{"id":299,"date":"2026-06-15T09:03:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/uncategorized\/ios-27-siri-agentic-shortcuts-review\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T09:26:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T09:26:44","slug":"ios-27-siri-agentic-shortcuts-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/news\/ios-27-siri-agentic-shortcuts-review\/","title":{"rendered":"iOS 27: Siri is Finally an Agent (With a Few Blind Spots)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I just spent a week living on the edge of the iOS 27 developer beta, and for the first time in a decade, Siri doesn’t feel like a glorified kitchen timer. We\u2019ve moved past the era of “I found this on the web” and into the era of Siri actually doing<\/em> things\u2014though it still has a habit of tripping over its own shoelaces when it leaves the Apple walled garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Magic of Agentic Shortcuts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The standout feature for me is the new agentic shortcuts generation. In previous versions, building a complex automation felt like writing assembly code with mittens on. Now, you just describe the intent, and Siri maps the App Intents to build the logic for you Source<\/a>. It\u2019s essentially a system-wide semantic index that understands what your apps can actually do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I tested this with a few cross-app chains, and it\u2019s surprisingly robust. It feels like the “democratization of automation” that reviewers have been calling for Source<\/a>. Instead of dragging blocks, you\u2019re just having a conversation with a compiler that actually understands English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Personal Context: The ISO Audit Test<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the big promises of Apple Intelligence is “Personal Context.” I decided to stress-test this by looking up when my next ISO audit was coming up. This requires Siri to dig through my emails, calendar, and potentially my files to find a specific date buried in a PDF or a thread from three weeks ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While it found the answer, this is where I noticed the first crack in the armor. Siri is incredibly smart about what\u2019s inside Apple\u2019s native apps, but it\u2019s still functionally blind to third-party data unless the developer has specifically built App Intents Source<\/a>. If your audit details are sitting in a Notion doc or a Slack thread, Siri is back to square one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Password Reset Agent: It Actually Works (Mostly)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The most “agentic” moment of the week was testing the password reset feature. I tried it with Spotify. The Passwords app identifies a weak or compromised credential, and you hit a “Fix Password” button. The agent then navigates the site in the background, handles the UI, and updates the Keychain Source<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It worked for Spotify, which was a relief, but don’t expect this to work everywhere. The agent relies on standard HTML structures. If a site uses aggressive anti-bot measures or non-standard JavaScript fields, the agent gets stuck Source<\/a>. It\u2019s a great start, but it\u2019s not a universal “fix my security” button yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Web Lookup Bottleneck<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One major gripe: when Siri has to go to the web, it feels like it\u2019s wearing blinders. It usually pulls from one or two webpages and calls it a day. Compared to “answer engines” like Perplexity that synthesize 10-15 sources, Siri\u2019s native web skills are still very limited Source<\/a>. You get a snippet, not a synthesis. I\u2019m hoping future updates allow for a more comprehensive crawl because right now, it misses the complete context more often than I\u2019d like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Image Playground and the Uncanny Valley<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I played around with the new Image Playground features\u2014specifically image expansion and reframing. The tech is impressive; it uses Private Cloud Compute to fill in the gaps when you widen a photo’s aspect ratio Source<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Technically, it works well. The textures blend, and the lighting matches. But personally? We\u2019ve officially entered the Uncanny Valley. Once you start letting AI “reframe” your memories, it\u2019s not really a picture anymore. It\u2019s a hallucination with a high-fidelity skin. It\u2019s useful for fixing a crooked horizon, but as a tool for “photography,” it feels slightly dangerous to the soul of the medium.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I lived on the iOS 27 dev beta for a week. From agentic password resets to uncanny valley AI photos, here is the raw truth about Apple’s new intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[60,152,151,153,145,154],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ai-agents","tag-apple-intelligence","tag-ios-27","tag-shortcuts","tag-siri","tag-tech-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balamurali.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}