Who brought up “community service” for this all-hands?
We are going to war gentleman. Gear up and fly the Pirate Flag
What in the hell are you talking about? Apple has been encouraging employees to get involved with volunteering and community service for 40 years. Since before Apple's own pirate flag flying.
It was Tim Cook who brought it up, by the way.
Try this: The company is at a critical competitive cross road. The future is at stake. And you are offended I suggest they should not spent time discussing community volunteering at the fist all-hands after the earning call? It is all hands on deck right now
And yes, I know Cook brought it up
I'm not offended, but I wonder if you've ever been to all-hands meetings. They tend to roll all over the place. Sometimes there's even donuts, promotion announcements, and so forth!
Who brought up “community service” for this all-hands?
We are going to war gentleman. Gear up and fly the Pirate Flag
What in the hell are you talking about? Apple has been encouraging employees to get involved with volunteering and community service for 40 years. Since before Apple's own pirate flag flying.
It was Tim Cook who brought it up, by the way.
Try this: The company is at a critical competitive cross road. The future is at stake. And you are offended I suggest they should not spent time discussing community volunteering at the fist all-hands after the earning call? It is all hands on deck right now
And yes, I know Cook brought it up
LOL AI is not going to break Apple and bankrupt them. AI is kind of an overrated thing right now and nobody is doing it well. Maybe some are getting more attention, but that doesn't mean they're doing it better or worse. Apple is going a different direction with AI from others and it's doing something I don't think anyone else is doing and that doesn't mean they're wrong and everyone else is right. Honestly, I don't think the overall public really knows what AI is and what they can do with it. Apple is going to integrate AI so people don't really have to know and that takes time.
You sound like a pesky shareholder who bought Apple shares and wants an overnight return.
Does Cook realize that the Apple II predated the PC or does he think it all started with the Mac?
There were "personal computers" before the Apple II, also.
But in general I do think it's a shame that the Apple II receives so little love from Apple. That's been a major gripe from Apple II diehards for decades.
I figured Apple senior executives were likely taking AI very seriously and working hard to catch up. I'm glad to see some confirmation that is correct.
If Apple executives were as clueless regarding the importance of AI as some fanboys posting on this site, Apple would be in huge trouble. As it is, they are behind, and they are at risk, but with appropriate senior management attention (and their vast financial resources and all the good tech on their shelf), they can catch up.
This particular one simply cements what many have thought about Apple's AI efforts:
It was behind, late to reveal, and is struggling to deliver.
Management changes, key members of staff leaving the company, and lately, evermore commentary on all of its AI failings.
Now, it is also very likely that staff morale is low and dissent within ranks is possibly rising. I believe that Gruber's piece simply gave a voice to the group within Apple that was dissenting.
That is what probably led to this 'pep talk'.
Comments like this seem very out of place in mid 2025:
"Employees should push to deploy AI tools faster, and urge their managers and service and support teams to do the same".
That would have been more appropriate four or five years.
It's a bit of a mystery as to why Tim thinks AI is 'sort of' theirs to grab. Again, that would have been fine four or five years ago so it was wrapped up in the 'Apple is rarely first' nonsense and sidestepping the fact that everybody else is obviously already grabbing it.
If that was the case there would literally be no need for an all hands meeting in the first place. It would be business as usual. Simply wait and deliver when fully baked. Clearly, something is very different here.
Now, as the pieces slowly fall into place, we are seeing a picture that doesn't look great.
After the original LLM AI fluster was out of the stalls, Apple chose to deliberately avoid using the term.
The AVP was then 'pre-announced' (very unusual for Apple), possibly as a means of distraction.
When AI was finally announced and branded as 'Apple Intelligence' it wasn't actually delivered. Also unusual.
When it did finally start rolling out it was lacking. It still is.
The cherry on the cake was possibly having to publicly delay the new AI Siri.
Of course Gruber's piece probably hit hard with some Apple executives.
I'm no fan of his but I applaud him for saying what he thought (with the 'risks' involved) and give him credit for very possibly speaking out on behalf of Apple employees who are effectively gagged.
Years into the future all of this will no doubt become clearer as people within Apple begin to reflect on this period. I'm sure it's turbulent times within the walls of Apple Park.
Apple is now saying that AI is possibly bigger than anything that came before. That realisation would have been better a decade ago. If they had realise then perhaps they would have been further ahead than they currently are and this situation could have been avoided.
Normally, it is not a bad sign that we have used to have our All hands meetings all the time as it is just a part of our organizational events. But this All Hands meeting was organized in a short time frame, which is not a good sign.
What many employees worry and are mainly disappointed is that the execution is very slow and poor. Believe me. Once you work at Apple, you would wonder how bureaucratic this organization is. Sometimes, I wished Apple could just announce massive layoffs to get rid of middle management layers.
Tim wants to launch Siri next year, but there are even many employees incl. me who doubt that.
Steve Jobs once said that it is a wrong way to make products based on consumer's feedbacks. Consumers don't know what they want, but Apple is going exactly to a diferent direction at the moment and keeps doing what Apple has mastered for years.
Gen AI is a new field and lots of companies lose tons of money at the moment. But what Apple worries about is that there might a "Boom" effect from a company, which revolutionizes the tech industry with something what big corps have never thought about before. Therefore, I see why most big Techs are spending "panic CapEx".
There’s been so many doom and gloom AI scenarios put forth, political noise around tariffs and manufacturing locations, and regulatory negativity directed at Apple this year that has the potential to erode the confidence and focus of Apple’s workforce. It’s completely within the scope of Apple’s leadership team to get up in front of the troops and give what is essentially a pep talk.
Questioning the timing of the meeting with respect to previously held all-hands meetings or how much advanced planning went into this particular meeting is a waste of brain processing time. I can’t recall a time when Apple has ever been in the position it is today with respect to external chaos and a constant barrage of criticism and doubt that is so deeply orthogonal and disconnected to the reality of the bottom line results that Apple has consistently delivered quarter after quarter and year over year for many years. To project Apple as a company in crisis is science fiction. Getting up in front of the whole team now is exactly what Apple’s leaders should be doing - now. They needed to throw a cold bucket of water on the smoldering pile of poop that is being pushed in Apple's general direction by outsiders.
I also wouldn’t read too much into the nitty gritty details of what was said or pick apart the statements word by word. It’s the overall message that matters.
The overall message here was to remind all employees that the company they are part of is on the right track, has a plan in in place, is executing on that plan, and needs everyone to stay focused, keep their heads down, and continue to do their part to help the company move forward with purpose, confidence, and resolve.
This is correct. Apple doesn’t make it a habit to respond to the peanut gallery, but the hype around LLM AI has been ridiculous and as a consequence so has the criticism of Apple for “being behind.”
LLM AI is experiencing a bubble from all the hype. Most people think it’s something that it isn’t, that it can do things it can’t, and that it’s about to do things it won’t. The prospect of lots of new, energy-sucking AI data centers is evidence of just that. The application of brute force computation on massive quantities of collected information yields worse results than still-forming adolescent brains informed by high school or undergraduate educations and running on the calories in pizza and cheeseburgers.
An all hands meeting to remind Apple employees not to be discouraged by all the hype and uninformed chatter is probably really needed right now. Reminding them that Apple is pointed in a different, better thought out direction is probably just the right message they needed to hear.
"The work we've done on this end-to-end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed. This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned," Federighi reportedly said to the Apple employees. "There is no project people are taking more seriously."
"The work we've done on this end-to-end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed. This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned," Federighi reportedly said to the Apple employees. "There is no project people are taking more seriously."
Important quote.
Indeed. The commentariat had concluded Apple had “abandoned” Macs shortly before Apple announced Apple silicon. So far at least, nobody has gotten rich by betting on the “Apple is doomed” thing.
Comments
You sound like a pesky shareholder who bought Apple shares and wants an overnight return.
But in general I do think it's a shame that the Apple II receives so little love from Apple. That's been a major gripe from Apple II diehards for decades.
If Apple executives were as clueless regarding the importance of AI as some fanboys posting on this site, Apple would be in huge trouble. As it is, they are behind, and they are at risk, but with appropriate senior management attention (and their vast financial resources and all the good tech on their shelf), they can catch up.
"The work we've done on this end-to-end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed. This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned," Federighi reportedly said to the Apple employees. "There is no project people are taking more seriously."
Important quote.