iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27

I've been using it for several months since the developer beta came out; overall I'm extremely positive on it. One of their better releases that seemingly focused more on quality and refinements than new-features.

Siri is definitely worth using now, even if it remains still a work-in-progress/needs continued refinement. It can surprise you in good ways, but it isn't consistently good yet.

The keyboard remains unfixed, as is tradition. The same issues they've "fixed" like three or four releases now, seemingly are identically broken, and I'm lost faith they CAN fix it.

The iOS Keyboard and Search on Windows, are like the perpetually broken things that both companies have "fixed" every year for the last ten+ years and yet... It is almost farcical as this point.

Hmm, got the liquid glass slider, put it all the way to the right, but still lost a lot of contrast in my notifications...

Was just looking over the Safari 27 release notes¹, which is part of macOS 27, and noticed this:

Web Driver

New Features

- Allow your agent to connect to a Safari browser for development and debugging via the Safari MCP server. (176038457)

Related (From July 1st)

Introducing the Safari MCP server for web developers

https://webkit.org/blog/18136/introducing-the-safari-mcp-ser...

So that's interesting. On the other hand, looks like WebXR support for Safari will never come.

---

¹ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-not...

At the bottom of the press release they have links to individual OS pages:

* iOS 27: https://www.apple.com/os/ios/

* iPadOS 27: https://www.apple.com/os/ipados/

* macOS: https://www.apple.com/os/macos/

* watchOS: https://www.apple.com/os/watchos/

* visionOS: https://www.apple.com/os/visionos/

* tvOS 27: no link.

* Overview: https://www.apple.com/os/?version=no-hero

I love Siri's suggestions for categories in my shopping list. At the moment it puts "Dishwasher Rinse Aid" in the "Beverages" category.

Reminder to wait a couple of months before upgrading macOS! Every single time issues are found after a new macOS version, give it a little bit of time before jumping right away on your work machine :)

So, is it better (faster, stronger, etc) than iOS 18? Everyone says iOS 26 was not good at all and iOS 27 is much better, but it seems like it's fairly simple to make something that's better than iOS 26. A more interesting question is whether it's better than iOS 18? Does anyone have any experience switching from iOS 18 to, say, some beta of iOS 27?

Usually I wait until december to install the new iOS on my phone, since most of the time I don't care about the upgrades. This time I installed iOS 27 beta on my phone since the public beta was out, and I had 0 new bugs compared to iOS 26, but it hasn't been the big relief that I hoped for.

Now I am worried about what the new versions of iOS will bring us, I hope that the "we removed the crap" wasn't just a thing of this year, and that iOS will go back to high software standards. Phone prices are really high for me now, and I would like for my poor little iphone 13 to survive another couple of years.

Not updating from Sequoia until the Liquid Glass era is over.

macOS 27 ade my M2 MBA feel like new. Tahoe just felt a lot less responsive most of the time.

I'm looking forward to trying out Safaris new ability to vibe code extensions that will modify websites to remove annoyances.

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2026/08/27/build-safari-extens...

For developers, there is a new framework (Core AI), that updates the decade old Core ML framework.

> Core AI allows your app to use the latest model architectures and inference techniques across the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreai

Updated a bit ago to give Siri AI a go for some basic stuff I've been wanting it to do with personal context. It had some false positives in there, but it's notably better now, pretty fast, and handled context well. It allows you to see where it got the context from, which is great considering that doesn't sound like a very Apple thing to do.

Are they no longer publishing the complete feature list PDFs for each OS? E.g. https://www.apple.com/os/pdf/All_New_Features_iOS_26_Sept_20...

That's all I want! A not-completely-useless Siri, and performance/quality of life improvements.

MacOS is fine. For the most part it gets out of my way. However I have a laundry list of small issues that have been there since my first Mac in 2012. I wish there was a Department of Details to fix those little snags in the user experience.

26GB for an update is pretty steep considering their base macs are still on 256GB SSDs.

I don’t want a new screen time experience , I just want it to work. Much to my surprise, it’s extraordinarily brittle, to such an extent that it’s virtually useless.

My iPad 2021 10.2" was flawless but some weeks ago it was updated to iOS26 by mistake and it became so slow on basic stuff (like showing the keyboard). Made me terrified of doing any upgrades

Anyone else accidentally upgrade to 26.7 first?

I wish they allowed iCloud subscribers with older hardware to use cloud-only Siri AI.

I imagine they wouldn't shift as much hardware that way though.

Nice. Can't wait for all my binaries to suddenly stop building.

Did they remove the rounded corners mess?

People who are still on Chrome as main browser should seriously try Safari 27. Compatibility greatly improved, super speedy.

Although for some reason the AI organise tab option is not showing up on me.

Still on iPadOS 18.7.8 on a 9th generation iPad out of fear for performance degradation of ProCreate using an Apple Pencil on iPadOS 26. Considering the size of this update, I fear iPadOS 27 might equally wreck my workflow.

Safari does in fact feel snappier.

I was surprised to see that macOS is 28GB. Is that all the local models that come with it?

Can this AI integration now mean that Siri can finally just read the wikipedia page of a topic when I am driving? Or can I finally have Siri add a stop at Mcdonalds on google maps during a road trip?

Are they still using Gemini? Curious to see how fast all these AI features will feel.

I wonder if Apple have fixed the issue where the user want the Siri to use a different language than the UI language.

WatchOS, too. Not tvOS, though.

Upgraded just now. Went pretty smooth!

Can I have my square corners back, please? And while you're at it, add sorting by alphabet in the WiFi networks list. Maybe even a filter field (I know, too advanced, but hey...)

And perhaps make the "System Settings" window scalable horizontally?

No? OK, I'll skip.

Finally Apple has a screen time that allows different configurations for different time segments. What took them so long? /j

Can the new AI browse the web?

I take it this is the one that tosses out Rosetta 2 on macOS?

Can we please have a 1 release focus on fixing bugs? not more ai but fixing bugs, 1 release where you can disable AI... 1 release to make it faster again, 1 release to polish... not to push the next "game changing UI design..."

the "upgrade to 18.4" took my iphone to 26.whatever and siri got even worst... siri set an alarm for 10:40 (creates one at 12:08)... NO, delete that one, 10 40 (does nothing)... hey siri... (ajum), delete the previous alarm... (done!) now set an alarm at 10:40 (alarm at 4pm....)... eventually you get tired... you go to the alarms app.. and then there is the previous "deleted" alarm and the other one...

New Siri is not available in the EU. And no plans to change that.

I'll probably switch to Android once my phone and watch batteries degrade enough to annoy me

Is it just me or is clicking “iOS 27” on iPhone showing upgrade screen for 26.7?

Updated my iPad to iPadOS 27 and disabled Reduce Transparency because I figured that they’ve fixed Liquid Glass.

The notifications on the lock screen are still completely unreadable. What the fuck is Apple doing?

Can’t even be happy about the bug fixes because my biggest one, Spotlight not getting keyboard focus when you use it, is still present.

I'll stay w/ Sequoia as long as I can.

I’m adding representation to an issue that I hope is fixed:

for the last couple months I’ve been able to record videos and watch those videos but am unable to share them, whether on instagram, whatsapp, airdrop or imessage. some limited luck saving the same video to the file system and sharing from there

searching this issue is notoriously difficult, and there is one partially related thread on Apple support forums talking about spacial h264 and spacial h265 video codecs further complicated by being wrappers, with something suggesting the latter is the issue, the final post having a bewildered user asking for clarification that the iphone can create videos that even it cant use

I looked in my camera settings and there are soooo many switches and file formats now, that its impossible to know which edge case has been run into, and there’s no reset button to put the settings back to their most compatible

I hope this OS refresh fixed that

note, this only affects some videos and the common denominator is not obvious. all videos are recent and made in the same timespan. some are sharable some are not

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So if you don't want to use Apple's AI, this brings... faster app launching on iOS? I guess I'll use the Liquid Glass controls, but otherwise this is a dud.