Apple buries Siri AI and Image Playground usage caps in macOS 27 fine print

Apple’s own release notes for macOS 27 Golden Gate quietly disclose that there will be usage limits on several marquee Apple Intelligence features.

Apple released the notes on Wednesday, five days before the update goes live on September 14.

Siri AI and other tools have a usage limit

That information is concealed in a single line at the bottom of Apple’s notes, far below the product announcements.

“Certain Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models are subject to daily usage limits, including but not limited to Siri AI, Intelligent Photo Editing Tools, Image Playground, and AFM 3 Cloud models in Shortcuts,” the release notes state.

Apple doesn’t say what those limits are, how often people would hit them, or if they reset daily.

Anyone who thought they’d be using the rebuilt Siri or new photo tools as their day-to-day utilities is getting real ambiguity. The headline features are metered, and Apple just says so in the terms.

The named products track closely with the functions Apple promotes hardest. Siri AI is the star of the show.

Intelligent Photo Editing Tools include Spatial Reframing, a tool that repositions a shot after it’s taken, and an Extend tool that broadens the frame. Natural-language shortcut builder employs AFM 3 Cloud models.

Apple is using Nvidia Blackwell B200 chips hosted on Google Cloud to process cloud-based Siri requests, a reversal of Craig Federighi’s promise at WWDC in 2024 to keep such work on Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute servers, according to Cryptopolitan’s report in June.

Apple had to make the change after a modified Google Gemini model ran too slowly on its own hardware.

At that scale, inference capacity is leased and costs money per query. That gives Apple a direct incentive to ration the cloud-dependent features it just listed.

Apple opened the new Siri to public beta testers with the iOS 27 beta in July.

AAPL traded at $315.34, down $0.88, on Wednesday, according to Google Finance data.

Apple’s update reaches every Mac on September 14

iOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate will be available for all users on September 14. The notes went out the same day Apple sent out the release-candidate builds.

The update reboots Siri around Apple Intelligence and incorporates it into Spotlight, so answers appear from the same bar people already search. Siri pulls personal context from mail, messages, and photos and works within apps on demand.

There’s a dedicated Siri app that synchronizes past conversations via iCloud. Visual Intelligence, reached with Command-Shift-Space, lets Siri read a selected window and do things like add a calendar event.

Safari now groups tabs by topic and monitors pages for price drops or restocks. The Passwords app identifies weak or compromised credentials and can alter some for a person.

Apple has also added parental controls and refreshed Liquid Glass design with a clarity slider. The company says AirDrop, Mail search, and network browsing run faster. The update now supports ultrawide displays up to 5K at 120Hz.