Starting to feel bad for the Siri team now that we’ve seen what they’re doing. Good to hear they are working hard though, can’t wait for what comes ahead
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Apple Reassures Siri Team Members Feeling Disappointed and Embarrassed by Apple Intelligence Delay
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Apple totally missed the boat on streaming until they suddenly didn't and Apple Music is a perfectly fine competitor to Spotify. Likewise they totally missed the boat on watches until the Apple Watch came out and made everything else obsolete...etc, etc, etc.
It'll be fine, agreed.
My favorite is when I tell siri to turn up/down the volume on the homepod. She then just lowers/raises her own voice for some reason.....
But yea, I limit my siri interactions to just setting a timer, as that seems to be the best case scenario for her actually completing a task still only correctly like 90% of the time.
But yea, I limit my siri interactions to just setting a timer, as that seems to be the best case scenario for her actually completing a task still only correctly like 90% of the time.
The contrast of this with Tesla is striking. Tesla misses announced date after announced date, they miss sales figures, they overhype features. They take actual customer money in advance and miss their deliveries and increase prices post facto. Then instead of public apologies their CEO gets up in front of a crowd and says "don't be sad, we're making robots!" and investors go wild.
I'm sorry, but I can't see this Siri thing as anything but a non-story and all the handwringing as the problem. All they needed to tell their employees is "you're not done yet, but the good news is you all still have jobs". As far as customers, they can just leave the "coming soon" light lit. Vaporware has a long and proud history in Silicon Valley, but this isn't that until they actually stop working on it and choose not to ever ship it. At the moment it remains sneak peaks at ongoing development.
Apple Maps still suffers reputationally from being released too early. The MoblieMe / Mac.com / iCloud debacle should never be repeated. I have no problem with Apple continuing to refine these features. Even when done well they're only marginally useful, and when they're pushed out too quickly we get Genmoji. For people who want an AI friend, we have access to ChatGPT.
I'm sorry, but I can't see this Siri thing as anything but a non-story and all the handwringing as the problem. All they needed to tell their employees is "you're not done yet, but the good news is you all still have jobs". As far as customers, they can just leave the "coming soon" light lit. Vaporware has a long and proud history in Silicon Valley, but this isn't that until they actually stop working on it and choose not to ever ship it. At the moment it remains sneak peaks at ongoing development.
Apple Maps still suffers reputationally from being released too early. The MoblieMe / Mac.com / iCloud debacle should never be repeated. I have no problem with Apple continuing to refine these features. Even when done well they're only marginally useful, and when they're pushed out too quickly we get Genmoji. For people who want an AI friend, we have access to ChatGPT.
Maybe im too optimistic but 60 - 80% sounds a lot better than i thought. This will situation sounds better than i thought this was. (Situation is still ****ed up nevertheless)
There is plenty of blame to go around on this, but senior leadership should probably bear the brunt of it for greenlighting marketing of features that are not even ready for a demo, let alone shipping. The late features are non-trivial to implement, and several well-funded and established players in AI are having big problems even getting the technology to work in their own products. Who within Apple thought they could make up for years of neglect and create these features from scratch in 12–18 months? And they surely ignored many loud, saner voices within Apple who were trying to tell management that this was impossible.
This is a symptom either of many managers lying to each other or of being so clueless that they really did not understand the complexity of what their teams were trying to build.
This is a symptom either of many managers lying to each other or of being so clueless that they really did not understand the complexity of what their teams were trying to build.
I don't understand why there's a need for a senior director to acknowledge employees feeling angry, disappointed, burned out and embarrassed. If they did a poor job and didn't release a good product, they should feel that way - about themselves for the bad job they did. Then get right back at it, DO YOUR JOB and put out a good product.
It's embrarrassing nowadays how employees need to be cajoled to just do a good job. The low standards and coddling of entitled employees is leading to poor products. I assumed companies like Apple, google, etc. would be hiring the top 1% of employees available, which should be people who have both intelligence and a strong work ethic and a willingness to grind and get stuff done. But, I guess not. So many of these employees making hundreds of thousands of dollars putting out mediocre products and software.
It's embrarrassing nowadays how employees need to be cajoled to just do a good job. The low standards and coddling of entitled employees is leading to poor products. I assumed companies like Apple, google, etc. would be hiring the top 1% of employees available, which should be people who have both intelligence and a strong work ethic and a willingness to grind and get stuff done. But, I guess not. So many of these employees making hundreds of thousands of dollars putting out mediocre products and software.
Brass tacks . The Siri team has been a failure for more than a decade and has never been competitive with Alexa or Google Assistant.
"Reassuring employees" ? What about customers who were lied to? What a **** show. Gas masks are required now to work in Cupertino.
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.
In a Siri team meeting, Apple senior director Robby Walker acknowledged that employees might be feeling "angry, disappointed, burned out and embarrassed" following the Siri delay, but he praised the hard work of employees and the "incredibly impressive" features they developed, saying that Apple would continue to work to "ship the world's greatest virtual assistant" to Apple users. "I saw so many people giving everything they had in order to make this happen and to make incredible progress together," he said.
The situation was described as "ugly" because the Siri features were shown off in public with marketing campaigns and TV commercials before there was a fully functional product. Siri's new functionality was also tied to the iPhone 16 launch in advertising, and it was a feature that Apple used to promote its iPhone 16 models.
Apple decided to delay the functionality because of quality issues, with Walker telling employees that Siri's new features were only working properly 60 to 80 percent of the time.
To encourage employees, Walker demonstrated Siri locating his driver's license number, manipulating apps by embedding content in an email and adding recipients, and finding specific photos of a child. Employees on the Siri team will be able to use time away to recharge and prepare for "hard work ahead."
Walker told employees that it is not yet clear when the new Siri features will be ready for launch, but Apple's statement about the delay mentioned "in the coming year." That has been interpreted as 2026, or in an update to the iOS 19 operating system launching this fall.
Walker said that Apple is aiming for iOS 19, but that the timeline "doesn't mean that we're shipping then." Apple will ship the Siri functions when they're ready to launch, and the company does not want to provide the public with unfinished features, even if "competitors might have launched them in this state or worse."
According to Bloomberg, Apple does not have plans to fire Siri chief John Giannandrea or any other Siri executives at this time, though there have been discussions about moving additional senior executives under Giannandrea to speed up development.
Article Link: Apple Reassures Siri Team Members Feeling Disappointed and Embarrassed by Apple Intelligence Delay
Sounds to me that Apple has very little skilled programmers at work and can’t focus on more than one development at a time. Same for hardware.
I understand that the second sentence sucks, but the first one doesn't make no sense to me. Do you want for strangers to be able to access you stuff? Or is it that she says that despite you having already unlocked your device?
"Reassuring"....was that done in a 'safe space' concluded by a big group hug?
Siri is basically always successful for me in setting timers (maybe a couple times a year it misunderstands the asked for time), even when asking it from clear across my kitchen.
Ha. I find that it works well but it highlights only 1 email message when often several time-sensitive messages exist. Is it limited to 1 message or can it show more? The UI is good but it should also color the actual message.
You should look into the conditions when they were just building up the company. A lot of people basically lived there, they worked so many hours. For better or worse, it’s softer nowadays.
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They should not have even announced this until it was at least 90% ready. They only pushed forward so quickly because AI is the latest tech buzz word.
Dramatic much? And this, purportedly mind you, was internal. Just normal job things. They didn't hold a press conference. You're losing your respect for Apple? Go buy a PC, what is stopping you? I can't imagine living my life like this, LOL.
I bet they feel great compared to the Vision Pro team twiddling their thumbs along the corridor.
They should get rid of the yearly OS releases. Make it a two-year cycle.
Wait, there’s a “Siri team”? What do they do? I mean, I haven’t seen big changes in Siri for a long time…
Apple knows that Siri has been behind for many years. It's built on 2 generations old methods. If you read the AI papers that Apple is publishing, you'd better understand their approach. Their research is leading edge.
Rather than releasing another "me too" LLM tool, where they would be behind the others, they are working on a whole new compute paradigm. Highly risky but if it works, will redefine personal computing.
Take a look at their new APIs. VisionOS and Spatial functions are designed to build a 3D model of your favourite locations, Home, work, cottage, car etc. This is the setting that will generate location context for your meta data. Have you seen spatial images on Vision Pro? - stunning. Lidar is included in all of their high end devices for a reason.
Apple is pushing the boundaries for edge computing models that will run on local devices - specifically phones. Combined with meta data (private) derived from every interaction within your domain, Apple has the potential to deliver magic.
When the edge devices don't have the compute power, the private servers will process your data and send the results back to your model. They can't do everything locally.
Their vision is bold and they are inventing solutions to bring about this new paradigm. They'll keep inventing until they deliver a worth while product. I'd rather they wait to get it right before release.
Rather than releasing another "me too" LLM tool, where they would be behind the others, they are working on a whole new compute paradigm. Highly risky but if it works, will redefine personal computing.
Take a look at their new APIs. VisionOS and Spatial functions are designed to build a 3D model of your favourite locations, Home, work, cottage, car etc. This is the setting that will generate location context for your meta data. Have you seen spatial images on Vision Pro? - stunning. Lidar is included in all of their high end devices for a reason.
Apple is pushing the boundaries for edge computing models that will run on local devices - specifically phones. Combined with meta data (private) derived from every interaction within your domain, Apple has the potential to deliver magic.
When the edge devices don't have the compute power, the private servers will process your data and send the results back to your model. They can't do everything locally.
Their vision is bold and they are inventing solutions to bring about this new paradigm. They'll keep inventing until they deliver a worth while product. I'd rather they wait to get it right before release.
I feel for the teams but I’m very angry at the greedy mismanagement.
They need to hire more skilled programmers for the job to get things done more quickly. They’re years behind Android already.
Samsung already delivers today what Apple is promising with their AI for next year.
Still asking the premium prices is laughable.
Fire Tim Cook!
It was on CNBC Squawk Box this morning with 2 full segments and open discussion from all three hosts (all iPhone Apple supporters) about trying android in the near future.
Siri has been failing for over a decade, and people are now disappointed?
Apple has no sense of urgency. Nothing will change as long as Tim Cook is in charge.
Apple has no sense of urgency. Nothing will change as long as Tim Cook is in charge.
I’m genuinely curious to see
this year’s WWDC keynote. I wonder if they will focus on the new UI design to not let Apple Intelligence take the spotlight. Because that would mean readvertising the same features they showed during past WWDC.