macOS 27 Golden Gate: The Ars Technica review

Apple hasn’t said what limits users can expect, just that they will vary “by feature, request complexity, system demand, system policies, and other factors” and that additional usage “will be available for a fee.” Apple gates some Home app features, like video summaries from cameras, to upper-tier iCloud+ plans, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other Apple Intelligence limits tied to iCloud upsells.

Siri AI and Spotlight

A Siri answer in the Spotlight window in macOS 27 Golden Gate.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

When fiction like Star Trek sold us all on the concept of a voice-controllable computer, that vision never included moments where the computer would say, “I can’t handle that question, would you like me to search the Internet for it?”

But that’s the norm with Siri for anything other than specific direct requests phrased in exactly the way that Siri expects them. I’ve long since given up on using Siri for anything other than setting timers or quick reminders.

Siri AI (in beta in the US for English speakers, unavailable elsewhere for a combination of technological and regulatory reasons) is a serious effort to change that status quo. On systems where it’s enabled, it takes over for both the old Siri and for Spotlight, unifying the interface you’d use for local file searches, basic old-school Siri commands for things like setting timers, more complex requests that pull from the data on your Mac (“show me all my meetings for next week”), and general chatbot questions.

When Siri AI is enabled, the Spotlight interface changes to a narrower, darker, more rounded search box, though aside from this new presentation, its functionality as an app launcher, clipboard history tracker, and file search mechanism all seem pretty similar to the way it was before.

Spotlight in Golden Gate looks different and is directly integrated with Siri now, but the core functionality and keyboard shortcuts are the same as before.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

But when you type in something that’s a Spotlight app/file search or a simple “set a timer/do some unit conversions”-type command, Siri reaches out to Apple’s cloud to get an answer for you. This experience is pretty similar to the way most chatbots handle it: a response to the question, a few bullet points of contextual information sometimes, a reminder that Siri is an AI tool and that its answers aren’t always accurate, and a handful of tiny source links at the bottom, collapsed behind a button, which may or may not lead out to original human-generated verifiable information if you follow them.