Since I'm a member of the Apple Developer Program thanks to interface design projects I was involved with years ago, I went ahead and installed the developer beta of iOS 27 on my iPhone (but not on any of my Macs, because I value my sanity).

The first thing I did... the very first thing... was to run to the settings and change the "Liquid Glass" interface to maximum opaqueness. Still not as good as a solid color, but the frosted appearance is a heck of a lot easier to read than what we previously had. I remain utterly dumbfounded that Apple, a pioneer in computer graphical interfaces, shipped something this fucking bad. Maybe it's because I have old, fucked-up eyes, but "Liquid Glass" is an abhorrent step backwards that is now tolerable. Kinda.

The next thing I did was say "Hey Siri... when is my next flight?" because I was psyched at the thought of Siri not being a brain-dead pile of shit for once. BUT NOPE!

Turns out that "New Siri" isn't on by default. I had to turn it on. At which point it said that I've been added to the waitlist. Which is to say that Siri will continue to be dumb as a box of fucking rocks for the foreseeable future...

That this extremely basic question requires "New Siri" in order to be answered is beyond the pale. Android has been able to do this mundane shit for years! But it gets worse. On my way home from work today, I asked Siri when the last day of school is. Siri blanked out. Realizing that Siri doesn't know where my fucking location is despite it being set up to know that, I re-asked the question but included my city and state. "I can search the internet when you're done driving" (or whatever). Infuriated, I asked why they have to wait for me to stop driving to search the internet. "I can search the internet for that when you're not in the car." I mean, holy fucking shit is Siri a complete waste of time! Apple has BILLIONS of dollars. They couldn't have spent a small fraction of that to make a capable voice assistant? I guess not. Which is why they're licensing technology from Google, of all places.

Something that threw me into shock was a massive decrease in battery life. I usually end the day with around 70% battery left. Less if I ended up playing games or taking a bunch of photos. But suffice to say that anything less than 50% is exceedingly rare for me. But after installing iOS 27? I am lucky to end my day with 10%. Now, this is a developer beta, so you would expect that there's extra stuff running to track bugs and monitor ho things are working. But this much battery life? Doubtful. If I had to guess, it's the indexing which is taking up most of the battery power...

If that's the case, Apple could do themselves a big favor and add that message to the indexing message.

One of the more intriguing new features (and one of the few things AI seems made for doing well) is to help you create shortcuts. I had no idea how smart the system would be, and just asked for a shortcut idea off the top of my head...

I was not expecting much. So you can imagine my total shock when I actually got exactly what I asked for...

Now, see, this right here is where I want my AI. This is fantastic! I will have to play with it further to see what it's limits are, but this is a game changer.

One of the new features I was interested in is the ability to see better 3D representations in Apple Maps. I love playing armchair traveler to places I have never been (and places I've been, for that matter) so the idea of it all was intriguing. Not that I expected my small city to get a fancier 3D representation... but I was expecting Seattle to have far better 3D. But nope. Everything is just as wonky as it has been. I guess it's going to take time to reach anything outside of San Francisco and New York...

When it comes to HomeKit HomeShit, my expectations are always in the basement. This is hands-down Apple's biggest reoccurring failure. It hasn't worked properly since Day One, and they've made zero attempts at improving it. I am having the same problems now that I've always had. And one of the biggest problems is my Automations disappearing at random. No reason for it... they just vanish. For example, I have a sensor on my garage door which turns the light on when triggered. The Automation for this disappeared a week ago. I also have an Automation which turns some lights on at night. This Automation didn't disappear a week ago, but a part of it did. My neon light all of a sudden stopped turning on, but all the other lights were operating normally. It's frustrating, because going back and fixing all this shit is time-consuming.

Well guess what? The night after installing iOS 27 Developer Beta, my neon started turning on with the other lights again! The garage is still fucked, but one thing that was broken seems to have healed itself. Heaven knows for how long, but it is offering a little bit of encouragement. As I suspected, my older Nest cameras are not compatible with any of the new camera improvements in HomeKit. Typical.

One thing which hasn't been touched is that the Mail unread message count badge is still fucked. If messages get deleted without being read on a different device, the iPhone displays the deleted messages as unread messages with the app icon badge. I honestly have no fucking clue why this can't be fixed. It's fucking embarrassing that this is still a problem in the Year of Our Lord 2026.

And now we come to Photos...

Even though we're talking about a mobile phone, 75% of what I do on my iPhone is take photos. Camera improvements are the only reason I buy new models of iPhone, because I don't care about anything else. The reason I didn't upgrade to the 17 Pro Max is because the camera was almost the same.

This time Apple added a bunch of AI tools to Photos and the result is a mixed bag. Let's walk through some of the things I tried.

The "extend" tool is remarkable. Better than the AI tools in Adobe Photoshop. What I think is going on is that the Google Gemini engine searches the internet to identify what's in your photo, then generates an extension around your image based on what it figures out. Take for example this photo I took in Italy...

I zoom out to extend it...

And vióla! A stunning job of adding the missing information around your photo...

I pulled back on this photo of me, which I selected because of the pattern on my shirt. I thought that might prove to be a challenge, but it did a remarkable job getting that sorted...

   
The new reframe tool works, to a very limited degree of "turning" but the results are a bit odd. There's some uncanny valley going on. This photo of my mom eating in Rome looks okay, but it screws up the angle in a way that feels bizarre. Especially in the eyes. The rotation wasn't very much, but she appears to be looking in an entirely different direction?

   
The next photo I tried got flagged as some kind of safety violation because it had a bare ass in it. Or so I'm guessing...

I have a lot more playing around to do with the Photos app before I can fully understand how it's going to benefit me. And I remain conflicted over the fact that Google's AI models were created based on untold numbers of photographers who weren't compensated for their work. Yes, these are my photos being changed, but the abilities being offered were partly stolen.

I understand that Apple's Image Playground app has been updated, but since there's absolutely no question that it's based on theft of photographers and artists, I won't be messing with it.

There's probably some other improvements that I'm missing, but these are the ones I was wanting to explore. The only thing left that I truly care about is New Siri, because I'm dying to see if Apple finally... FINALLY... has a voice assistant that isn't totally fucking stupid. I'll look at that when (and if) it's ever loaded on my iPhone.

A boy can dream, can't he?