Apple News That Surprised Me
Free business tools, full Gemini access, and Siri
A lot happened at Apple this week.
Most of it got buried under the MacBook Neo craze.
But it’s worth a deeper look!
Apple Business is now one thing
For years, Apple’s business tools were a mess. I didn’t even know half of this stuff before this news.
So, let’s go into it.
Apple Business is a thing.
Apple Business Manager for app deployment. Apple Business Essentials for device management. Apple Business Connect for your listing on Apple Maps.
Those used to be three services, scattered around, and not available globally. Well, not anymore (from April 14th on).
Starting then, Apple is merging all of them into one service called Apple Business.
The big news isn’t the name. It’s that the mobile device management features, the ones that let you control what employees can do on company devices, are now free.
And available in over 200 countries. They used to be paid and US-only.
For small businesses running a handful of iPhones and Macs, this is a pretty big deal. You no longer need a third-party MDM platform to do basic device management. Apple just gives it to you.
The Apple-Google Gemini deal is deeper than expected
We knew Apple and Google made a deal to bring Gemini to the iPhone. That’s been reported for months. But new details about what Apple actually got access to are kind of wild.
According to reports from people close to the deal, Apple has full access to Google’s complete Gemini model. Not a limited version. Not an API with restrictions. The full thing. And Apple can run it in its own data centers.
But it gets more interesting.
Apple can use that access to distill smaller models from Gemini. Basically take the big model, extract specific capabilities, and create lightweight versions that are small enough to run on-device. On your iPhone. No internet. No cloud.
That’s a huge deal if it’s accurate. It means Apple doesn’t just get to use Gemini as a cloud service. They get to learn from it and build their own on-device AI using Gemini as the teacher.
Apple is apparently still working on its own foundation model too. How far along that is, nobody seems to know. But with full Gemini access in the meantime, they have a lot to work with.
iOS 27 and the Siri overhaul
Apple announced WWDC this week. No surprise there. But Bloomberg is now reporting what iOS 27 will actually look like, and it’s all AI. Front to back.
The Gemini deal seems to have unlocked something at Apple. Here’s what’s reportedly coming.
Siri as a standalone app. Like ChatGPT, basically. A separate app where you can have conversations, organized by topic. You can pin chats, delete them, sort them. It works like the Messages app but for Siri. Being tested on Mac, iPhone, and iPad right now. Will be shipped to millions of users soon. Apple might win the AI race after all.
Siri moves to the Dynamic Island. No more floating button at the bottom. No more glowing border around the screen. Siri lives at the top now, inside the Dynamic Island. You’ll be able to choose between “search” and “ask” from there. When Siri processes a request, a pill-shaped indicator appears. When results come in, it expands into a translucent panel using Apple’s Liquid Glass design. You can pull it down for more content.
(How this works on iPhones with the notch instead of the Dynamic Island? No idea. We’ll see.)
Siri everywhere. There’ll be a button above the keyboard to write to Siri from anywhere. Select a text passage and get Siri’s input on it. Voice or text, anywhere in the system. The goal seems to be: Siri is no longer a thing you go to. It’s a thing that’s already there.
All of this is supposedly powered by a combination of Google Gemini and Apple’s own models. The first beta drops June 8.
Downsides
The first beta will be buggy. I’m pretty sure about that. When Apple tries to ship this many AI features at once, things will break. That’s just how it goes with major platform shifts.
The Gemini dependency is also worth thinking about. Apple is building core features on top of Google’s model. That’s a deep partnership with a company Apple has historically tried to distance itself from. If the deal changes or Google pulls back access, what happens to the features that were built on it?
And Siri has been “getting better” for years. Every WWDC, Apple promises a smarter Siri. Every fall, we get a slightly less dumb one. I want to believe this time is different. The Gemini access suggests it might be. But… well…
The Bottom Line
Free business tools for small companies. Full Gemini access for on-device AI. A Siri that might actually be useful.
WWDC is going to be interesting this year.
I’m cautiously optimistic. Which for Apple AI news is probably the right amount of optimistic.