694: Potential and Homework

What It Covers

With WWDC one week away, ATP covers Apple's AI failures and what a genuine turnaround would require, Gurman's leaked details on a Gemini-powered Siri overhaul and Liquid Glass refinements for macOS 27, the CarPlay standoff with Rivian and GM, long-delayed Apple TV and HomePod hardware, and potential macOS 27 naming candidates from a trademarked shortlist.

Key Questions Answered

• •Apple AI Benchmark: Every AI feature Apple shipped in 2024 — Image Playgrounds, Genmoji, Writing Tools, Visual Intelligence — launched already behind competitors and received no meaningful iteration. The one exception is system-level audio transcription APIs, which developers found genuinely useful. The pattern to watch at WWDC 2027 is whether new features are competitive on launch day, not whether they exist at all.
• •Gemini-Powered Siri Architecture: Gurman reports Apple is rebuilding Siri on Google Gemini's underlying model for iOS 27, adding a dedicated chatbot-style app interface and AI-powered web search. The practical implication for users: Siri's natural language parsing should improve substantially, since LLMs handle ambiguous, sloppy human input far better than the rule-based systems Siri has relied on for over a decade.
• •CarPlay Adoption Reality: Surveys consistently show roughly 80% of car buyers will not purchase a vehicle without CarPlay support, yet Rivian executives continue publicly dismissing the feature while citing inaccurate claims — including that CarPlay requires full-screen takeover. Rivian's own in-vehicle routing, maps, Bluetooth audio, and media apps have all underperformed, pushing owners to mount phones in dashboard brackets as a workaround.
• •Liquid Glass Implementation vs. Design: Gurman's sources describe macOS 27's Liquid Glass changes as fixing incomplete implementation rather than correcting design flaws. The distinction matters for developers: bugs like toolbar button taps failing at edges and the requirement to render mirrored fake content beneath translucent sidebars are design-level problems, not implementation bugs, and a "slight redesign" framing suggests those root issues remain unaddressed in the upcoming release.
• •Apple Intelligence Delayed Features: The most anticipated Apple Intelligence capabilities — on-device personal context awareness, cross-app understanding, and proactive Siri actions using private data — were announced at WWDC 2024 but never shipped. These features represent Apple's only defensible AI moat, since third-party LLM apps cannot access the same encrypted on-device data. WWDC 2025 is the first realistic opportunity to actually deliver them.
• •Hardware Backlog from Siri Delays: Apple TV (last updated October 2022, now approaching 1,324 days without a refresh), HomePod mini, and a new HomePod with a screen all reportedly have completed hardware sitting in inventory. Shipment has been blocked by Siri feature readiness. With iOS 27 nearing announcement, these devices are expected to release in early fall alongside new iPhones, likely featuring an A17 Pro chip in the Apple TV.
• •Dynamic DNS 20-Year Cost Analysis: Maintaining a free NoIP dynamic DNS hostname for 20 years by clicking a monthly confirmation link and occasionally completing a CAPTCHA costs zero dollars versus the $3 per month paid tier — a total avoided spend of $720. The practical lesson for hobbyists: free tiers with minor manual renewal requirements can outlast the underlying use case entirely, especially when tools like Tailscale now solve the original problem more completely.