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Report Reveals Internal Chaos Behind Apple's Siri Failure

I’ve heard from former developers at Apple that marketing is a leviathan within the company—to the detriment of literally every other department.

Of course engineers are biased, but the mention of compensation packages in the report seems like the issue is cultural—many devs at this time were/are fighting RTO initiatives, and any of the AI specialists in the valley could basically go anywhere and get anything they wanted during the initial hype cycle of 22-24.

Also, Apple, like Google has the misfortune of being too early in the consumer ML market—autocomplete and dictation are “small language models” and they reveal limitations of the interface that even current gen LLMs can’t overcome. A more natural sounding digital assistant is not a “smarter” assistant—and since they can and frequently do make factual mistakes, the downsides of a more authoritative voice being wrong are cataclysmic in comparison to janky less-than-helpful siri.
 
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Quicksilver867 said:
This is a really good point. The iPhone release in '07 is the golden example for me.
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MR posters, including me, have been posting comments about going back to live keynotes for quite some time now. That keynote mentioned in 2007 was sure a hot one. There were other great keynotes when Steve was running the show. Live and well rehearsed with no need to do lame predictable preshot footage. The ones together with Phil Schiller were hilarious at times. Apple lost that feeling of personal connectivity and robbed audiences of humor by removing live keynotes. It seems over the years, convenience and greed for driving profit has taken priority and Apple sat too comfortable for too long milking their products (iPhones in particular). Now, with AI accelerating quickly, they find themselves in a vortex of sudden urgency to catch up. August 24, 2025 will be 14 years for Tim Cook as CEO. Seems like he has "overcooked" his time and time to look for shiny fresh new Apples to take them where they need to go into the future.
 
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antiprotest said:
Is this Apple's Nokia/Blackberry moment? The beginning of the end (a long end, no doubt) for Apple? Falling behind at a crucial moment such that it will never catch up while other big tech and start ups leave Apple in the dust? It has enough cash to buy it's way out of this, but we haven't seen any good moves lately, only fumbles. What's going on?
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Interesting take.

Some counter-points:

1. AI is not profitable for anyone, nor is there a clear path to profitability. Where, exactly, is everyone rushing to at such great haste?

2. Unless Apple's AI problems have a significant impact on device sales (I see it unlikely in the short-term), how are they "falling behind"?

3. Apple's software has fallen in quality steadily over the past decade, but I'm curious to hear whose software is better than Apple? It certainly isn't Alphabet or Microsoft, although the gap is getting smaller.

4. What startups do you think will "leave Apple in the dust?" Apple controls the pre-eminent platforms to access the internet, what will you replace those with? There's really just Android and Windows, both of which are a big "no thank you" from me and I imagine most Apple users.
 
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Radio_N1URE said:
I have been a Mac person for decades. This blatant lie and misrepresentation sealed it for me. I'm going to transition to non-Apple products. And I don't care what the fan boys say. I was a professional programmer, unix, IBM... Stability and consistency is what I want. Apple is no longer it.
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Who is "it", then?
 
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Apple is trying to do something different than a chatbot. They want an "agent" for specific tasks we do with a mobile phone, iPad or computer, and maybe robots (or cars) in the future. Talking to a chatbot is not like allowing an IA to control a machine or device, completely or not. In the second case the IA has to know the device, the interface, the user, the information contained, the context (even physical context, like the place in which the user or device is), etc. The training of a chatbot with pictures or texts has nothing to do with the training of a IA for devices. Apple needs more time, and that is understandable because they are trying something completely different and new!
 
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wanha said:
3. Apple's software has fallen in quality steadily over the past decade, but I'm curious to hear whose software is better than Apple? It certainly isn't Alphabet or Microsoft, although the gap is getting smaller.
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I use both platforms, and in my opinion, today Mac os and Windows are almost interchangeable. Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, but in the end it is more a matter of taste than necessity, except using a software available for only one software platform.

wanha said:
There's really just Android and Windows, both of which are a big "no thank you" from me and I imagine most Apple users.
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This is one of the reasons why Apple's quality is, in my opinion, declining today. Knowing that there is a quantity of users who will ANYWAY buy their products is very reassuring for them. I realize that technology and software cannot be innovated as in the nineties, but the wonder of SJ's presentations and its true innovations seems lost to me today.
 
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jgreg728 said:
This Siri fiasco is part of a much larger problem at Apple that I called out way back last year when it was becoming apparent they were losing their pull and influence in the industry with constant disappointing headlines like losing cases on the Apple Watch blood oxygen features, wasting time on things like Apple Car, over promising and under delivering on things like Apple Intelligence and CarPlay 2, and just a general and constant sense of an Apple that’s always losing time and time again after largely winning in every arena they stepped into for years.

This new report only confirms the concerns I have about what is going on with Apple as a company. Bad leadership, bad communication, low ambitions, skewed sense of priorities, and lack of vision (pun intended). Hopefully the new Craig-lead Siri team does in fact turn things around. But to be honest, my expectations are very low, and rather my expectations for things to continue getting worse for Apple in other areas are much higher - especially with everything going on politically right now. Apple fans and especially Apple ecosystem fans won’t be eating well for a while. Not until a much bigger shakeup takes place….
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Everyone called it out.
 
Rokkus76 said:
I use both platforms, and in my opinion, today Mac os and Windows are almost interchangeable. Each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, but in the end it is more a matter of taste than necessity, except using a software available for only one software platform.
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I will not ever understand who says the Mac and Windows experience is "almost interchangeable".

You and I live in completely different universes.
 
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Rokkus76 said:
This is one of the reasons why Apple's quality is, in my opinion, declining today. Knowing that there is a quantity of users who will ANYWAY buy their products is very reassuring for them. I realize that technology and software cannot be innovated as in the nineties, but the wonder of SJ's presentations and its true innovations seems lost to me today.
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I agree with this, and it's frustrating that there are no good alternatives to Apple which would make them have to work harder to serve and delight their customers
 
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Interesting read. Siri and Apple Intelligence require a lot of work. Hopefully it will be better within the next 12 to 24 months.
 
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Fll01 said:
“Senior leaders didn't respond with a sense of urgency to the debut of ChatGPT in 2022”

This says it all. Unbelievable to overlook the significance of this.

But yeah, also some folks here still do not get it.
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This. This is a Windows Phone level of mismanagement.
 
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The BoD is equally incompetent if they don't see the long term ramifications of keeping Cook on as the CEO. He made shareholders lot of money by focusing on upselling, cross-selling and nickel-and-diming, all at the expense of innovation and product vision and now it's come back to haunt them.

The problem is that this lack of vision and innovation were all visible, for a very prolonged time, and the BoD kept him on.

They have some very difficult decisions to make.
 
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wanha said:
I will not ever understand who says the Mac and Windows experience is "almost interchangeable".

You and I live in completely different universes.
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I think it depends a lot on personal experiences. I've been using Windows since 1997, MacOs since the first G5. Back then, the differences were huge. Starting with Win10, I've never had any particular problems, neither software nor hardware. I'm clearly talking about high-end PCs, comparable in design quality and features to Apple computers. I don't do particularly demanding video editing, nor 3D rendering. The Adobe and Affinity suites work the same for me on both, and honestly, always in my strictly personal experience, I can work well with both systems. That Apple computers are obviously very well made and incredibly powerful today is clear. I think MacOs is more aesthetically beautiful and polished than Win11, I agree. But in Italy their prices, unless you need specific software that makes them necessary, are truly sky-high - especially the upgrades - and really discourage purchasing. In the end, to each his own :)
 
in 2022; Giannandrea told employees that he didn't believe chatbots like ChatGPT added much value for users.
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Well, this is THE collossal failure that led Apple to the situation today. In 2022, as Apple leader that has direct responsibility on AI internally, made a failure of reading the market and development.

Whatever data that led Giannandrea believe that GPTs are a chatbot or do not add value to users is just a mind-blowing mistake.

And Apple had and still has a leading Machine Learning department and was actually in a great spot to continue these efforts towards building it's own GPT. They are now exactly 2 year behind on this exponentially growing race.
 
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A huge slow moving entity beholden to the will of the shareholders. It's sad to see that there isn't someone on the team with a passion and love for technology that can just grab it by the scruff of the neck and drive it forward.
 
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Just crapping allover Apple’s legacy of announcing real products

It’s not like Apple never fumbled the bag under Jobs, but if this is true and the personal context feature was never even in the works this is a drastic departure from a core value that made Apple different from most Silicon Valley companies

Tim Cook might have been a supply chain genius but I think Jobs made a mistake when he appointed him to lead the entire company, he’s so clearly unfit for the task, lacks vision and is quite honestly also missing any kind of charisma
 
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