I’ve been playing with the new AI Siri and find myself more impressed with every little experiment. I think Apple finally got this right. In a recent Substack article (“125 Tests of the New AI Siri”), David Pogue calls it “a phone-changer.” (That will make more sense after you play with it a little)

It replaces most Google searches, most ChatGPT or Claude interactions, and cumulative hours of fumbling and searching and dragging and copying and finding and tapping and pasting. […] You can ChatGPT your own life […] The hardest part will be getting out of the habit of opening apps, and remembering that you have Siri.

It’s tempting to tell those around you, “Wow! Did you know Siri can…” but I’m going to resist that temptation. Here’s the thing… Android users (who all secretly suffer from Apple envy) will insist their phones have done xyz since the early 70s. The anti-AI crowd simply doesn’t want to hear about… anything AI related. So I’ll try to limit myself to sharing WHOA! moments here.

But if you’re among the 2.5 billion Apple customers, you probably don’t care (about Android). People just don’t switch platforms—from iPhone to Android or vice versa.

I think Mr. Pogue might be right about AI Siri changing how we use our phones. I’ve already found myself picking up the phone less often. I can simply tell Siri to do such and such or ask it a question and it does it. Again, from Mr. Pogue:

An overwhelming side effect of AI Siri is that you don’t open apps anymore. You just ask and then read (or listen to) the answer. As a result, some app companies might not want to play ball. They want you to open their apps, so they can show you ads. That may be why the Gmail app, for example, isn’t Siri-compatible.

A few AI Siri baby steps: