Hand holding a smartphone with the screen on above a wooden table

· Translated from the Spanish original · 中文 · 日本語

AI assistants

Apple speeds Siri toward an agent that runs its own apps and third-party ones

Bloomberg reports Apple is pushing Siri to control its own apps with iOS 27.3 and add third-party apps in spring, while admitting it trails rivals.

What happened

  • The Verge summarized on November 8, 2026 a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman on Apple’s plan for Siri.
  • According to Gurman, CEO John Ternus is pressing Craig Federighi, who leads AI, to speed up the roadmap and deliver an agent able to compete with OpenAI’s Dots or Meta’s Muse.
  • Federighi reportedly delivered a working version of Siri with AI on a very short timeline, but the company has no illusions about keeping pace with rivals.
  • Two improvements are expected in the coming months: fine-grained control of Apple’s own apps and, later, integration with third-party apps.

Why it matters

An assistant that only answers questions is different from one that operates apps for the user. The second needs permissions, rules about what it may touch and guarantees that it will not run a wrong order. Apple controls the operating system and the built-in apps, so it can open that door gradually, first at home and then outward.

For app developers, how far Siri opens to third parties defines how much of their service becomes visible to an agent. A restaurant booking or a food order would happen without opening the app, and that interface would become a new entry point for sales.

The number

iOS 27.3 for first-party apps, spring for third-party ones. The first improvement would give Siri control over Apple apps: for example, rotating and cropping images in Photos or organizing tabs in Safari. The second would allow ordering food through Grubhub or booking a table through OpenTable. Both timelines are what Gurman says he received from sources, not company announcements.

Context

Gurman describes a broader goal. Dots, Muse and Grok, he writes, can keep track of goals, decide what needs to happen next and keep pursuing objectives without the user starting every step. Apple would want to go in that direction and, according to his source, could make Siri more agent-like as early as next year, something the market and consumers already demand.

We have tracked that race at Mamífero. Meta launched Spaces, where its Muse agent builds boards, Palo Alto Networks is negotiating to buy Clutch, which watches AI agents’ access, GitHub Copilot added multi-agent projects and desktop app control and Notion let its agents work 24 hours straight.

What’s next

  • If the schedule holds, Apple app control will arrive with iOS 27.3 and third-party opening in spring.
  • It remains to be seen which permissions Siri will ask for and how users will be able to review the actions it takes.
  • Ongoing tasks, not one-off ones, are the step Gurman attributes to Apple for the following year.

Bottom line

Apple starts with a working assistant and the distribution of its devices, but with internal acknowledgment that it is behind. Real progress will be measured by which tasks Siri completes without help and with how much user supervision.

Sources

  • The Verge (Terrence O’Brien), “Apple is racing to make Siri more agentic”, November 8, 2026, link. Summarizes a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman that could not be read directly; the timelines come from sources cited by Gurman.
  • Cover image: Dennis Cortés cortes, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Edited by Rodrigo Cornejo. How we select and verify: who writes these notes.

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