Ex-Apple Siri chief Bill Stasior now a Microsoft vice president of technology

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in General Discussion edited December 2019
Apple's one-time head of Siri development Bill Stasior has left Apple, and is going to be one of Microsoft's vice presidents of technology.

Cook Siri


Stasior's shift to Microsoft following seven years of work on Apple's Siri has been confirmed in a brief statement by the Windows developer. In a remark to The Information, Microsoft said that Stasior will " work to help align technology strategies across the company."

Sources inside Microsoft told The Information that Stasior will be the head of an artificial intelligence group inside the company. Whether Stasior will be put in charge of a new division, or take over an existing one isn't clear.

Siri was a big priority for Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who made it a point of focus for Scott Forstall. Stasior was hired by Scott Forstall to be the Siri lead, following a tenure at Amazon.

Under Stasior, the Siri division was allegedly plagued by infighting as focus for the product changed away from a true conversant digital assistant to a search-focused tool. John Giannandrea was hired in April of 2018.

Giannandrea was promoted to Senior Vice President in December 2018. Stasior stepped away from Siri following another shift in company priorities, leaving Giannandrea in charge uncontested.

Stasior remained at Apple until May before the shift to Microsoft.

Stasior is only the most recent exit under Gianandrea's restructure. Tom Gruber departed in July 2018, and was the last of Siri's founders to leave the company. Apple's search lead Vipul Ved Prakash started working for Apple in 2013 , and left when Gruber did.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    ElCapitanElCapitan Posts: 372member
    What a fall!
    AppleExposedvirtualshift
  • Reply 2 of 14
    seanismorrisseanismorris Posts: 1,624member
    Stasior is a “what is Apple working on?” hire by Microsoft.

    Siri is something that touches everything at Apple... AR, Cars, TVs, etc.  Stasior might not know the nitty gritty, but he knows the plans and status of everything.
    applesnorangesAppleExposedvirtualshift
  • Reply 3 of 14
    bulk001bulk001 Posts: 795member
    ElCapitan said:
    What a fall!
    Siri? Totally agree. Though it finally seems to be getting better. 
  • Reply 4 of 14
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    ElCapitan said:
    What a fall!
    Working for the most valuable company in the world is a fall?
    williamlondonrevenantbeowulfschmidt
  • Reply 5 of 14
    OnPartyBusinessOnPartyBusiness Posts: 93member
     I don’t know which of the Siri leaders’ vision for Siri is anything like mine but I hope several things get done. Yes, Siri is something that goes across all OS versions and I would like to be able to have her  tell me the things that are useful to me -for example pollen count when giving the weather would be very helpful. I’d like to be able to ask her what my Apple ID account balance is and not  have her tell me to go to the App Store. I used to be able to  ask her what my battery level was if I was not looking at the iPad and had my hands in something cooking, but suddenly one day she stopped doing that. I don’t want to have to use Shortcuts to do these things, I’d rather have them baked into the OS. Mostly because I don’t always remember the exact phrase that I used with the short cuts, and even though I attended college for 2 1/2 years I still have difficulty constructing them.   I’ll be honest. I want Jarvis. 😀
    philboogievirtualshift
  • Reply 6 of 14
    AppleExposedAppleExposed Posts: 1,805unconfirmed, member
    ElCapitan said:
    What a fall!
    Working for the most valuable company in the world is a fall?
    Heck yeah. A company that sells office software and can't innovate outside of Apples ideas.

    Maybe he'll work of Cortana? lol
    edited August 2019 lollivervirtualshift
  • Reply 7 of 14
    seanismorrisseanismorris Posts: 1,624member
    AppleExposed said:
    ElCapitan said:
    What a fall!
    Working for the most valuable company in the world is a fall?
    Heck yeah. A company that sells office software and can't innovate outside of Apples ideas.

    Maybe he'll work of Cortana? lol
    Microsoft currently has better AR than Apple...

    Cortana was a flop, but is being repurposed....

    Microsoft has a business focus, so you don’t see much of their innovation...

    On the consumer side... we’ll have to see what the next Xbox looks like.  

    Consoles look “long in the tooth” and are struggling, we should see a new version soon.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 8 of 14
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Good riddance?
    virtualshiftcommand_f
  • Reply 9 of 14
    seanismorrisseanismorris Posts: 1,624member
    SpamSandwich said:
    Good riddance?
    How can we tell?  Siri supposedly has gotten better lately...

    Who gets credit?

    This (hire) is just one of the games billion dollar corporations play.  Apple does the same...
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 10 of 14
    elijahgelijahg Posts: 2,854member
    bulk001 said:
    ElCapitan said:
    What a fall!
    Siri? Totally agree. Though it finally seems to be getting better. 
    Really?

     
  • Reply 11 of 14
    sumergosumergo Posts: 215member
    seanismorris said:
    Stasior is a “what is Apple working on?” hire by Microsoft.

    Siri is something that touches everything at Apple... AR, Cars, TVs, etc.  Stasior might not know the nitty gritty, but he knows the plans and status of everything.
    You got it.  Siri touches everything in Apple products (current & future).

    What worries me is that Siri (Alexa, Cortana, etc. . . .) touches (and records) everything you and I say and do in our private spaces -  and transmits it to the world.

    I don't want to be Winston Smith from Orwell's "1984" - do you?
  • Reply 12 of 14
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member
    OnPartyBusiness said:
     I don’t know which of the Siri leaders’ vision for Siri is anything like mine but I hope several things get done. Yes, Siri is something that goes across all OS versions and I would like to be able to have her  tell me the things that are useful to me -for example pollen count when giving the weather would be very helpful. I’d like to be able to ask her what my Apple ID account balance is and not  have her tell me to go to the App Store. I used to be able to  ask her what my battery level was if I was not looking at the iPad and had my hands in something cooking, but suddenly one day she stopped doing that. I don’t want to have to use Shortcuts to do these things, I’d rather have them baked into the OS. Mostly because I don’t always remember the exact phrase that I used with the short cuts, and even though I attended college for 2 1/2 years I still have difficulty constructing them.   I’ll be honest. I want Jarvis. 😀
    I am sure you don't want this at all. Bouncing your highly private information all over the internet.
    You should be asking for Siri to be handled locally, on your device only, without any ‘cloud’.
  • Reply 13 of 14
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member

    SpamSandwich said:
    Good riddance?
    Of course, very good riddance.
  • Reply 14 of 14
    command_fcommand_f Posts: 428member
    SpamSandwich said:
    Good riddance?
    Feels that way doesn't it.

    Siri should be able to reliably and flexibly do some easily defined and useful subset of functions on, say, iPhone by now. All this "and now read what's on the display" is not only useless, it also discourages use of Siri because you expect to have to pull out the phone and look at it anyway... so you might as well use the touchscreen that you know is going to work.

    The actual speech recognition is really good (I use dictation all the time for messages and E-Mails) but the capabilities behind are rudimentary.
    elijahg
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