Apple’s long-awaited Siri update and equally long-awaited by Rockstar Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA6) are two topics I never thought had so much in common, but it turns out that in the year 2025, there is one thing that most TechRadar gadgets and pop culture have in common: latency.
Whether it’s media facing production challenges, hardware struggling with disruptions in supply chains, or software keeping pace with ever-changing user behavior and expectations, we’ve become accustomed to disappointment. More often than not, what they advertise to us isn’t even what we get, and there’s nothing worse than prolonged excitement over an ultimately overrated result.
Let’s talk about deadlines first.
GTA6 was first announced in December 2023, initially setting the release window at 2025 to get fans of the series super excited. Then, in May 2025, Rockstar Games announced the first delay, pushing the release to May 2026, followed by a (hopefully) final postponement to the current release date of November 19, 2026.
Siri 2.0, on the other hand, was first announced as part of Apple’s 2024 WWDC presentation as part of the then-new Apple Intelligence suite, but it didn’t arrive with the first wave of tools when iOS 18 debuted in behind schedule 2024. Still, Siri 2.0 became a major selling point of the iPhone 16 series, leading many to assume its arrival would happen until Apple officially confirmed delays to key Apple Intelligence features in March 2025. During WWDC in June 2025, Apple more directly addressed the delay and for now we have no official confirmation of its release.
So what’s going on with all these delays?
At the heart of both of these issues is a elementary excuse: quality control. And, controversially, I think this should always be considered a good thing.
GTA6 is probably the most anticipated game in living memory; these days, greatly exaggerated “we have XXX before GTA 6” jokes date back to the behind schedule 2010s, with fans speculating (and clamoring for) the next sequel years before the official announcement. This level of pressure is almost insurmountable – and even then, I’m pretty sure the results won’t please everyone – but I completely understand that the team behind the game will want to do everything they can to release a game that’s as enjoyable as possible for the public.
On the other hand, Apple’s path to Siri 2.0 is a bit more complicated. While I cannot condone Siri 2.0 being used for any purpose to promote a device that supports the feature before the company had absolute confidence in its readiness, that ship has now sailed and we exist in a space where Apple is much more conservative when it comes to Siri 2.0 messaging beyond the “coming” message, and this has been a bigger undertaking than initially expected. Official information is therefore limited; but rumor has it that Siri 2.0 will ship, at least initially, with Google’s Gemini clever solution.
Although there is no confirmation of this, as part of the alleged deal, Apple will pay $1 billion per year to apply Google’s artificial intelligence model with 1.2 trillion parameters compared to Apple’s 150 million parameters. This may all sound like a no-brainer, but it will translate into a much better user experience and a much higher success rate than anything Apple has tried to collect using its much smaller data set.
This means that I think we should actively encourage quality control delays. It will always be disappointing, but you will never be happier eating a half-baked cake than letting it bake for another 15-20 minutes.
As for what I think will be released first, Apple’s Siri 2.0 has my vote because GTA6 may not be out of the woods yet when it comes to release date issues.
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