iOS 18 update, Siri multitasking

Welcome to 95Mac Daily for Wednesday, April 1, 2026. I'm your host, Chance Miller. We are sponsored this week by Backblaze. Leading off today, yet another new report from Bloomberg SmartGerman has details on upgrades coming to Siri later this year. This update specifically highlights just how stagnant Siri has been over the years. As part of iOS 18, Apple improved Siri's ability to remember context between sequential requests, but now the voice assistant in iOS 27 is said to have actual persistent context, not just for back-to-back requests. German reports that Apple is developing the ability for Siri to parse and handle multiple requests from a single prompt. The feature would let users combine requests like asking it to check the weather, create a calendar appointment, and send a message all within a single prompt. If this pans out and works as expected, it would be a significant upgrade to the Siri experience and make it significantly easier to have the voice assistant actually take action on your behalf. The report also explains that iOS 27 will come with a big update to the keyboard. German says that Apple has explored an updated system keyboard that expands autocorrect by offering alternative words. It's an approach used by similar tools like the third-party app Grammarly. German says a final decision on releasing this keyboard tool hasn't been made. It would, however, serve as a natural extension of the current autocorrect system as well as writing tools, one of the few Apple intelligence features that actually shipped as part of iOS 18. Ultimately, German's reporting continues to paint the picture that Siri's Gemini-powered upgrade will be a total makeover for Apple's voice assistant. There are plans to integrate it throughout iOS, release a dedicated Siri app, and do much more, pending Apple's ability to actually develop and ship these features in a timely manner. We're sponsored this week by Backblaze. If you travel with your MacBook, you're carrying your digital life with you. iCloud keeps your files in sync across devices while Time Machine protects you locally. What if while you're traveling, your MacBook is lost or damaged? Would you have an off-site backup? Well, Backblaze runs automatically and creates a separate backup of your entire Mac in the cloud, including external drives. I've used Backblaze before, and it's easy to use. You set it up once and you forget about it. So iCloud for sync, Time Machine for local backup, and Backblaze for off-site protection. Try it free at Backblaze.com-925-Mac and get 20% off with code 925-Daily. My thanks to Backblaze for their support of the show. Next up today, last week Apple released iOS 26.4, which enabled support for voice-based AI apps and CarPlay for the first time. Just a few days later, OpenAI has now updated the ChatGPT app for iPhone to take advantage of this change. Now, ChatGPT is fully accessible via a dedicated CarPlay app. As we've explained before, Apple limits the categories of apps that are allowed in CarPlay. This is done for safety reasons as well as design limitations of Apple's CarPlay framework. Unlike iPhone apps, CarPlay apps must be built around Apple-provided templates within that framework. With iOS 26.4, Apple updated its list of supported apps to include these voice-based conversational apps. The CarPlay version of ChatGPT focuses entirely on voice interaction and does not show any text. You can simply talk to it like you would with voice mode in the ChatGPT app on your iPhone. There is an end button in the upper left corner, along with a mute-unmute button in the upper right corner. Other than those two buttons, the only interaction method is with your voice. There is also a list of your prior interactions for voice conversations. Disadhearsed to Apple's guidelines would say that voice-based apps like this must optimize for voice interaction in the driving environment and cannot show text and imagery in responses. They must have the primary modality of voice upon launch and after launch appropriately respond to questions or requests and perform actions. ChatGPT is the first of the major AI apps to roll out a dedicated CarPlay app. Presumably the likes of Anthropics Clawed and perhaps Google Gemini will follow suit. But for now you can download the latest version of the ChatGPT app on the iPhone to try it out, pending that you're running iOS 26.4. Running out today, according to Wired, Apple is set to release an update to iOS 18 on Wednesday to patch vulnerabilities exploited by the Dark Sword hack. Dark Sword is an exploit that chains multiple vulnerabilities together to compromise devices running older OS versions. In most cases they rely on WebKit exploits as a point of entry and they escalate the attack from there. Dark Sword affects iOS 18.4 through iOS 18.7 and it was discovered by the Google Threat Intelligent Group. According to the GTIG, there are multiple commercial surveillance vendors and suspected state-sponsored actors utilizing Dark Sword in distinct campaigns. Apple first responded to Dark Sword by releasing new versions of iOS 18 but only for iPhone models that can't run iOS 26. This came in the form of iOS 18.7.7 for iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. There are, however, iPhone users with a device that can run iOS 26 but who have chosen not to update. These people remain exposed to the Dark Sword exploit as the last iOS 18 update released for them was iOS 18.7.3 in December. As such, today's iOS 18 update will be available for all iPhone users still running iOS 18 whether they are supported by iOS 26 or not. This is something often referred to as back-porting a patch. In a statement to Wired, Apple says that it still encourages all users with supported devices to update to iOS 26 to receive its most advanced protections. Nonetheless, iPhone users who have auto-update enabled will automatically receive this iOS 18 update if they're not running iOS 26. You can also preempt that auto-update by going to the Settings app, choosing General, then choosing Software Update to install it manually. Apple released the first batch of iOS 26 adoption numbers in February, saying that iOS 26 at that time was installed on 74% of devices released in the last four years. This signals just how many people there are still running iOS 18 even though they could technically update to iOS 26, so it's important to get this fixed out to everyone as soon as possible. That wraps up another episode of 95Mac Daily. As always, you can find all of the latest Apple news on 95Mac.com, follow along with me on threads at Chance H. Miller, and we'll be back tomorrow for a new episode of 95Mac Daily.