“Apple Intelligence 2.0” isn’t Apple’s official name, but it’s a useful shorthand for where the company is going. Apple calls it the next generation of Apple Intelligence, with Siri AI as the most visible piece.

That’s a risky place to put the spotlight because Siri has baggage. For years, it’s been the assistant people use for timers, weather, and arguments with a glowing orb that somehow heard every word except the important one.

The ideal version is Siri finding the flight code from an email while the airline hold music slowly removes the will to live.

That’s the version Apple is now trying to sell: AI that doesn’t live in a separate prompt window, but inside the normal behavior of the iPhone.

Why Siri still carries the whole thing

Siri AI is the obvious star because Siri has spent years as Apple’s most public AI problem. The new version is supposed to understand context, see what’s on screen, answer tougher questions, and act across apps. Apple says Siri AI can use personal context to search across messages, emails, photos, and more, while also answering onscreen questions and taking broader systemwide actions.

That is a huge reset, meant to make Siri look like it didn’t sleep through the entire chatbot boom. The funny thing is that this sounds impressive partly because the baseline has been so low. Apple is finally describing the Siri people thought they were getting years ago.

That doesn’t make the update fake or unimportant. It makes the stakes stranger. Apple is rebuilding trust in a feature many users have already trained themselves to ignore.

A better Siri doesn’t need to become a charming digital friend. It needs to stop making simple things feel like a scavenger hunt.

What the new features are really doing

The new Apple Intelligence features can look scattered at first. Some live in Siri. Others show up in the camera, text fields, calls, photos, and everyday apps. Taken together, they point at one goal: make the phone feel less fragmented.

Writing help should appear where people are already typing. Visual search should work through the camera. Call Context should surface the right detail during a call, because modern life still requires that specific punishment.

Apple specifically says Call Context can surface a confirmation code or reservation number during a business call, including finding an airline confirmation code from Mail.

Photo tools should make editing feel less like a separate errand. Messages and Mail should get smarter without turning every reply into a corporate memo with better punctuation. The camera should understand more of what it sees without demanding that users learn another AI ritual.

The best version of Apple Intelligence shouldn’t feel like “using AI.” It should feel like the phone understands the task better and removes some of the manual nonsense around it.

Much of the AI race has trained people to think of AI as a separate destination, and Apple is trying to make it feel like something already under the glass.

How Apple ended up here

Apple Intelligence started in 2024 with a smaller first wave of tools. It brought writing help, notification summaries, photo cleanup, and a nicer Siri shell.

Those tools were useful, though they were not the full version of the idea Apple was selling. The larger promise was always a more personal Siri that could understand what users were doing and act across apps. That’s the stuff that would make it feel less like a voice interface with nicer lighting.

Because those more ambitious Siri features weren’t part of the first wave, the first version of Apple Intelligence felt oddly incomplete. This update is Apple trying to close that gap.

Apple can talk about privacy, polish, and ecosystem control, but useful AI also needs raw model strength. Apparently, that meant letting Google into the machinery.

Why the boring plumbing decides everything

That hidden machinery may decide whether Apple Intelligence works at all. Siri AI can only become useful if apps expose enough information and actions for the system to understand.

That’s where things like App Intents and semantic indexing stop being developer jargon and start becoming the product. Apple says App Intents lets developers connect app content and capabilities to Siri AI features like personal context understanding, app actions, and onscreen awareness.

Most users will never think about any of this. Nobody buys an iPhone because the app plumbing looks healthy. If Siri can’t find the right thing, act on the right screen, or understand what an app can do, the magic trick collapses back into voice-command theater.

This is the least glamorous part of Apple Intelligence, and probably the most important. A smarter model can answer better questions, but an assistant that can’t interact with the apps people actually use is still trapped behind glass.

Where the promise gets messy

Apple’s careful approach creates its own problems. Siri needs enough personal context to help without making the phone feel like it’s reading over someone’s shoulder with a clipboard. It also needs enough app access to act without becoming unpredictable.

Then there’s the uneven rollout, which will depend on the device, region, language, and whether apps support the deeper hooks.

Apple says Siri AI will arrive as a beta later this year for supported devices set to English, will not initially be available in the EU on iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS, and will not be available in China while Apple works through regulatory requirements.

Privacy is Apple’s advantage here, but it’s also a constraint. Too little access, and Siri remains a polite search box with a voice. Too much access, and the iPhone starts to feel like a personal assistant that has been rifling through the drawers.

What this means for normal iPhone users

For normal iPhone users, Apple Intelligence comes down to friction. Someone should be able to ask Siri to find the flight code from an email while they’re on a call, instead of playing clipboard gymnastics across three apps.

That’s a small example, but small examples are where this kind of AI has to prove itself. The real test is whether Siri can understand the thing happening in front of the user, find the right personal detail, use the right app, and avoid turning the whole process into another chore.

Apple Intelligence shouldn’t ask users to become prompt engineers. It should make the iPhone feel less like a pile of apps pretending to be one device.

That’s the real promise of Apple Intelligence 2.0, even if Apple would never call it that. Siri is getting a second chance, but the future of Apple AI may depend less on a shiny chatbot moment than on whether it can finally handle ordinary phone work without making a meal of it.

After all these years, Siri may finally be getting the job it’s been pretending to have.

Every iOS update comes with a few headline features that grab all the attention. But for me, it’s usually the small, unglamorous changes that end up making the biggest difference in my day. iOS 27 is packed with these little wins, and after spending time with the iOS 27 beta, seven of them have already improved my day-to-day experience.

Connectivity Assist keeps me online

If you’ve ever watched a webpage stall while your iPhone stubbornly clings to a weak Wi-Fi signal, you’ll appreciate this one. Apple has added a new Connectivity Assist feature that lets your iPhone automatically switch to cellular data when you are connected to a spotty or weak Wi-Fi network. You can find it in Settings under Wi-Fi.

It ensures your iPhone never loses connectivity, as it will seamlessly switch to cellular data when needed. Keep in mind it can use a bit more mobile data in the background, so if you’re on a limited cellular data plan, you should keep an eye on it. 

Auto-paste suggestion for what you copy

This is the kind of tiny change that makes a considerable improvement in your daily life. Now, whenever I copy a piece of text, the keyboard shows a paste suggestion right above it. Instead of long-pressing the text field and hunting for the paste button, I just tap the suggestion, and it’s done.

It sounds trivial, but I copy and paste things dozens of times a day, from links to addresses to messages, and it makes the whole process feel effortless.

Separate volumes for alarms and ringtones

Until now, your alarm and your ringtone shared the same volume, which meant turning down your ringer at night could leave your morning alarm too quiet to wake you. iOS 27 finally lets you set separate volumes for ring and alarm.

You can set this up by going to Settings, then Sounds & Haptics, and turning off Match Ringtone Volume. From there, you get independent control over alarms, timers, and system sounds. 

Now I can keep my ringtone low during the day without worrying that my alarm won’t do its job the next morning.

A new connectivity widget size in Control Center

The connectivity widget in Control Center gives you quick access to your Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular data, AirDrop, and other controls. In iOS 26, you could only use this widget in either small or large size. 

If you use the small size, it requires two taps to access controls, while the large size widget takes up the entire page. With the iOS 27 update, you now get a middle ground. To use this, long-press the Control Center to enter edit mode and use the corner drag handle to adjust the size. 

The new widget takes half the page, leaving space for your other controls while ensuring you can use all connectivity toggles with just a single tap. 

Setting a timer just got quicker

You could always add a Control Center toggle to create timers in previous versions of iOS. However, tapping on the toggle would only launch the Clock app, which didn’t make much sense to me. 

With iOS 27, the timer toggle finally functions as it should have from the start. Now, when you tap the toggle, it opens an overlay you can use to quickly create the timer. 

I can swipe left and right to change the time and use the “Set Timer” button to start the timer without opening the app. It’s quick, works well, and lets me set timers without switching apps. 

Dictation got the upgrade it needed

iPhone dictation used to be trash. It had no concept of punctuation or formatting, and it got words wrong so often that fixing the mess took longer than just typing the thing myself. With iOS 27, that has finally changed thanks to the new Advanced Dictation feature.

It’s in preview for now, and you can turn it on by going to Settings → General → Keyboard → Advanced Dictation Preview. It uses a new on-device model that not only makes far fewer mistakes but is also genuinely good at adding punctuation on its own, so you don’t end up with one long run-on sentence. 

If Apple keeps improving it from here, you might not need to pay a hefty subscription for one of those dedicated dictation apps anymore.

AirDrop is shockingly fast now

I left my favorite for last. AirDrop has always been handy, but in iOS 27 it feels like it got a serious shot of espresso. Small files like photos and documents transfer instantly, and large files feel almost twice as quick as before. I am constantly amazed by the new transfer speeds, and I love that it saves a considerable amount of time each day.

These features might not get the limelight, but they are what make iOS 27 worth installing. They smooth out the little annoyances I deal with every day and improve my iPhone experience. That makes these features worth more to me than any single big-ticket feature.

Microsoft is accelerating updates to its Edge browser, switching from a monthly release schedule to a biweekly one. The change takes effect with Edge 152, due on August 27, and puts the browser on the same cadence as Google Chrome.

More updates, not more features

The shift does not mean users will get twice as many new features. As Microsoft explained in a recent blog post, each release under the new schedule will carry roughly half the content of the current monthly drops, keeping the overall volume of changes roughly constant. The practical effect for most users is a steadier, smaller stream of updates rather than a sudden jump in new functionality.

Microsoft framed the change as a benefit for both consumers and enterprise customers, noting that security and platform fixes will reach users faster, and that smaller change sets are easier for IT teams to validate before deployment.

Who it affects and when

The new cadence applies to users on the standard Stable channel. Those on the Stable Extended channel, a longer-term option aimed at organizations that prefer less frequent updates, will stay on the current every-two-months schedule.

Google Chrome moved to a two-week release cycle in March, and Edge’s realignment closes the gap between the two Chromium-based browsers. The biweekly releases kick in with Edge 152 on August 27, giving users and IT admins a couple of months to prepare before the new schedule takes hold. For everyday users, the transition should be largely invisible. Automatic updates will simply arrive more often, each with a smaller footprint than before.

At WWDC 2026, Apple announced watchOS 27, bringing Siri AI, a new Siri app, a dynamic app grid, better Smart Stack suggestions, expanded fitness features, and new health tracking tools to the Apple Watch.

The Apple Watch works best when it helps you get small things done quickly without reaching for your iPhone. watchOS 27 leans into that idea with updates that make it easier to start workouts, find apps, open Wallet passes, and check important information from your wrist. Here’s what’s new.

Siri AI is the main upgrade

One of the biggest additions in watchOS 27 is Siri AI, Apple’s next-generation assistant powered by Apple Intelligence. The upgraded Siri can understand personal context, answer more complex questions, and take action across apps.

On the Apple Watch, these improvements are especially useful because the smaller screen makes typing and navigating apps more cumbersome. Siri AI lets users ask more natural questions, get workout suggestions, access wellness-related information, and carry on back and forth conversations directly from their wrist.

Siri can also pull from personal information when needed. For example, it can help find a saved driver’s license number, a door code stored in Notes, or details from other personal content.

watchOS 27 also adds a dedicated Siri app. Users can continue conversations, start new chats, revisit previous interactions, and pick up conversations started on iPhone. Important conversations can also be pinned for quick access. The assistant can also complete tasks inside apps, such as sharing flight details, playing a trainer-recommended song, changing an Activity ring goal, sending an email, resuming a podcast, or adding music to a workout playlist.

Siri AI is not available in the first beta release, though it is expected to arrive in a subsequent beta update. Additionally, Apple Intelligence features will not initially be available on watchOS in the European Union due to the Digital Markets Act, and Siri AI will not be available in China at launch while Apple works through regulatory requirements.

The app grid and Smart Stack are getting smarter

The Apple Watch app grid now has a dynamic layout that highlights Siri-suggested apps, frequently used apps, and recently opened apps. For users with many installed apps, this update makes it easier to find and open the apps they use most often or are likely to need at that particular moment. That said, accessing the entire app grid is now a two-step process instead of a single press of the Digital Crown.

Smart Stack is also more context-aware. It can surface widgets based on relevant situations, such as birthday reminders, parked-car locations, sleep-alarm suggestions before select holidays, and transit card information. There is also a new tap gesture for Smart Stack. Users can tap their index finger and thumb together twice to open Smart Stack, continue to double-tap to scroll, and use a single tap to open the selected widget.

Workout Buddy gets more useful

Workout Buddy has received several upgrades in watchOS 27. The feature now uses fitness history to deliver more personalized motivation during workouts. Instead of generic encouragement, Workout Buddy provides updates tied to pace, distance, workout duration, and other performance metrics.

Apple is also making the feature more flexible during workouts. Workout Buddy keeps working without users needing to carry their iPhone in a pocket or hand during exercise. However, the feature still requires a paired Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone and Bluetooth headphones or speakers. Users also have the option to use Workout Buddy in Spanish

Indoor run and walk tracking is more accurate

Tracking indoor runs and walks on treadmills is generally more challenging than outdoor tracking as GPS data is unavailable. That is why the new update includes improved motion-tracking algorithms, which help the watch estimate treadmill distance more accurately using wrist movement data.

Health tracking expands with menopause support

Cycle Tracking has been part of the Apple Watch and Health app for several years, allowing users to log menstrual cycles, track symptoms, and receive predictions about upcoming periods and fertile windows. The feature is designed to help users better understand changes in their reproductive health over time.

With watchOS 27, Apple is expanding Cycle Tracking with new perimenopause and menopause support. The Health app can now notify users when logged cycle patterns may indicate possible perimenopause and provides symptom tracking tools along with educational resources.

Find My gets a unified app

The new Find My update brings all location-tracking features under a single roof. Instead of using separate apps to locate people, Apple devices, and AirTag-equipped items, watchOS 27 combines Find Devices, Find People, and Find Items into one unified Find My app with a more map-focused interface. This is a nice quality-of-life change for the app since it now requires fewer taps to keep track of everyone and all your things.

Wallet adds support for custom passes

Wallet is also more useful for everyday cards that do not already have official Apple Wallet support. Users can create custom passes on their iOS 27 devices and sync them to the Apple Watch. For example, it can be used for memberships and cards that use QR codes or barcodes, such as library cards and gym memberships. These passes can be stored in Wallet and pinned to Smart Stack for quicker access.

Call Context surfaces important information during calls

Calls with businesses often require confirmation numbers, booking details, or information buried in Mail or Messages. watchOS 27 has added Call Context to handle that. The feature surfaces relevant information while users are on a call with a business. For example, a flight confirmation code stored in Mail can appear automatically during a call with an airline.

Liquid Glass and other small fixes

The Apple Watch display is small, so readability matters more here than on most other Apple devices. The new software refines Apple’s Liquid Glass design language with more consistent refraction effects and improved contrast, which should improve readability across notifications, widgets, controls, and apps.

Several smaller improvements are included as well. Music playback is now faster, step counts in the Fitness app are synced more accurately with data from the Health app, and the watch can suggest battery-saving adjustments to help extend battery life. Apple has also made it easier to mute notifications, allowing users to select a notification and access the mute option from the bottom-right corner of the screen. Sleep tracking is also said to be more accurate, although Apple has not yet shared specific details about the improvements.

Apple is also expanding child safety features. Through Child Accounts and Apple Watch For Your Kids, parents can set up an Apple Watch for a child who does not have an iPhone, allowing the device to be used for communication and safety features.

Which Apple Watch models support watchOS 27?

watchOS 27 requires an iPhone 11 or later, or an iPhone SE (2nd generation) or later, running iOS 27.

The compatible Apple Watch models are:

• Apple Watch SE 3
• Apple Watch Series 9
• Apple Watch Series 10
• Apple Watch Series 11
• Apple Watch Ultra 2
• Apple Watch Ultra 3

The cutoff is stricter than usual. Apple Watch Series 8, the first-generation Apple Watch Ultra, and Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) will not receive watchOS 27, even though they were supported by the previous major update. This means Apple is drawing the line at watches equipped with the S9 chip or newer.

When can you download watchOS 27?

watchOS 27 will be released publically for elligible watches this fall. The company has already made watchOS 27 available for developer testing. Siri AI will arrive in a future watchOS 27 beta before its broader rollout later this year. A public beta is expected ahead of the final release.

Installing developer software on a primary device carries risks. Apple Watch software is particularly difficult to roll back compared with iPhone or iPad software, so most users are better off waiting for the public beta or the final release.

Social network Bluesky launched support for group chats on Thursday, another feature designed to make the app more competitive with its larger competitor, X.

While Elon Musk-owned X recently doubled down on chats with the launch of a stand-alone XChat app, Bluesky is only now catching up by offering a way for groups to interact more privately on its platform.

The feature, which is arriving in the latest version of the social app (v1.124), is one of the first to deliver on Bluesky’s plan to focus more on communities, rather than trying to be a social network where people post solely to reach a wider public audience.

That’s a notable shift in strategy, and one that arrives as Bluesky’s overall growth has slowed. Today, the network reaches some 44.8 million registered users, compared with X’s 600 million monthly active users. If Bluesky can’t reach the scale of competitors like X or Meta’s Threads, it may need to find new ways to make its app attractive to would-be users, including by offering different forms of social connection.

The startup added support for messaging in 2024, but it only more recently began offering encrypted chats, and only by integrating the third-party messaging service Germ. Now, Bluesky is offering support for group chats of up to 50 people, its announcement states.

That’s smaller than X’s support for 1,000 members, but it’s a start. And the company says it may increase this limit in the future.

Group chat creators can manage their chats however they like and can decide who is allowed to participate, the company noted. They can generate an invite link that can be shared across the web, including in Bluesky posts where it’s displayed as an embedded card.

Chat participants, meanwhile, can control who’s allowed to invite them to chats — everyone, only people they follow, or no one. The default setting will be “only people you follow,” unless users select a different choice for DMs.

Sharing media in group chats is not yet supported, as it will require additional safety and moderation systems, Bluesky says.

In a series of recent posts from Bluesky’s head of product, Alex Benzer spoke about how Bluesky will be working to make its app more community-focused in the days ahead.

“Today, Bluesky is one big space. Communities will be smaller spaces inside that where you can go deeper and hang out with people who care about the same stuff,” he wrote. Benzer also explained that the goal was to build more community features on the underlying protocol (AT Proto) with support from the wider developer ecosystem.

“On Bluesky, you’ll be able to create communities, join them, post in them, and get updates,” Benzer added.

The timing is particularly notable given that X announced in April that it was shutting down its Communities feature because of low usage and too much spam. Bluesky, seemingly, is trying to pick up where X left off by catering to those who want more control and ownership over their online community experience.

For instance, Benzer noted that communities on Bluesky will get their own handle that doubles as a URL, like community-name.bsky.social or community-name.bsky.space. They’ll also be able to be set it as either public, invite-only, or private, similar to the options available on Facebook Groups or Reddit.

With communities, Bluesky is ultimately betting that people are looking for an exit from platforms operated by Big Tech players, and could be enticed to explore more open technologies where they feel they have more control over the experience (and won’t have their account disabled by rogue AI moderation systems!).

Along with group chats, the updated version of Bluesky is also offering a new way to share profiles via a personalized QR code, similar to other social apps.

China wants its electric vehicles to go on a diet. The average passenger car in the country weighed 1,704 kg in 2024, roughly a third more than in 2012, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday. Many popular SUVs and MPVs now approach or exceed 2 metres in width, squeezing into parking spaces designed a decade ago for smaller cars.

One vehicle measured by CCTV was nearly 2.3 metres wide. The current standard parking space is 2.4 metres. That leaves 10 cm of clearance, barely enough to open a door.

The weight problem starts with batteries. Some manufacturers market vehicles with ranges up to 1,000 km on a single charge, which can require battery packs weighing as much as 800 kg, according to experts cited in the report. Heavy batteries are not unique to China, but the scale of the problem is, given that the country produces more EVs than any other nation.

Feature bloat is also a factor. China’s crowded EV market has pushed manufacturers to differentiate by turning cars into mobile living spaces. Some models let users work, watch videos, drink coffee, and rest inside. A few even come with in-car toilets, CCTV reported. Each feature adds weight.

Beijing has already responded. On 1 January 2026, China became the first country in the world to enforce a mandatory energy consumption standard for electric vehicles. The rule caps two-tonne EVs at 15.1 kWh per 100 km under the Chinese CLTC cycle, tightening limits by approximately 11% compared with previous recommendations. New EV models that fail the standard cannot be produced, sold, or registered.

The regulation pushes manufacturers toward efficiency rather than simply adding bigger batteries. Better aerodynamics, lighter materials, and drivetrain optimisation become more important than raw range figures. With battery capacity unchanged, compliance is expected to increase an average EV’s range by about 7%.

The timing matters. China produced 16 million electric cars in 2025, according to the IEA, and exports are surging into new markets. Lighter, more efficient vehicles would not only ease domestic infrastructure pressure but also help Chinese automakers meet emissions and efficiency standards in export markets like the US and Europe, where regulations are tightening in parallel.

No no no, we are not sad. *slumps in the corner crying*

Microsoft is officially shutting down Collections, one of the more unique productivity features inside the Edge browser, and many users believe the move reflects the company’s growing obsession with AI-first experiences.

According to Microsoft’s support documentation, Collections in Edge is being discontinued beginning June 2026. The feature allowed users to save groups of webpages, images, notes, shopping links, and research material into organized visual boards directly inside the browser. For students, researchers, online shoppers, and multitaskers, Collections became one of Edge’s most practical hidden tools – and one of the few browser features that genuinely stood apart from Chrome and Safari.

Collections first launched as a productivity-focused tool that blended bookmarking, note-taking, and visual organization into a single interface. Unlike traditional bookmarks, users could drag webpages, screenshots, text snippets, and images into categorized boards that synced across devices. It became especially popular for planning trips, organizing research projects, comparing products, and saving inspiration from across the web.

Now, Microsoft appears ready to move on.

Edge is increasingly becoming an AI-first browser

The removal of Collections arrives as Microsoft aggressively transforms Edge into a platform centered around Copilot and generative AI features. Over the past two years, the company has integrated AI-powered assistants into nearly every part of Edge, from sidebar chat tools and webpage summarization to writing assistance and contextual search.

Critics argue that Collections represented a genuinely useful feature focused on human productivity rather than AI automation. Unlike some newer AI additions that users may ignore entirely, Collections solved a simple but common problem: organizing information gathered across the web without relying on third-party apps like Notion, Pinterest, or Pocket.

We at Digital Trends previously described the feature as one of the browser’s best hidden tools, particularly because it offered a more visual and intuitive alternative to cluttered bookmark folders. Users could quickly collect shopping comparisons, project research, recipes, or reading material into organized workspaces without leaving the browser.

Microsoft has not directly stated that AI features are replacing Collections, but the timing has fueled criticism that practical browser tools are increasingly being sacrificed to make room for AI-centric experiences and interface redesigns.

The broader concern extends beyond Edge itself. Across the tech industry, companies are rapidly reshaping products around generative AI, sometimes at the expense of smaller features users genuinely rely on every day.

Edge users may lose one of the browser’s most practical tools

For longtime Edge users, the shutdown represents the loss of one of the browser’s clearest identity features. While Chrome dominates browser market share, Edge often differentiates itself through smaller quality-of-life tools like vertical tabs, sleeping tabs, and Collections.

The removal could particularly frustrate users who built workflows around the feature for productivity, shopping research, or creative organization. Microsoft has not yet introduced a direct replacement that replicates the same visual organizational experience.

At the same time, the decision signals how seriously Microsoft is prioritizing AI integration across Windows and Edge. The company increasingly sees Copilot as the centerpiece of its software ecosystem, and browser development now appears heavily focused on AI-assisted experiences rather than traditional productivity utilities.

For some users, that future may sound exciting. For others, it may feel like another example of useful software features quietly disappearing in favor of AI tools they never asked for.