watchOS 27 drops Apple Watch Series 9 support two years after launch

Apple Watch Series 9, sold just two years ago, gets no watchOS 27 update, making this one of the largest compatibility cuts in Apple Watch history. Millions of people who bought a watch in 2023 are now frozen out of new features, including Workout Buddy running without a nearby iPhone and Spanish language support. Meanwhile, visionOS 27's headline feature is a 3D Siri avatar you can place in virtual space, which is a thin list for a platform Apple reportedly paused hardware development on. That Siri runs on Google's Gemini AI, not Apple's own models, is the quieter admission buried in the announcements.