Apple’s new voice interface

Hey everyone, it's Mark. Apple's upcoming voice-control feature for the new Siri could be an under-the-radar hit — if it works. Also: Tim Cook placates Trump with minor supply-chain changes (and a bar of gold), and Apple is finishing up work on iOS 26 and Liquid Glass 1.0. Lastly, the iPhone maker loses a fifth AI engineer to Meta.

Last week in Power On: Apple's new "Answers" team prepares a stripped-down ChatGPT rival focused on world knowledge.

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The Starters

Apple iPhone 16s. Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America

Apple's decision to delay its next-generation Siri features this year set off a storm inside the company, leading to executive changes and underscoring to the public just how far behind the company is in artificial intelligence.

But here's the thing: The uproar over the delays largely missed the biggest reason to be disappointed. Many Apple watchers lamented that Siri wouldn't be able to tap into personal information to better handle requests — say, by finding a particular file sent from a friend, locating a song that was texted to you, or surfacing your driver's license number from your photos.

This capability was the star of Siri's demo at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference...