Apple lets China Mac users connect Siri to Alibaba's Qwen

Apple has quietly published a guide showing eligible Mac users in mainland China how to plug Alibaba's Qwen AI models into Siri and Writing Tools, extending a China-specific Apple Intelligence partnership that first cleared regulatory approval in July.

Based on the updated Chinese language document by Apple, users who choose to sign up will have access to more descriptive answers by Siri, including photo and document analyses, as well as rely on Qwen to produce texts and images based on descriptions provided.

This app extension needs a minimum of macOS 26.6 and also activation and login into a new Qwen account. According to the document by Apple, Alibaba is not allowed to use any of that information for training their models.

Apple’s Mac computer shipments were down by 9% to around 800,000 units compared to last year during the first quarter, which has Apple accounting for only 9% of the PC market, according to Omdia, a research company.

Lenovo had 31%, with its Tianxi AI assistant at the centre of its business plans, and Huawei managed to secure 16% of market share with its AI strategy that is linked to HarmonyOS. Linking Siri and writing tools to a compatible AI assistant is how Apple can narrow this gap.

For Alibaba, plugging Qwen into Apple's built-in software extends its reach well beyond its own apps and cloud platform. Alibaba has said Qwen will eventually power Apple Intelligence across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro devices in China, though Friday's guide covers Macs exclusively.

The company released its newest model, Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter system it describes as its most capable yet, earlier in the week, though Apple's documentation doesn't specify which Qwen version actually powers the Mac extension.