macOS 27 Golden Gate Ships Next Week--Apple Silicon Only, Rosetta's Last Full Release, and the Siri Rewrite

macOS 27 Golden Gate, announced at WWDC on June 8, is at developer beta 8 and public beta 6 as of this week, and Apple is expected to give the release date at today's event; Macworld and others put it the week of September 14. Apple's macOS page already carries the Golden Gate name and feature list.

The compatibility list is the shortest in a decade: every Apple silicon Mac from the 2020 M1 models forward, plus the new MacBook Neo, and no Intel Macs at all, per EveryMac and iClarified. Tahoe was the last stop for Intel. Golden Gate is also, per MacRumors, the last release with full Rosetta 2, so if you still run an Intel-only app, this is the year to find its replacement.

The headline feature is the rebuilt Siri, now a conversational assistant merged with Spotlight that can read what is on screen and act across apps; the advanced parts need an M3 or later and 12GB of unified memory, so an 8GB M1 or M2 Mac gets the basic version. Safari groups tabs automatically and can alert you when a page changes; Mail and Messages get personalized Smart Reply; Photos gets Spatial Reframe and Extend. The beta 8 notes are on Apple's developer site, and the current builds are listed on the Releases page.

See our First Look at the public beta. Our advice for release week is the same as it was for Tahoe: wait for .1 on your main machine unless you have a specific reason not to.