the smart Siri will need buy-in from developers. Devs will tell the system about nouns and verbs that their apps know about — the semantics of the app’s data model objects, and the actions users can take upon them. Additionally, using this structured data, apps will tell the system what the user is doing right now, thus providing the context that Siri can become aware of. It’s all built on top of the existing Intents and UserActivities that apps have already been using to integrate with Shortcuts, Spotlight, and a bunch of other bits of the system. But using those is optional, and even for an app that’s got a head start, the new supercharged versions will require extra work to adopt.

Gone are the days where an eager group of independent developers would adopt every new technology springing forth from Cupertino, just because. Look at VisionOS — Apple promised the next big thing, but there’s no market for software there. (Jeff Johnson reports that in the first three weeks he only sold 21 copies of the Vision Pro version of his popular Safari extension StopTheMadness.) Beyond that, it is increasingly clear that Apple does things that benefit Apple, and many of those things do not benefit developers.