Apple's Secret Robotics Team Gets New Leadership

[Ghengis LeMond]

I wanna see it go up stairs.

I want the Pro version with the RAM and tilt upgrades!

 

[lazyrighteye]

Hope he can see the writing on the wall. Two demotions in a row, time to polish up the résumé again.

What - you think his next move is enabling Open to Work on LinkedIn?

They not like us.

 

[adrianlondon]

Shhhh!

The first rule of the secret robotics team is: you do not talk about the secret robotics team.

 

[Numbah One]

I can't help but think Giannandrea would have been booted out the door ages ago in the pre-Cook era. 😬

Meanwhile, looks like Ternus is collecting more departments like Pokémon. At this rate he'll have the whole company before the iPhone XX comes out!

Gotta catch 'em all 🤣

 

[Chazak]

Siri needs to be completely replaced at this point. It has not had any meaningful updates since the mid 2010’s. Google is like 10 years ahead at this point.

They both stink, but I will concede Google stinks a bit less.

 

[rp2011]

Well, that should tell you Giannandrea is on his way out.

 

[Macaholic868]

Siri needs to be completely replaced at this point. It has not had any meaningful updates since the mid 2010’s. Google is like 10 years ahead at this point.

That’s exactly, finally, the conclusion Mile Rockwell has come to. I think continuing on with the two headed monster version of Siri in iOS 19 is inevitable at this point to get these features out the door but I’d imagine by 2026 - 2027 and iOS 20 Apple would have a completely and totally re-written an LLM based version of Siri. Perhaps it’ll still keep the two headed monster even in iOS 20 letting the end users choose which they want in iOS 20 before killing the old Siri completely in iOS 21 or later.

It’s way too late to expect it in iOS 19 unless there’s been a skunkworks team working on this for years on its own separate track from the hybrid old / new Siri and Rockwell is fully embracing it and focusing on improving it without having to go back to the drawing board. I’ll hope for the latter but reality would seem to suggest the former.

The bottom line is that unless Apple has some tricks up its sleeve we don’t know about, like offloading Siri processing to data centers in the cloud on older iPhones, then right now the oldest iPhone model that could support an all LLM based Siri via Apple Intelligence on device is the iPhone 15 Pro and beyond.

So they’ve got to keep the older version of Siri around for users of lesser phone models for backward compatibility reasons, unless they go straight up cloud based processing with the exception of devices with the specs to handle it locally

At this point given how far behind they are I’d be going with offloading new Siri to be processed in data centers in the cloud in the name of catching up with the competition as quickly as possible on older iPhones that are still supported but with Apple’s focus on security and the huge mea culpa that kind of a switch would mean if there is no option to go back to old Siri, then I doubt they’ll go there. We’ll see. Interesting times.

 

[ateslik]

Seems like a waste of resources.
Apple getting into that Sony territory of coming up with a solution to a problem no one had. And before you quote Jobs about horses and cars etc, in what world do YOU need a robot that isn’t a gimmick?

clean the house when I'm not home or when I'm sleeping. Grocery shop, then cook perfect meals from international recipes, ready when I arrive. Create hand crafted quality furniture, including finishes. Purchase seasonal flower bed items and maintain the garden, including a robust fruit and vegetable selection. Schedule and share these resources with the other microplots maintained by the other robots in my area. Teach me - mathmatics, music, foreign languages, physics, etc.

And that's off the top of my head in just one minute.

 

[BB1970]

clean the house when I'm not home or when I'm sleeping. Grocery shop, then cook perfect meals from international recipes, ready when I arrive. Create hand crafted quality furniture, including finishes. Purchase seasonal flower bed items and maintain the garden, including a robust fruit and vegetable selection. Schedule and share these resources with the other microplots maintained by the other robots in my area. Teach me - mathmatics, music, foreign languages, physics, etc.

And that's off the top of my head in just one minute.

Cool. Now if they can only get Apple Intelligence to do more than a Genmoji.