After years of Siri being the punchline of the AI industry, Apple just did the most un-Apple thing imaginable: admitted it needed help. At WWDC 2026, the company unveiled “Siri AI” — a ground-up rebuild of its voice assistant powered by Google’s Gemini models. The price tag? Roughly $1 billion per year. The market’s response? A collective shrug followed by a selloff. AAPL has shed about $25 per share since the keynote. ...
The company that introduced AI to mainstream consumers — remember when Siri debuted in 2011 and it felt like the future had arrived? — is now widely considered an AI laggard. And the man tasked with fixing that just landed the biggest promotion in tech. Apple announced that John Ternus, its longtime hardware engineering chief, will become CEO on September 1, replacing Tim Cook, who moves to executive chairman. It’s only the third CEO transition in Apple’s modern history, and it arrives at arguably the most consequential inflection point since Steve Jobs returned in 1997. ...