Google has used the biggest stage at its Cloud Next 2026 keynote in Las Vegas to publicly reaffirm what many had started to doubt: the Gemini-powered version of Siri is still on track for a 2026 release.
Speaking to a packed conference hall on Tuesday, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian stood in front of a giant Apple logo and described the collaboration as “monumental.” According to 9to5Mac, Kurian said Google is working with Apple as its “preferred cloud provider” to develop the next generation of Apple Foundation Models based on Gemini technology, and that those models will “help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalised Siri coming later this year.”
There’s no fresh product news here. But the timing matters. It tells us the partnership is shipping, not slipping further.
What this actually is
Back in January, Apple and Google published a rare joint statement confirming a multi-year partnership to use Google’s Gemini models and cloud infrastructure for the next generation of Apple Foundation Models. We covered that announcement in detail in our earlier piece on Apple tapping Google Gemini to power next-generation Siri.
The deal was unusual for two reasons. First, Apple almost never publicly admits it needs help. Second, Google is a direct competitor in phones, assistants, and services. For Apple to hand its most prominent AI feature to a rival is effectively an admission that its in-house models were not cutting it.
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Bloomberg has reported that Apple is paying roughly $1 billion a year (about KES 130 billion at current rates) for a bespoke version of Gemini. Neither company has confirmed that figure.
Why Apple needed the help
Apple first previewed a “personalised Siri” at WWDC 2024. The demo showed Siri checking when your mother’s flight landed by reading your Mail, cross-referencing your Messages, and knowing your on-screen context. It looked magical. It never shipped.
Apple officially delayed the feature in March 2025. Internal reports later described a Siri codebase so entangled that engineers had to rebuild it from scratch on a large language model foundation. That rebuild is what the Gemini partnership now backs.
Apple Intelligence, which did ship, has been underwhelming in practice. Notification summaries sometimes invented news. Writing tools were useful but unremarkable. The part users actually wanted, a genuinely smart assistant, kept slipping.
How the plumbing is expected to work
Based on statements from Tim Cook on Apple’s Q1 2026 earnings call and reporting from MacRumors, Siri will run on a tiered system:
- Simple tasks (timers, opening apps, basic dictation) stay on-device using Apple’s own models.
- Moderately complex tasks go to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers.
- The heavy reasoning, the “world knowledge” layer, hits a custom Gemini model reportedly hosted on infrastructure Apple controls.
Apple insists its privacy posture is intact. Gemini, in this setup, is the engine. Siri is still the face.
What to watch at WWDC
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on 8 June 2026. That is almost certainly where the first Gemini-powered Siri features will be shown off, as part of iOS 27. Developers and public beta testers will then spend July and August kicking the tyres before a wider September rollout.
Expected features in this overhauled Siri include a standalone Siri app, persistent chat history that behaves more like ChatGPT or Gemini, deeper cross-app awareness, and the ability to chain multiple commands into a single request.
Apple currently uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT for certain complex queries inside Apple Intelligence. That integration is reportedly unchanged for now, though how long Apple keeps two external AI partners is an open question.
The Kenyan angle
Most of these features require an iPhone 15 Pro or newer to run Apple Intelligence at all. For many Kenyan users still on iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 models (which dominate the local secondhand market), the headline Siri upgrade will not arrive on their current devices.
There’s also the supported-languages question. Apple Intelligence rolled out in English first, and support for languages widely used in Kenya like Swahili remains absent. Whether the Gemini partnership accelerates that is unclear, but Google’s translation infrastructure is a genuine asset Apple did not previously have.
For Apple resellers in Nairobi, a meaningfully smarter Siri could also become an upgrade driver for users sitting on the fence between Android flagships and the iPhone 17 lineup, which we broke down here.
The bigger picture
Google getting this partnership on a keynote slide, in front of its entire cloud customer base, is a flex. It tells enterprise buyers that Apple, the most privacy-obsessed company in tech, vetted Gemini and picked it. That is a marketing win Google could not buy.
For Apple, it is a pragmatic admission: shipping a great assistant matters more than shipping one built entirely in-house.
WWDC will tell us whether the wait was worth it.
. The Mac mini is Apple's small desktop, an aluminium box roughly 5 inches square that ships without a screen, keyboard or mouse. You supply those, which is why it has been the cheapest way into a Mac for two decades. The design is unchanged this generation. ## Where the $899 comes from The previous Mac mini launched in October 2024 at $599 with the same 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. We [covered that launch](https://tech-ish.com/2024/11/04/m4-mac-line-up-apple-refresh/) at the time, when the M4 Pro cost $1,399. In May 2026 Apple dropped the $599 version, brought it back in late June at $799, and pushed the M4 Pro to $1,599, [changes tracked by MacRumors](https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/mac-mini/). So the same specification has gone from $599 to $799 to $899 in under two years, a 50 percent rise on a machine whose whole pitch is being the affordable Mac. [AppleInsider calls $899](https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/08/25/m6-mac-mini-arrives-in-ram-and-ssd-constrained-environment) the highest starting price it has ever had. The original 2005 model was $499. ## Why the price went up On its earnings call on 30 July 2026, chief executive Tim Cook told analysts: "we reluctantly raised prices, I would say. We did it because we're in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on the memory pricing." The [full transcript is public](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/08/07/apple-aapl-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/). Three companies make almost all the world's memory chips: Samsung, SK hynix and Micron. Since late 2025 they have moved factory capacity towards the specialist memory AI data centres buy, where margins are higher, leaving ordinary memory scarce. [TrendForce reported in July](https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20260703-13134.html) that contract prices would rise another 13 to 18 percent in the third quarter of 2026, after jumps of roughly 60 percent in the quarter before. Apple's finance chief Kevan Parekh told the same call that memory costs explained more than 100 percent of the company's sequential fall in profit margin. The same pressure is expected to hit the iPhone 18, covered in our [piece on iPhone pricing in Kenya](https://tech-ish.com/2026/08/02/iphone-18-split-launch-kenya-prices/). ## What you get The M6 has a 12-core processor and 12-core graphics, with a dedicated AI accelerator in every graphics core. Apple claims up to 4 times faster AI work and 2 times faster graphics than the M4 Mac mini, on its own July 2026 tests. It is also the only M6 tier Apple plans to make, since it is skipping the M6 Pro and Max to bring the M7 forward, as our [piece on both chips explains](https://tech-ish.com/2026/08/25/apple-m6-m5-ultra-chips-explained/). Base memory stays at 16GB and base storage at 256GB, so the extra $300 buys speed rather than capacity. The M5 Pro model gets Thunderbolt 5, the fast port standard used for external drives and displays, and can be linked to other Mac minis to run large AI models locally. The M6 keeps the slower Thunderbolt 4. Both gain Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5Gb ethernet, and both run macOS 27, which brings the rebuilt Siri that Apple [showed at WWDC in June](https://tech-ish.com/2026/06/02/wwdc-2026-siri-ios-27-cook-last-keynote/) as an English-only beta later this year. Apple said in February that Mac mini production would come to the United States for the first time, at a Houston plant, and Cook confirmed in July that assembly starts there this year. Apple [opened a training centre at the site on 13 August](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-opens-advanced-manufacturing-center-in-houston/). ## What this means in Kenya Apple has no store here, so the machines arrive through authorised resellers and importers on their own timelines. At about KES 129.45 to the dollar on 24 August 2026, $899 converts to roughly KES 116,000. Nobody will pay that. Computers enter Kenya at zero import duty, but a 2.5 percent import declaration fee, a 2 percent railway development levy and 16 percent VAT all apply, and VAT is charged on top of the other two. With air freight, our working estimate puts the landed cost near KES 150,000 before any shop takes a margin. The outgoing M4 Mac mini sells locally from about KES 89,000 at [iTey Store](https://iteystore.co.ke/category/mac-mini-m4-m5-in-kenya-apple-desktop-computers) to KES 137,000 at [Price in Kenya](https://www.priceinkenya.com/product/113317-apple-mac-mini-m4). Early Kenyan pricing on new Apple hardware runs high and then falls. The MacBook Neo landed at KES 130,000 against a $599 list price [in March](https://tech-ish.com/2026/03/25/macbook-neo-price-in-kenya-alternatives/), and iPhone 17 prices [dropped sharply three months after launch](https://tech-ish.com/2025/12/30/iphone-17-iphone-air-prices-in-kenya-go-down-crashing-just-3-months-later/). So wait for stock to settle rather than paying the first asking price. If your current Mac still does your work, nothing in the memory forecasts suggests a cheaper Mac mini next year. The thing to watch is whether Kenyan resellers list the M6 before the 22 September shipping date.](/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Apple-M6-and-M5-Ultra-hero-260825_big.jpg.large_2x-390x220.jpg)
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