Apple will try to right the Apple Intelligence Siri ship, but don't expect firings
Apple's ongoing promise to improve its vocal assistant Siri with Apple Intelligence has still not been fulfilled, and looks to be a failure at multiple levels of the executive management team.
Siri's upgrade to leverage Apple Intelligence will be a focus at Apple's annual retreat.
The head of Apple's Siri efforts, Robby Walker, has at least privately acknowledged the problems, calling them "embarrassing" and "disappointing." Apple's advance marketing of features that weren't yet ready has been, he acknowledged, part of the problem.
It's clear, based on the marketing of the features that began late last year, that Apple -- or at least its marketing department -- expected more Apple Intelligence features to have arrived by now, reports Bloomberg. This would have included Siri gaining on-screen awareness, personal context, and improved voice control -- both of which are now officially delayed.
It's now expected that these features may not fully roll out until sometime in 2026. It's an unusual miss from a company that generally delivers on features when it says it will.
Pushing forward rather than rethinking
To be clear, Apple is allowed to have unexpected problems. No Apple product is perfect, but broadly speaking the company delivers software, services, and hardware that often delight users, an suffers fewer "deadline misses" than its competitors.
In most companies, a delay like this would be accompanied by the company saving face by announcing the resignation of an executive in charge of the delayed rollout. Apple's executive team, however, are apparently a tight-knit group that has to tolerate occasional misfires like this rather than dare to lose someone -- or bring in anyone new.
Big transitions at the top of Apple's team are rare: Tim Cook has been CEO since 2011, Jeff Williams has been the company's COO since 2010. Most of the various hardware and software division heads have been in those positions since at least 2012.
Some of Apple's current top executives.
This week, 100 top Apple executives will be meeting for their annual retreat -- and the top topic for discussion is likely to be how to speed up the evolution of Apple Intelligence, particularly to improve Siri's interactions with users.
Traditionally, Apple has been tight-lipped about new features and abilities until the company was sure it was ready to ship -- but that didn't happen in this case. Apple Intelligence brought the promise of a "smarter" Siri, compared to the incremental and minor updates since its initial release.
That said, users would benefit immensely from the "personal context" understanding of users Siri will gain from Apple Intelligence. The reason this hasn't already happened is that Apple Intelligence doesn't yet include that feature, except in beta.
The folly of pre-announcements
Publicly, the delays with Siri and Apple Intelligence look like Apple's top brass are unwilling to take any blame for failures or missed deadlines. A seemingly-permanent executive is reassuring when the company is firing on all cylinders -- but recent missteps like these suggest that some rethinking and fresh voices should be considered at this year's retreat, and going forward.
Despite the delays to key parts of Apple Intelligence and Siri, we can expect the same group of top Apple executives to make the trek to luxury resort Carmel Valley Ranch, as they have for the past several years. This year, it could be an opportunity for Apple's leadership to refocus on getting announced services and productions out the door -- and to not announce things before they're ready.
The annual retreat could be an opportunity for all the various executives to come together and work out a detailed plan to deliver the rest of Apple Intelligence's promised features to users quickly. While the general public may not have much awareness of the coming upgrades, Apple's most dedicated fans are growing impatient for long-promised upgrades.
Apple has since pulled TV advertisements touting Apple Intelligence until the most anticipated features are ready to roll out. But Apple's timeline has slipped, and a much-improved Siri is now not expected to debut until the arrival of iOS 19, which is expected to launch in the autumn of 2025.
Importantly, iOS 19 and macOS 16 will -- at a minimum -- need to be ready in time for beta-testing the new features and integration with developers in time for June's annual WWDC conference. The biggest change in Siri's capabilities since its introduction in 2011 will need to have a smooth roll-out for Apple to even begin to catch up with its rivals, including Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot AI engines.
Rumor Score: Likely
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Comments
That people… posible… made a mistake, or even a lot.
Then… you want them to be fired. So, the company must hire new people…
…How do we assure that they won't do the same… or even worser… mistakes?
Maybe the only thing that is needed is a clarification or redefinition of the goals, timeframe, and controls.
Of course, we all remember that after the failure of MobileMe's launch Steve Jobs fired the team.
In the Maps fiasco… the —maybe only— person fired was because he did not want to sigh the apology.
And the real solution after those debacles was a change in the head of the project… Eddy Cue took the internet services.
The reason why Google is way ahead of their AI is that they're literally collecting personal user information in plaintext while Apple encrypts everything making user information inaccessible to Apple making it more challenging to analyze data.
I feel silly asking because it seems like I’m missing something super obvious. But I did read the article twice and I don’t actually know what the rumor is. Or is the rumor simply that Apple will try harder and nobody will get fired?
In this case, people will probably get 'sidemoted', shuffled under a new leader.
This looks way more like Jobs's MobileMe screwup, or his antennagate.
You don't fire someone for a mistake. You fire someone for a sequence of mistakes and an unwillingness or inability to learn from them.
I don't think it's that bad and Apple has the ability to self-correct.
Copland suffered from endless feature creep, goals that were technologically almost impossible at the time, lots of executive turnover, and a company that was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Apple today has the money and the talent to fix the AI/Siri situation. I'm confident they will get this fixed eventually.
https://www.cultofmac.com/news/apple-history-mac-os-copland
Also, their financial position actually wasn't so rosy. Apple went through an extended period of time during which they managed to remain solvent by selling off shares of ARM stock. Their market share was falling. They went through three CEOs in rapid succession (Sculley, Spindler, Amelio).
To compare Apple of the mid 90s to Apple today, in any respect, is to deeply misunderstand Apple of the mid 90s and Apple today.
Nobody needs to be fired. They just need to take the feedback, learn from it and make appropriate changes to make it better. I think people have very unrealistic expectations of new services. They seem to expect everything to be perfect and great out of the gate and that's usually never the case. Apple has very talented people working for them and they can make changes and make it better than is today. We also don't know why features are delayed, why things are the way they currently are, etc.
I just don't get this well something failed out of the gate so people need to be fired! How would you like if you were fired because something didn't work quite right out of the gate and perhaps it wasn't even your fault (or anyone's fault directly)?
I suspect it was more than just Maps. I reckon Tim Apple found him too much of a Jobs, and thus a long term competitive threat