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

[Night Spring]

Here’s another honest question. When did it become the norm for bosses to go in shouting and firing people publicly whenever something goes wrong? That doesn’t strike me as the hallmark of how an effective company is run. This may make for juicy tabloid headlines, but doesn’t fix the underlying issue at all.

I just want to say that I doubt Steve Jobs shouted and fired people at every instance when something went wrong. He likely did that when he thought that would be the most effective way to fix what went wrong, but there were probably many other times he fixed problems in a more quiet and less attention getting way, and we just never heard about them because, well, quiet and not attention getting.

If Jobs was the type of leader that threw a hammer at every problem, I doubt he could have made Apple as successful as it is.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

Honestly if you have ever worked with AI you know infuriating it is that you’re not so much programming as much as you’re begging the ghost in the machine to give you the right answer

You’d think that just because you’re rolling your own LLM or whatever you have absolute control over how it works but at the end of the day it’s more like a black box that you can tweak parameters in

I know that we have apparently decided that “AI” is the future but I honestly wish we could move past this collective obsession of ours - while it’s really cool that we have computers that can give the illusion of reasoning and conversation it’s really frustrating to try and do any kind of serious work with it

 

[Wanted797]

Here’s another honest question. When did it become the norm for bosses to go in shouting and firing people publicly whenever something goes wrong? That doesn’t strike me as the hallmark of how an effective company is run. This may make for juicy tabloid headlines, but doesn’t fix the underlying issue at all.

I get the feeling that the majority of people here have little interest in seeing Apple get better at all. They just want to see blood, and the outcome at Apple is purely incidental.

The long list of “Apple needs to do X or it’s doomed” posts over the last two decades is really all the evidence you need that armchair analysts don’t understand business and they don’t understand Apple.

I didn’t say firing but it was pretty normal for Steve and STILL is normal for boss’ to yell when things go wrong.

I dunno what jobs you’ve held but my first one in a kitchen was basically like a Ramsey kitchen. I’m now in a corporate job and when stuff goes wrong bosses yell.

 

[Abazigal]

I didn’t say firing but it was pretty normal for Steve and STILL is normal for boss’ to yell when things go wrong.

I dunno what jobs you’ve held but my first one in a kitchen was basically like a Ramsey kitchen. I’m now in a corporate job and when stuff goes wrong bosses yell.

I have been working as a teacher in an elementary school since I graduated. Perhaps it's different when we are not a "for-profit" organisation, but we have never had to engage in shouting matches with one another to get things done. We just came together and worked things out. Perhaps I have been fortunate in that regard. Not saying that teaching isn't stressful or plagued with issues of its own, but in the very least, toxic colleagues have not been one of them for me.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

I don't get it. If you don't have it fully functioning, why promise, or even promote, a delivery date? Just say, "It's coming" and keep working on it.

Sadly, that's just the way of the World these days.

Everything from interplanetary space travel to "general" artificial intelligence is always just around the corner, and every brand always has a competing product whenever another announces their new thing.

It's absolutely nuts that products like the Humane AI Pin and the rabbit r1 ever got funded and launched. Or that one can blatantly fake tech presentations with promises and products that have never been demonstrated to work and still get the press and public to talk about it as if it's a thing that's happening.

But stocks go up and down with nothing but words, expensive CG renders, or something that is best described as advanced animatronics.

Tech is in so many ways like the fashion industry but far worse in that fashion trends or clothing brands going big in no way impacts our lives like tech does and is nowhere near as profitable or important as tech to society as a whole.

While prohibiting these nebulous promises would be too extreme, I definitely think it's time for a law that all press material, videos and visuals associated with "vapor" products need big red labels on them unless the product has been verified to work as promises by an unbiased third-party.

We also need penalties with payouts to early adopters for when deadlines are pushed back

Capitalists investing in and consumers buying and pre-ordering ideas that never materialize is a huge waste of potential, throwing away resources that should flow to those who can actually deliver on their promises and not just make them.

What Apple is doing with AI right now is really no different than what we got with Humane's AI Pin or Rabbit R1. The only big difference is that Human and Rabbit have no laurels to rest on while Apple is the most beloved brand in tech.

But it's still a promise of AI that isn't getting delivered on time and has failed horribly with what we've seen of it so far.

By now, Apple should, to some extent, be reimbursing iPhone 15 Pro, 16e, 16 and 16 Pro owners.

-It doesn't matter whether or not anyone bought these products for AI. It was a part of the pitch and in the ads but still not here and won't be for months or years.

 

[michelepri]

Siri was in itself always an embarrassment, even without AI ‘intelligence’ problems .

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

That’s your opinion. I’ve seen very helpful and timesaving examples that are mindblowing. You won’t find them if you never look outside apples walled garden.

The fact that they’ve Siri for over 15 years! and the fact that it’s almost in the same bad shape as before is telling.

A good working assistant is a key element of a modern OS. Google has it, Microsoft has it, Amazon has it. The most expensive company Apple has nothing.

Exactly.

AI is very lacking in some areas, regardless of who delivers it.

But these sweeping, black vs. white statements of it being useless or too unreliable to do anything are false and don't apply anymore.

AI is incredible for certain tasks even if it mostly still requires humans to check for errors.

The fact that Apple is delivering none of the cutting-edge AI to its user base is embarrassing but, obviously, doesn't mean that AI is too finicky or useless to implement.

It would seem that Apple is prioritizing a strict budget and timeframe for its AI development and refuses to exceed it as it would cut into profit margins? It would require massive spec bumps for iPhone's that, again, would eat too much profit? I don't now. That's just speculation on my part.
But I can't come up with a better explanation as really everyone else is doing better AI than Apple.

What is Apple waiting for?

 

[cdarlington1]

I upgraded to the 16pro for these upgrades. Not a great look. Oh well.

 

[Manzanito]

You are making an awful lot of assumptions based solely off leaked reports. How do you know that Cook didn't personally address the team on Monday with a more critical and focused tone and that Walker didn't re-energize the team on Wednesday with a more personal and communicative tone. This happens all the time in business. We have no idea what has been said inside Apple. Project leaders often communicate with their team much differently than Senior VP and CEO's do.

You are right, we only got a part of a frame of the entire movie. We also have the results of 15 years of Siri, and what they're doing internally doesn't produce stellar results.

The guys in charge of hardware are the ones who should be angry with people in charge of software.

 

[davemchine]

Apple is reassuring employees on the Siri team who may be feeling demotivated by the recent Siri delays and the bad press surrounding the company's decisions, reports Bloomberg.

​

If the team is just now embarrassed about their work with Siri, then I think we have found the problem. They should have been embarrassed over the last few years!

 

[Wanted797]

I have been working as a teacher in an elementary school since I graduated. Perhaps it's different when we are not a "for-profit" organisation, but we have never had to engage in shouting matches with one another to get things done. We just came together and worked things out. Perhaps I have been fortunate in that regard. Not saying that teaching isn't stressful or plagued with issues of its own, but in the very least, toxic colleagues have not been one of them for me.

I imagine it’s a different dynamic being in teaching with kids around. Never been a teacher so I can’t think of a scenario where someone loses their cool.

I wouldn’t say it’s common in the corporate world but it still happens. I definitely suspect working in kitchens or blue collar jobs it happens a lot more frequently.

 

[Digital Dude]

I asked Siri this morning what 50×12 was and she directed me to a website. 🫏…💩
As much as I like the bulletproof construction of my 12 max and M2 iPad, I’m seriously looking at the Fold 7. As it stands now, I use Google search 99% of the time anyway.

 

[Expos of 1969]

I asked Siri this morning what 50×12 was and she directed me to a website. 🫏…💩

Pretty bad. She did not even say "A big number"

 

[MikeX]

they don't need AI to make siri not suck. Like I wrote, I use 5 commands ~95% of the time. If siri would correctly and quickly execute them instead of asking "would you like me to search it in internet" or "who is asking" , i'd be pretty fine.

 

[thethirdshoe]

B B B. If the lot of you are sooooo smart, why haven't you shown Apple the right way to do it?.
Privacy. Security. It just works.
One has to have Apple Silicon for the bare minimum.
The server farms that need to support the rest?
Well, first you have to write the OS for the servers.✅
Then you have to design the chips that you want in it. ✅
Then you have to make the chips. 🤐
I'm thinking some sort of M5 Hydra. 🤐

How many hundreds of thousands of servers are going to be needed?

No matter what you wish for, it's always going to take nine months to create a human baby.

This is a different kind of baby...

 

[QuarterSwede]

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

I thought it was appropriate. lol.

 

[tinsoldier]

I asked Siri this morning what 50×12 was and she directed me to a website. 🫏…💩
As much as I like the bulletproof construction of my 12 max and M2 iPad, I’m seriously looking at the Fold 7. As it stands now, I use Google search 99% of the time anyway.

Is it more worrying the response or that you had to ask 😀 I’m joking of course, I just tried it and she gave me the answer, I don’t use Siri or any of these things much except for timers.

 

[DownUnderDan]

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!

If only all the worlds problems could be solved with a stab of the caps lock key and complete disconnect from the source of the problem.

 

[DownUnderDan]

I didn’t say firing but it was pretty normal for Steve and STILL is normal for boss’ to yell when things go wrong.

I dunno what jobs you’ve held but my first one in a kitchen was basically like a Ramsey kitchen. I’m now in a corporate job and when stuff goes wrong bosses yell.

Wow. You need to figure out why people find it fine to keep yelling at you. Admittedly I'm Australian, so that crap isnt going to sail over here.

 

[Night Spring]

Is it more worrying the response or that you had to ask 😀 I’m joking of course, I just tried it and she gave me the answer, I don’t use Siri or any of these things much except for timers.

I asked Siri to convert miles to kilometers one day, and it kept trying to send me to search on the web. Next day, when I tried to show the problem to a friend, it converted just fine. 🙄

 

[redheeler]

Honestly if you have ever worked with AI you know infuriating it is that you’re not so much programming as much as you’re begging the ghost in the machine to give you the right answer

You’d think that just because you’re rolling your own LLM or whatever you have absolute control over how it works but at the end of the day it’s more like a black box that you can tweak parameters in

I know that we have apparently decided that “AI” is the future but I honestly wish we could move past this collective obsession of ours - while it’s really cool that we have computers that can give the illusion of reasoning and conversation it’s really frustrating to try and do any kind of serious work with it

AI can automate some medial tasks, but the claims that it can fully replace people are very overblown. If people look at it as just a time-saver then that’s reasonable.

Getting it to work right is super frustrating. Tweak one hyperparameter slightly and the whole thing crumbles. Lots of trial and error to get anything going. I’ve never liked that aspect of deep learning but it isn’t going away anytime soon.

Developing these things isn’t trivial, even for a company the size of Apple.

 

[Tomasulu]

Coddling your employees is why they continue to produce lousy work.

 

[Tomasulu]

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.

You said it like apples competitors don't face the same pressure of yearly refresh. And many of those companies actually upgrade their hardware with significant improvements.

 

[Wanted797]

Wow. You need to figure out why people find it fine to keep yelling at you. Admittedly I'm Australian, so that crap isnt going to sail over here.

I’m Australian too funny enough...

I wouldn’t say it happens often and it’s not at me. But a global stuff up and embarrassment like this I feel would be the exact time for it too happen.

It’s often behind closed doors arguments will happen so there’s nothing to say it’s not happening at Apple (I’d be surprised if it isn’t at least a little).

But I’ve never heard such soft spoken “it’s okay you stuffed up” words like this from an executive to a group. I don’t imagine it would have flown well with Steve.

 

[MacFarmer]

I can't beleave how messed up they are with this! They had siri for how many years???? And it still sux! They should either cancel it and remove everything, or spend 10 billion and fix this damn thing. They missed all the AI hype, they missed so many possibilities. Embarrassing.