John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple

[MacRumors]

Daring Fireball's John Gruber today shared some strongly-worded comments about Apple's delayed personalized Siri features. Gruber is a well-known Apple pundit who has been writing about the company for more than two decades.

In a blog post titled "Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino," Gruber said Apple's credibility has been "damaged" by the delay:

Keynote by keynote, product by product, feature by feature, year after year after year, Apple went from a company that you couldn't believe would even remain solvent, to, by far, the most credible company in tech. Apple remains at no risk of financial bankruptcy (and in fact remains the most profitable company in the world). But their credibility is now damaged. Careers will end before Apple might ever return to the level of "if they say it, you can believe it" credibility the company had earned at the start of June 2024.

This obviously isn't the first time that Apple has failed to deliver. However, Gruber said other examples like the canceled AirPower charging mat "tended to be around the edges," whereas he believes that generative AI is going to be "big" and "important."

It's not the delay by itself that bothers Gruber. He said the true "fiasco" here is that Apple "pitched a story" last year "that wasn't true":

The fiasco here is not that Apple is late on AI. It's also not that they had to announce an embarrassing delay on promised features last week. Those are problems, not fiascos, and problems happen. They're inevitable. Leaders prove their mettle and create their legacies not by how they deal with successes but by how they deal with — how they acknowledge, understand, adapt, and solve — problems. The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn't true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn't true, and they set a course based on that.

Gruber said the personalized Siri features announced during the WWDC keynote last year were merely conceptual, and therefore "********":

What Apple showed regarding the upcoming "personalized Siri" at WWDC was not a demo. It was a concept video. Concept videos are ********, and a sign of a company in disarray, if not crisis.

He was even more explicit here:

You can stretch the truth and maintain credibility, but you can't maintain credibility with ********. And the "more personalized Siri" features, it turns out, were ********.

Gruber said Apple's repeated unwillingness or inability to demo the personalized Siri features in action since WWDC last year "should have set off blinding red flashing lights and deafening klaxon alarms" in his head that something was wrong.

Gruber went as far as saying that Apple's culture of excellence could be at risk if this situation is not handled correctly within the company:

Tim Cook should have already held a meeting like that to address and rectify this Siri and Apple Intelligence debacle. If such a meeting hasn't yet occurred or doesn’t happen soon, then, I fear, that's all she wrote. The ride is over. When mediocrity, excuses, and ******** take root, they take over. A culture of excellence, accountability, and integrity cannot abide the acceptance of any of those things, and will quickly collapse upon itself with the acceptance of all three.

The full post is worth a read.

Article Link: John Gruber Says 'Something is Rotten' at Apple

 

[dukebound85]

Agree. They had to have known this before launching the 16

 

[eric89074]

The only good thing about Apple intelligence is Apple is putting better hardware in devices than they probably want to to support AI.

 

[dustin_]

He’s right. Apple’s been killing it at hardware, but there are some major changes that need to be made on the software side of the company.

 

[JCCL]

Yes, quite misleading. They seem so far behind everyone else. They tried too hard with smoke and mirrors to convince everyone they were catching up, but now it seems they’re falling flat on their face.

 

[NewYorkRanger]

Oh, he mad.

Let's face it, Apple dropped the ball on AI and is a step behind the market. They've gotten so lazy that it is hard to be surprised anymore they are mailing it in. The Dynamic Island was really the last jaw dropping software moment and that is only because of the false, silly leaks about the gap.

 

[skymovieguy]

Apple has proven to be MIA since they shipped the black HomePod mini and cable with a white wall charging brick. When I opened the box I couldn’t believe it. Every year they continue the downward trend of making decisions that don’t make sense. Completely ignoring the smaller phone now, they have told a significant amount of people - nope. You have to get a bigger phone for AI AI AI! AI I don’t want or care about. I rarely use Siri. Rarely. I just want a good device that is well designed, aesthetically beautiful, and thinks differently.

Those days are over.

 

[twolf2919]

Totally agree with Gruber. They mislead the public into believing they’d get some great AI features a few months down the road - but only if they upgraded their iPhones. Analysts went as far as calling for an iPhone upgrade supercycle due to these great AI features. Most prominent/exciting being a Siri that knows about you. And that is the exact feature that turns out to be vaporware - for the entire iPhone 16 cycle! So the trust is broken. You can no longer believe what Apple tells you.

 

[ManBun]

Boomer tim needs to let go. These guys hang on and destroy places. Dude call it good and let someone else run the show. You did great things for the stock. Take care

 

[KentuckyApple]

All I see here are a bunch of people that don’t know what AI means for them complaining about the absence of something completely nebulous. And when Apple delivers it, they’ll go crazy. What? You’re going to leave the Apple ecosystem so you can have a different AI assistant make up a limerick about frottage and text it to your buddies while you drive? Get real.

 

[Dark_Omen]

I think the article puts a perspective on the way Apple has been run for many years now.

Steve had a vision and a culture that was very successful given the circumstances. In the early 2000s before the iPod, nobody gave a damn about Apple and their products, except maybe their 0.001% market share of users. Then suddenly the iPod comes out, then the iPod touch, and then the iPhone, iPad, and finally MacBook Air. He had the confidence and personality to not only introduce these in front of a live audience on stage, but to go in depth about how they’re going to change your life for the better.

Now we have Tim. Tim came from the financial operations part of the company. Tim only cares about numbers and maximizing profits. Not only that, but Tim doesn’t know anything about technology, which is where the “bull ****” comes from. If you don’t know anything about technology or innovation, then why are you leading a tech company? Go back to the bean counting office where you came from and stay there. Steve Ballmer barely knew tech too, and look where he ended up — Gates was the one that put Microsoft over the top.

Tim is a fool if he doesn’t resign from this; and Apple’s board of directors are fools if they don’t sack the guy before the next WWDC event. Enough is enough of this bean counting first, “milking the cow” culture at Apple. Perhaps after Tim is sacked, he can buy a team in LA like Ballmer did… Perhaps the Lakers or the Angels.

 

[dguisinger]

....this is the thing that did it for him?

Not over 10 years of dropping the ball on Siri?
Not the ever-more buggy iOS platforms?
Not a business model that is increasingly built on rent-seeking?
Not selling commodity storage and memory for 5x or more than the industry standard because they know their customers have no other choice?
Not several years of selling defective macbooks who's keyboards couldn't be typed on?
Not billions wasted on a car that never made sense and never came to market?

 

[Andres Cantu]

The Apple of the past would have held people accountable like with the iOS 6 maps debacle.

I’ve said it many times before but I’ll say it again: they just wanted the stock bump from last year that all companies were getting when mentioning “AI” in their stockholder meetings.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

It seems the people in charge at Apple for some years have spent too much time in the walled garden, relying on past successes (mostly those of other people many years ago), rather than venturing into the outside world and seeing what's going on there so that they can keep up.

"Leaders prove their mettle and create their legacies not by how they deal with successes but by how they deal with — how they acknowledge, understand, adapt, and solve — problems."

I'd suggest that leaders also prove their mettle by how they deal with past successes, maintaining the promise of those successes rather than resting on their laurels and letting others pass them by.

 

[Radeon85]

They sold the iPhone 16 Pro based on AI and sod all has really materialised so far, nothing really dedicated for the 16 Pro when even the 15 Pro gets pretty much every feature now.

They sold the 16 Pro on a lie and delays. Hell, the 16 Pro isn't even finished yet software wise, and we are already halfway through this phone's life cycle!

Tim needs to go along with all the bean counters.

 

[red elma]

Not a fan but Gruber hits the target on this one...
All in all... seems like  is loosing their cutting edge approach...

 

[DHagan4755]

I don't even really care about A.I. The empty promise is what's truly disappointing.

 

[chrono1081]

My pure guess/speculation: Apple was following what other companies were doing with AI, and suddenly realized that AI wasn't nearly as advanced as everyone was touting. Many companies straight up got caught faking their AI results (Devon anyone?) and many other companies AI results are so bad they're unusable (Gemini anyone? Has anyone actually gotten accurate information from Gemini?)

Consumers realize the ruse is up and just aren't interested anymore.

 

[yurc]

Albeit financial success to shareholder, Tim needs to go.

Apple hardware advancement is solid but barred with mediocre OS, even they starting another useless noise by UI redesign based on VisionOS? Meh, I better licking good old Aqua！

Annual OS releases absolutely need to stop, to polish and squash the bug as priority, but Tim says otherwise.

 

[victorvictoria]

"The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn't true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn't true, and they set a course based on that."

That was kind of Steve Jobs' business model. But then he set about making it come true, even if it was impossible!

 

[Dark_Omen]

All I see here are a bunch of people that don’t know what AI means for them complaining about the absence of something completely nebulous. And when Apple delivers it, they’ll go crazy. What? You’re going to leave the Apple ecosystem so you can have a different AI assistant make up a limerick about frottage and text it to your buddies while you drive? Get real.

I’ve already started my journey by moving everything to Google starting today. Notes, files, word processing, e-mails, calendar, and everything else.

Even if Gemini or Galaxy AI isn’t perfect yet, they certainly have a much higher ceiling than Apple Intelligence does. The way Siri has been programmed for the last 14 years tells it all.

 

[russell_314]

Absolutely rotten. You know it’s just so rotten that the rotten pieces are rotting. It’s like cheese with mold that has cheese in the mold. As Tim Cook would say I will make the best rot ever. I’ll even attach a chart showing how bad this rot is. This is a five-year graph of the rot and it’s absolutely horrendous.

 

[Andres Cantu]

....this is the thing that did it for him?

Not over 10 years of dropping the ball on Siri?
Not the ever-more buggy iOS platforms?
Not a business model that is increasingly built on rent-seeking?
Not selling commodity storage and memory for 5x or more than the industry standard because they know their customers have no other choice?
Not several years of selling defective macbooks who's keyboards couldn't be typed on?
Not billions wasted on a car that never made sense and never came to market?

At least the public perception may finally start to change.

That’s what will get them to change, once it starts affecting their bottom line.

 

[teknikal90]

Absolutely rotten. You know it’s just so rotten that the rotten pieces are rotting. It’s like cheese with mold that has cheese in the mold. As Tim Cook would say I will make the best rot ever. I’ll even attach a chart showing how bad this rot is. This is a five-year graph of the rot and it’s absolutely horrendous.

View attachment 2491617

it's almost like you have blinders on and couldn't bring yourself to actually read what was written. Yes, go off your stock chart.

 

[jz0309]

They put that PM person in charge of Siri a month or 2 ago. What has been transpiring over the past couple weeks is the outcome of the work of that person, they have known about it for a while, hence the change back then.
Grubers “PhD knowledge of Apple” (that is his claim) should have highlighted this months ago, he’s just riding the wave now.