Apple quietly closed the door on a shortcut that let Mac users jump the line for its redesigned Siri.
In macOS 27 Golden Gate beta 1, a single Terminal command was enough to unlock the enhanced Siri ahead of Apple's official waitlist. Beta 2 broke that trick, and testers who had already enabled Siri AI via the workaround report being pushed back to the waitlist after updating. Apple has not commented, but the likely explanation is that the underlying entitlement check shifted from a local feature flag — easy to flip with a command — to a server-validated state that Apple controls remotely. That would also explain the batch rollout: Apple is probably still scaling the server infrastructure the new Siri depends on.
It matters because the redesigned Siri is a meaningful product change, not a chatbot coat of paint. It can search across messages, emails, and photos using personal context, execute actions across third-party apps, and on Mac it surfaces in Spotlight and right-click context menus. That scope means the backend load is real, and Apple shutting the workaround is a credible capacity decision rather than pure gatekeeping.
Anecdotal reports suggest that submitting Apple Intelligence feedback can speed up approval, but there is no verified mechanism behind that claim — and Apple is apparently granting access to new testers within days anyway, so patience is the most reliable path forward.