Apple Reassures Siri Team Members Feeling Disappointed and Embarrassed by Apple Intelligence Delay

[Bryan MacGuy]

Don’t hold your breath because the Apple under Timmy has no shame.

Timmy will only get in action when his financial spreadsheet tells too.

Timmy has no shame by selling old technology with minimal technical changes with the same design for years at premium prices.

Fire Timmy and replace him with a leader with a vision and heart for technology and a good balance in profits.

Out with the greed and in with the vision and passion for tech.

You may have some points here, but using “Timmy” made it really hard for me to take anything else you wrote in good faith. Disrespectful.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

And while they need to deal with this latest problem it's not some order of magnitude greater than antenna-gate, bend-gate and so many other things that hit Apple just like things hit most companies.

Completely agree.
The smart thing to do would be to back off of all of the “Apple Intelligence” talk. Still introduced the features, but they don’t have to have their own special name.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I feel like I am coming late to this, but what are the top three or so things where Apple over promised and under delivered wrt Apple Intelligence/Siri?

The three features that were delayed are stronger App Intents, on screen awareness, and personal context knowledge.
I think people are under the impression that what was delayed was a conversational Siri, but Apple *never* promised that.
If anything, it was more like a super advanced next generation of shortcuts and Spotlight that just *happens* to have a major Siri component.
Apple never promised a chat bot, that was only just rumors and speculation.
Apple is barely even trying to compete with ChatGPT, which is why all of the comparisons are ridiculous.

 

[klky]

I remember thinking Siri was a bit gimmicky but kinda cool when it was first introduced in iPhone 4S. After a few months, the novelty wore off and I turned it off indefinitely. In over a decade, I've heard nothing that intrigues me to turn it back on which is kinda sad.

 

[Javert24601]

Re assuring for wha?
CRACK SOME HEADS TIM COOK THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE THEY SHOULD BE ASHAMED OR BETTER YET YOU COME OUT AND APOLOGIZE FOR PUSHING VAPORWARE BUCKO!

Robby Walker is "retiring". He may have been asked to resign or be fired. His response is part of the problem with the Siri team. This is Siri delay is a 9-alarm fire, and he is talking like there is no urgency. Furthermore, if he knew Siri wasn't anywhere close to being "enhanced Siri", he should have fought tooth and nail to prevent Apple from presenting it as part of iOS 18.

 

[Rogifan]

Apple Joins the Navy

They need to find the pirate mentality again...

spyglass.org

 

[4k78]

View attachment 2492262

Haven’t seen that meme format in a long time. 🤣

 

[JohnC1959]

The three features that were delayed are stronger App Intents, on screen awareness, and personal context knowledge.
I think people are under the impression that what was delayed was a conversational Siri, but Apple *never* promised that.
If anything, it was more like a super advanced next generation of shortcuts and Spotlight that just *happens* to have a major Siri component.
Apple never promised a chat bot, that was only just rumors and speculation.
Apple is barely even trying to compete with ChatGPT, which is why all of the comparisons are ridiculous.

They do intend something sort of conversational (depending on how one defines this). They intend to have it understand followup questions. This may be what you meant by contextual knowledge. So you can ask it to find a specific photo then follow that with and send that photo to Joe.

 

[halo9]

Really Apple… playing the pity card. Rather than take responsibility at management level they make a point of saying our employees worked so hard and are burnt out, so that we should feel sorry for them.

Well I do feel sorry for the employees, that they have poor leadership and were given an impossible task to pull off after marketing showed a “working” product and years of neglect by upper management to focus on improving Siri and quashing bugs in the system. I do believe the people actually working on it gave their all, they were simply let down by decisions made in the upper circle.

I hate Apple execs we can do nothing wrong attitude. Take responsibility and stop deflecting. People would accept it easier and maybe even show a little respect for being honest.

 

[Javert24601]

Some of the comments here don’t take into account the human impact of working for Apple.

It seems that Apple puts huge pressure on the software teams to get features out of the door, to line up with new hardware releases.

This is due to the every year hardware refresh, meaning new software across a range of products, it’s unnecessary and only done as Apple maintains its profit margins.

Software from Apple has been poor for a long while, largely because the teams are not given the time needed to get it working in a way that meets quality control.

I feel for the teams that clearly wanted to get it working, even after they told Apple it might not be ready for the gravy train hardware refresh.

Sorry, but every corporation is like this. Human impact? Please. These employees have been pampered with all of Apple perks and working from home.

It is not really hard when you have a good manager, which Robby and John clearly are not. I am sure Apple has an overall development plan laid out for the next several years with development milestones to meet. If your team is falling behind and needs more help (how many employees does Apple have?), then s/he should be asking for it. Not meeting targets is an accountability issue, and that falls on Tim.

 

[bousozoku]

Yup, many of the people in the teams that developed the Mac were true mavericks--I followed some of their progress at the time, and tried to get a feel for their mindset, and many of them really were very innovative, bringing in all kinds of disciplines not previously brought to bear on a personal computer. Steve Jobs was to some degree among them, especially in his push to implement true typography on the Mac, except he initially tried to personally control the Mac team beyond what was useful, until he realized his level of micromanagement wasn't entirely helping, and he backed off somewhat and let the actual developers have more say.

Maybe Apple needs to have a new "pirate flag division" as many of the Mac developers saw themselves, like Jeff Raskin, Steve Capps, Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare, Burrell Smith, Bill Atkinson, Bruce Horn, Larry Kenyon, and many others. I took the time to list the names of some of them since it's probably been a while since many people have heard them.

When I was early into my programming career, I saw people leave Xerox PARC and start their own companies, such as 3COM and Adobe. Until then, computing was a by-the-book situation where people put circuitry together and patched it up with software.

A few companies tried to do something different and were smacked down but Digital Research and Apple were thinking graphically finally.

Apple must change to do more than survive. They should revive that spirit from the early days.

 

[Javert24601]

Really Apple… playing the pity card. Rather than take responsibility at management level they make a point of saying our employees worked so hard and are burnt out, so that we should feel sorry for them.

Well I do feel sorry for the employees, that they have poor leadership and were given an impossible task to pull off after marketing showed a “working” product and years of neglect by upper management to focus on improving Siri and quashing bugs in the system. I do believe the people actually working on it gave their all, they were simply let down by decisions made in the upper circle.

I hate Apple execs we can do nothing wrong attitude. Take responsibility and stop deflecting. People would accept it easier and maybe even show a little respect for being honest.

I have never understood why Apple cannot have a development team focused on each major project or product. Apple is always jumping from one product development to another instead of just developing each product. How much money do they have? How many employees do they have? They act like they are a 20-person company with limited resources.

 

[Javert24601]

I mean, honestly, that's about how often Siri works for me now. No shade. I actually like using Siri, but 80% is right around my hit rate.

If they can get into the 90s, I'll be pretty happy.

I would say it would be closer to 60% currently for me. Apple said they put in an improved microphone into the 16PM, but I see no evidence of that because Siri went from 70% to 60% on this phone and iOS version. Just today, I had to keep saying "Siri", "Siri", "Hey Siri", "Siri", and "Siri" right into the microphone before Siri finally responded. Very frustrating!

 

[novagamer]

EXACTLY. Thanks, I didn’t know this was still out there. It really did work and was genuinely useful, I thought it was bogus before I tried it because it seems implausible.

There’s functionality in that short demo that works better than it does now.

 

[Abazigal]

I have never understood why Apple cannot have a development team focused on each major project or product. Apple is always jumping from one product development to another instead of just developing each product. How much money do they have? How many employees do they have? They act like they are a 20-person company with limited resources.

I thought this article does a pretty good job of explain how Apple works.

Above Avalon: Apple Isn't a Tech Company

Apple continues to be misunderstood. With the company's cash cows showing signs of maturity, Apple's interest in new industries is growing. Questions are swirling as to where Apple may be headed next. The answer is found by assessing how Apple views itself and the role it has to play in the

www.aboveavalon.com

Basically, it’s one way of keeping politics out so you don’t have rival hardware factions fighting with one another.

 

[JohnC1959]

I would say it would be closer to 60% currently for me. Apple said they put in an improved microphone into the 16PM, but I see no evidence of that because Siri went from 70% to 60% on this phone and iOS version. Just today, I had to keep saying "Siri", "Siri", "Hey Siri", "Siri", and "Siri" right into the microphone before Siri finally responded. Very frustrating!

Interesting. While I haven't found Siri useful for general questions (just gives me web links), I have found it nearly perfect on understanding what I say. I can compose whole messages to send as text (used this a few times driving or while cycling) and it gets better than 90% in those cases and even better in simple cases. That's pretty good considering most human listeners won't get 100%.

 

[garranhado]

I see the problem some years ago.

John Giannandrea comes from Google (2018) with bad software engineering practices. His team works with micromanagement and in a fragmented way. Apple should avoid certain agile practices such Scrum.

Scott Forstall would agree with me.

 

[I7guy]

Will Apple reassure its paying customers and investors by firing some executives responsible for this mess? If Forestall got the ax over Apple Maps then another high level exec needs to lose their jobs over this debacle. Apple arguably didn’t, and still doesn’t, need a built in Maps application. Google Maps works just fine. AI, however, is much more than you can get with just an app. Unlocking its power requires OS level integration and with as much cash as Apple has on hand there is no excuse for falling behind and staying behind. Siri itself was an acquisition. So go do it again.

That is the only thing I want to hear out of Cupertino on this. The clock is now ticking. I’ll be looking at buying a new premium smart phone this September and will be taking a hard look at what Google has to offer. I’ll likely stand pat for another year but if by 2026 they don’t have new hardware that presents a satisfying upgrade including a new version of Siri that actually works and can do 75% of what the competition is doing in the AI space then I’ll seriously considering a smart phone from somebody other than Apple for the first time since 2007 when I waited in line and spent over $700 on the OG iPhone with data at blazing fast Edge speeds. LOL…. 😂

I’d be surprised if any heads roll. There is always churn. People who want to buy another device will do so.

 

[throAU]

If they believe that Siri is the world‘s greatest personal assistant, that’s part of the problem. Apple has not shipped good software in years.

It doesn’t sound like this is ever going to ship, let’s be honest. And that’s probably for the best because it will never work. The only part of Apple Intelligence that’s actually useful is the part that is outsourced to open AI.

Concur with that.

From a user perspective, irrespective of the things going on in the background of the phone the end user thinks of Siri as the dumb idiot that responds to "hey siri", and the functionality of the voice activated assistant feels like it has gone steadily BACKWARDS since 2010.

I remember getting better results from Siri on original release than I do today, and today it feels like much beyond asking for timers or a weather forecast is beyond it, and even that is occasionally infuriating with multiple HomePods in the house and none of them seeming to be aware of timers set on the other device in the house - and the "wrong" HomePod responding to a request.

It's a joke.

 

[antiprotest]

I am glad this is getting out. It is exasperating to see users and tech writers who kept insisting that Apple is not behind in AI, and perhaps even ahead, that Apple has been using AI all along, etc. etc. I have been seeing this perspective of willful blindness and denial less and less over these months, but I realize there are still some people who think like this.

 

[MNJohn]

"praised the hard work", you have to be kidding me. Someone needs to walk into Apple with sink in the hands and get rid of these unproductive people. Just look at the size of that building and the thousands who work there, and the small incremental innovation aside from new watch bands, and emoji's. Apple has fallen so far behind, they need major shakeups, not praise.

But look of what they did to “improve” the iOS Photos App 😂. Does anyone at Apple actually try to use the sh*t they’re developing?

 

[novagamer]

But look of what they did to “improve” the iOS Photos App 😂. Does anyone at Apple actually try to use the sh*t they’re developing?

I mostly like the new photos app and can see why for some users especially the non-tech savvy it might surface some functionality they weren’t aware of.

However. It is absolutely insane that you can’t sort your search results by date. It makes OCR’d screenshots, which I have an absolute ton of, impossible to navigate. I cannot believe they shipped it without that functionality and that it is still missing 6 months later. Ridiculous.

 

[Boeingfan]

A very good reason why marketing departments should be at the bottom of the food chain, to avoid spruiking crap that is undeliverable.

 

[MNJohn]

Well, I do think Tim Cook is doing as well or better than any other CEO. He just isn't Steve Jobs, but then who is?

Thanks, Tim.

 

[Boeingfan]

But look of what they did to “improve” the iOS Photos App 😂. Does anyone at Apple actually try to use the sh*t they’re developing?

Hey, flipping the camera roll upside down is a feature! Hahaha note heavy layers of sarcasm.