As part of iOS 27, Apple debuted an all-new Siri app as a way for users to manage their interactions with Siri AI. In a post-keynote tech talk at Apple Park this week, Apple’s Craig Federighi explained why Apple decided to launch a chatbot-style app, after previously saying a chatbot wasn’t part of Apple’s strategy …

In an interview with Joanna Stern last year, Federighi and Greg Joswiak explained that Apple’s strategy with Apple Intelligence was to create an “experience that’s integrated into everything you do, not a bolt-on chatbot on the side.”

Federighi was directly asked about those comments in the Q&A I attended at Apple Park yesterday. He explained that Apple wanted to create a place where people can go back and reference their previous chats with Siri. Apple ultimately determined that a dedicated app on the home screen made the most sense for this.

Federighi’s full comments:

We see Siri not as a separate chatbot, just an unintegrated place you go and chit-chat, but rather as an integral, conversational tool that you use in the moment, deeply integrated into your experience that’s understanding what’s on screen, able to interface, not in some separate world, but directly in the document that you’re editing and that you want help proofreading, that you want tips on.

And so all these experiences are conversational. They are really an extension of your system experience, deeply integrated into your flow.

Now, we did go back and forth on what’s the best way, if you want to get back to such a chat that you had, because you want to continue it, you want to reference it, and quite honestly, in our platform, the most natural affordance for any user to go find something like that is to have an app that they can manage on their home screen, launch, and get back to. And so we have a Siri app, and that Siri app just re-embodies those capabilities of that core system experience.

What do you think of Apple’s change in strategy with iOS 27? Are you glad to have a Siri app icon on your home screen? Let us know down in the comments.

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