The MacRumors Show: Revisiting iOS 27 Ahead of iPhone 18 Pro

Apple's iOS 27, expected to launch this fall, introduces Siri AI, a revamped assistant rivaling chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT, along with over 80 speed and efficiency improvements, including app launches up to 30 percent faster and AirDrop transfers up to 80 percent faster than iOS 26. The update also refines Liquid Glass with a transparency slider, adds on-device intelligence features like Call Context, and brings generative photo editing tools, as detailed on The MacRumors Show.

After over a month of testing iOS 27, on this week's episode of The MacRumors Show we circle back to the beta and talk through our experiences with Siri AI, Liquid Glass refinements, and more. iOS 27 is expected to launch this fall, bringing sweeping performance work across the system. Apple has cited more than 80 speed and efficiency improvements, with app launches up to 30 percent faster and AirDrop transfers up to 80 percent faster than on iOS 26. Animations, keyboard responsiveness, Home Screen page swapping, and App Library loading have all been sped up, and Apple says the improvements extend even to older iPhones like the iPhone 11. The centerpiece of iOS 27 is Siri AI, a substantially overhauled version of the assistant positioned as a rival to chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT. Siri AI can hold back-and-forth conversations, draw on personal context from Mail, Messages, Photos, and Files, and see what's on screen to answer follow-up questions. A new standalone Siri app houses ongoing conversations, while a "Search or Ask" interface, accessed via the Dynamic Island, has effectively replaced Spotlight as the default way to search the device and launch apps. Liquid Glass, the translucent design language introduced in iOS 26, has also been reworked. iOS 27 adds a system-wide transparency slider in place of the binary "Clear" and "Tinted" toggle from iOS 26.1, letting users dial the effect anywhere between fully opaque and completely clear. Apple also improved how the material diffuses busy content behind it, addressing readability complaints that dogged the original rollout, and refreshed first-party app icons with additional Liquid Glass layering. Elsewhere, Apple has leaned into contextual, on-device intelligence. For example, Call Context, a new Phone app feature, automatically surfaces relevant information, such as a flight confirmation number or order code pulled from Mail, when a user calls a business they've recently corresponded with. Apple says the feature works entirely on-device and looks only at who is being called, not at call audio, and it also appears on the Apple Watch during a call. Calendar and Reminders now support natural language entry, letting users type something like "meeting at 2pm with Eric on July 14" and have the app suggest the date, time, and attendees automatically. Apple says Siri can handle more complex natural-language scheduling requests directly, including edits to recurring events. The Photos app gains three generative editing tools grouped under an Apple Intelligence Tools section: an upgraded Clean Up, a new Extend tool, and Spatial Reframing. Clean Up now offers Fast, High Quality, and Auto modes for object removal and can reconstruct more complex backgrounds than before. Extend uses generative AI to fill in new content when a photo's borders are expanded, and is capped at a maximum of 25% per side. Spatial Reframing, which draws on the same spatial data used for Portrait mode, lets users shift a photo's apparent camera angle after it was taken. The Shortcuts app has been rebuilt around a "Describe a Shortcut" interface, where Apple Intelligence assembles an entire automation from a plain-language description rather than requiring users to build workflows action by action manually. Safari picks up a similar natural-language approach with a new Create an Extension option for building custom browser extensions on the fly, automatic AI-driven tab organization by topic, and a "Notify Me" tool that monitors a webpage and alerts users when it changes, which is useful, Apple says, for tracking ticket sales or restocked products. Image Playground has also been overhauled for iOS 27, adding support for photorealistic image generation, edits to existing images via text descriptions, and additional aspect ratio options for wallpapers and Contact Posters. iOS 27 is available now to developers and public beta testers, and Apple plans to release the software officially in September. The MacRumors Show has its own YouTube channel, so make sure you're subscribed to keep up with new episodes and clips. The MacRumors Show is on X @MacRumorsShow, so be sure to give us a follow to keep up with the podcast. You can also email us at podcast@macrumors.com or head over to The MacRumors Show forum thread. Remember to rate and review the podcast, and let us know what subjects and guests you would like to see in the future.