All hands on deck: Tim Cook, Craig Federighi address Apple employees on AI, Siri
On Friday afternoon, Apple CEO Tim Cook and senior vice president Craig Federighi addressed Apple Park employees, discussing the scope and scale of artificial intelligence, Siri, and the road forward for Apple.
Craig Federighi and Tim Cook at WWDC
Less than a day after Apple blew away Wall Street's expectations for the quarter, Tim Cook and Craig Federighi held a all-hands meeting with Apple on Friday. The topics were wide-ranging, with a focus on the Apple Intelligence efforts that have come under fire from analysts, and other talking heads.
"Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab," Cook said about artificial intelligence during the meeting, according to Bloomberg's accounting on Friday. "We will make the investment to do it."
Ever since the improved Siri got delayed by Apple, and, honestly, for years now, we've been making the observation that Apple's cash pile allows it to wait out any storm, or any failure to launch. Tim Cook made that exact remark at the all-hands meeting.
"We've rarely been first. There was a PC before the Mac," Cook reportedly said. "There was a smartphone before the iPhone, there were many tablets before the iPad, there was an MP3 player before iPod."
Cook also encouraged Apple employees to use Artificial Intelligence more in the workplace.
"All of us are using AI in a significant way already, and we must use it as a company as well," Cook said. "To not do so would be to be left behind, and we can't do that."
Tim Cook wasn't alone in presenting to the gathered Apple employees, in person, and virtually. Craig Federighi spoke, but didn't hold the lectern for very long, apparently.
Hair Force One on the spot for Siri
In a very brief remark, Federighi pontificated on the Siri delay, saying that the problems stemmed from a new system that merged two new and discrete engineering tasks.
Apparently, the tasks of setting alarms and day-to-day smartphone use is difficult to integrate with a large language model as demonstrated during the 2024 WWDC.
"We initially wanted to do a hybrid architecture," Craig Federighi reportedly said. "We realized that approach wasn't going to get us to Apple quality."
"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 improved Siri is now expected in the spring of 2026.
Engaging the workforce
Artificial Intelligence and Apple's implementations weren't the only topics of discussion. The meeting ran an hour, and discussed Apple TV+ viewership improvement, AirPods Pro hearing aid, Apple employee community service, a push into emerging markets, a vague reference to upcoming products, the retirement of Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, regulatory efforts, and environmental issues.
Apple hasn't historically listened to naysayers, nor social media complaints. Direct feedback is their number one vector of one-way interaction with the Apple-using public. We do know that they read sites like AppleInsider and our friends at MacRumors and 9to5Mac frequently, but pay little attention to forums.
The meeting as held on Friday is rare, and from what we've heard as well, incorporated some of those feedback vectors that we just mentioned that are typically ignored.
Apple has held only a handful of all-hands meetings. There was one around the iPhone 4 antenna issue, we know of one after the original HomePod was discontinued, and there was another around the AirPower wireless charging pad after they cancelled it.
So, clearly, Apple may be starting to listen, at least in part, to the wider user base. More importantly, executives are making clear their stance on projects to the "rank and file" at Apple Park.
Overall, we think that's a good thing.
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Comments
I look forward to the better Siri in 2026.
What this Friday meeting missed is any discussion about the lack of accountability inside the company. And, they couldn't help themselves and had to "brag" how upgraded Siri is a "bigger upgrade than envisioned". <rolling eyes> They are still trying to use it to push sales, but since it wasn't advertised at 2025 WWDC, they can't be sued over it. People, don't fall for it and wait until it is actually released. And, even then since there will be massive bugs in it, you might as well wait for the iPhone 18 with its 16Gb RAM, which will run AI much better anyways.
Tim Crook needs to be fired.
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 realised 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".
It was Tim Cook who brought it up, by the way.
It was scheduled two weeks ago, apparently.
And yes, I know Cook brought it up