June 13 tech news roundup: Apple announces iOS 27, iPadOS 27, Siri AI is here, macOS 27 Golden Gate, Microsoft reboots its Xbox strategy

iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 officially announced

Apple unveiled iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 at WWDC 26. The Cupertino company says that an optimized CPU scheduler helps older iPhones more responsive  The announcement highlighted a number of performance improvements in iOS 27. App launches are up to 30% faster, new photos open 70% faster in the Photos app. AirDrop transfers are now up to 80% faster than before. iCloud Shared Albums are now shareable with Windows and Android devices.

Users who did not like Liquid Glass, which was introduced in iOS 26, will be happy to learn that the new update has a slider. This allows you to set the transparency level of the effect, i.e. you can make it more transparent or go the opposite way for a more opaque/fully tinted style.  Most app icons in iOS 27 have a new look, they are sharper and more detailed.

In a surprising move, iOS 27 supports all phones that could run iOS 26. This includes the iPhone SE 2nd gen, and the iPhone 11 which was launched in 2019. It will be the first iPhone to receive 8 major iOS updates. iPadOS 27 shares most of iOS 27’s improvements, but has a handful of improvements that are unique to it. iPad users will be able to resize iPhone apps on their tablet, to make them easier to use. The Menu Bar can be set to be displayed all the time, instead of auto-hiding. The status bar now displays the active app’s name. The Files app in iPadOS is up to 5x faster to browse and transfer files.

Apple announces macOS 27 Golden Gate

Apple also announced macOS 27 Golden Gate, following in its tradition of naming macOS after popular landmarks in California. The next iteration of the operating system is named after a strait that connects San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

Users can now trigger Visual Intelligence on macOS using a keyboard shortcut. A new consistent toolbar appears at the top of all app, to provide quick access to useful options. App windows on macOS 27 have a tighter radius, and sidebars expand to the edges of the screen. Safari will organize your tab groups based on context, this feature is powered by Apple Intelligence. It can also notify you when a web page is updated.

The Photos app is getting Spatial Reframing and generative AI tools, while the Image Playgrounds app is adding more tools for editing, styles, and offers options to create wallpapers and contact posters.

Could Siri AI be the next big thing?

The star of WWDC 26 was Apple’s Siri AI. It is now a dedicated app that is integrated deeply into the OS, and is powered by Apple Intelligence. Apple has partnered with Google to leverage technologies used in Gemini models, to build Apple Foundation Models. Siri AI uses an on-device model for processing data, and connects to Private Cloud Computing servers that are encrypted. Apple says that the servers do not store any data, to ensure the privacy of users.

In addition to recognizing visual content (on-screen awareness), image understanding (generating and editing images), Siri AI supports dictation with better language understanding. The AI uses Spotlight’s semantic index to quickly search through files. It can connect to the internet to fetch up-to-date information, and use Private Cloud Computing to generate answers to users’ queries. App actions allows Siri AI to open apps for executing user requests, e.g. when you ask it to send an email, it opens the Mail app. It can undo send, create a new contact, read upcoming events in your calendar, create notes, play music, and more.

Siri AI is only supported on newer models of devices. The list includes the iPhone 15 Pro and up, iPad models with an Apple Silicon chip, A17 Pro and newer, all Mac models with an Apple Silicon chip, A18 Pro chip.

Users in the EU region will have to wait longer to use Siri AI, as Apple has delayed the launch of the feature due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Brave Browser now lets you block auto updates for extensions

Brave Browser is testing a new feature that will allow users to prevent extensions from being updated automatically. The option is currently hidden under an experimental flag that you can toggle.

Firefox already has this feature, but as Chipp.in reports, Chromium-based browsers lack the ability to block automatic extension updates. It’s good to see that Brave is giving users more control over how add-ons are updated. Normally, the browser updates all extensions automatically in the background. While that can be good for security reasons, the option to disable auto-updates can be particularly handy in case you wish to stay back on an older version of an extension because a newer one is buggy, or if it removed features that were previously supported, or even because an extension was sold/acquired by a third-party.

But, it’s not perfect in its current form. There are a couple of downsides to Brave’s implementation, the first is that users will need to check for extension updates manually, which can be tedious. The other problem is related to how the browser handles the updates. Unlike Firefox, where you can choose which add-on to update, Brave has an all-or-nothing system, meaning that you cannot update add-ons individually, it updates all extensions at the same time. Hopefully, Brave will improve this in the future.

Microsoft’s Xbox strategy is being rebooted

After announcing price cuts for Game Pass, Microsoft is making another big change to its Xbox strategy. Exclusive games are back, for better or worse. Sony had recently announced that its singleplayer games would not be launched for PC. Rumors suggest that this was due to the fact that the next Xbox will be able to play PC games, and Sony really didn’t want fans to play its games on a rival console.

Two can play at that game, or so Microsoft decided, when it announced Gears of War: E-Day as an Xbox console exclusive. That still means the game will be available on PC and Xbox, but not on the Sony PlayStation 5. Similarly, Microsoft also unveiled Clockwork Revolution as an Xbox console exclusive. What’s interesting here is the fact that some journalists had reported that Microsoft has a PS5 version of Gears of War:E-day ready, and that the Redmond company decided not to go ahead with that version. Fans had spotted a pre-order listing for the game, and even Microsoft’s own video had the PlayStation branding, but it was later taken down. This indicates that the change to make the game exclusive to Xbox was a last-minute decision.