app for the first time, deeply integrating Google's Gemini model to address its own limitations in large-scale model capabilities.
This year's conference unified the upgrade of its mainstream operating systems to version 27 (iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27 "Golden Gate," etc.), focusing entirely on AI capabilities. AI not only restructures Siri but also permeates system applications such as Photos, Safari, Messages, and Mail. iOS 27 supports upgrades for iPhone 11 and later models, but the most powerful on-device AI model requires 12GB or more of RAM, meaning that only the latest devices such as the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPad Pro with the M4 chip can experience the full range of AI capabilities.
However, for users in mainland China, this launch event was undoubtedly a disappointment. At its conference, Apple explicitly stated that **Siri AI and other new Apple smart features will not be available in the Chinese mainland market for the time being**, citing the need to "cooperate with regulatory requirements to advance related work." The capital market reacted similarly coldly, with Apple's stock price experiencing a sharp drop after opening high during the event, closing down 1.89% that day, wiping out over 570 billion yuan in market value.
Cook's departure marks the end of an era and leaves behind a suspenseful question: after being "two years late" in the AI field, whether Siri AI can help Apple truly gain a foothold in the AI race remains an unsolved problem for his successor. For Chinese consumers, the answer will be even longer.
