Report Reveals Internal Chaos Behind Apple's Siri Failure

[cpnotebook80]

It used to be that apple software and hardware integration was the gold standard but it seems like that is out the door. We are stuck with the same UX for a decade and nothing really has change on how we use our devices for the better. Looking at other LLMs and the speed at which advancements are made and embedded in devices like gemini etc and phones like s25 doing much better job etc makes my clunky iphone 16 pro ... well just clunky. I use other LLM and chatbots as personal assistants to test out and are miles ahead of siri. Even amazon is catching up.

 

[jecowa]

Absolutely agreed. Of course, with bad leadership and marketing along - it’s beyond ridiculous announcing features before they’re ready (or existing).

Not only that, but we’re talking about features which everybody knows are hard to build and can’t be done overnight.

Generally, I’m not sure why people are surprised by what happened. Many of the AI features introduced throughout other apps are mostly gimmicky and not really helpful. I never believed what was showcased during WWDC will materialise in a year.

What are the best features that they showcased that are still not available? Just curious what we're missing out on.

 

[maxfromdenmark]

It took two years for removal “hi” from “hi Siri” activation phrase and it is still sometimes deaf when I try call with just “Siri”. Congrats, pretty good job 👏🏻

 

[jecowa]

On the other hand, we could see MacBook Pros next year with 128GB memory as a BASE model, purely for local LLM.

I hope so. Maybe with the option to pay 400$ to double it to 256 GB in case we want to run two local LLMs.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Like usual, managers along the chain make promises then expect the teams under them to be able to keep them and act surprised and disappointed when they can't.

 

[0049190]

Apple has become complacent under Tim Cook. There is very little genuine innovation just incremental updates every year to keep the money rolling in.

 

[bucknut89]

I thought that the overheating was caused by a hardware GPU issue they didn't catch in time. Still inexcusable, but more on the hardware team IMO.

It is a separate issue but still something that should have been identified before releasing an inferior product to the market and letting those who purchased it suffer the consequences.

 

[0049190]

Steve Jobs would have terminated them all a long time ago. He simply did not tolerate incompetence. Multiple teams that missed deadlines were fired for this.

Tim Cook should give the Siri team a deadline and fire them if they don't meet it. This is how you motivate people.

Threatening the developers will not work. If they’re any good they will simply walk leaving the poor quality ones behind.

Steve Jobs could get away with it because he was respected and admired inside Apple but I don’t think Tim Cook commands the same level of respect.

Steve would have fired the person in charge not the developers below them.

 

[CapitalIdea]

This is such a weird series of articles. They don’t want to put out a product that’s only at 80% reliability, and it’s called “chaos” and a “failure,” yet their entire business is built on trying NOT to rush to market with things just because their competitors are releasing things working at 50% reliability.

 

[kshitijshah]

How much of this times wwdc is going to be fake?

 

[Plutonius]

If it is using open source models from other sources, why bother ?

 

[dbc34]

2 years to get rid of "hey"? Maybe I don't understand coding, but dang. That seems like a ton of time for a "small win". How much salary was spent to get rid of the word "hey"?

 

[MacCanick]

Cook as well. The next Board of Directors meeting should be interesting to say the least. This is disorganization at its finest.

Huh?
No, not, “Cook as well.”
For one thing, the board sees him as the golden-goose-slash-gifted-wizard, increasing shareholder value like nobody else out in that space. His compensation package clearly shows how much he’s both valued and necessary to the organization.

(Fun fact: If you’d invested a thousand bucks in their stock in 2011, ten years later, it was worth $12k)

What’s more, a CEO delegates to department heads and veeps. He or she cannot have their heads on a chopping block just because they have folks under them who got the technical execution wrong. Their role is to set the vision, at a 35,000-foot-level—not to micromanage the ground crew.

https://www.thestreet.com/apple/news/under-tim-cook-apple-stock-reaches-dizzying-heights

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Steve Jobs would have terminated them all a long time ago. He simply did not tolerate incompetence. Multiple teams that missed deadlines were fired for this.

Tim Cook should give the Siri team a deadline and fire them if they don't meet it. This is how you motivate people.

Steve Jobs said that the initial version of Mac OS X would ship in summer 1999.
This got delayed to early 2000…
Which then got delayed to summer 2000.
Which then got delayed to early 2001.
You can literally watch all of the delays right in a row, right here.

And by the way, these delays were not publicly announced. Steve just moved the goal posts, without telling the public.
So yeah, whenever you say “Steve would never”, maybe actually look at the evidence.
OS X delayed four times. Across two years.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Once again Craig gets the credit, but where has he been all this time with Siri leadership? He’s stood there with his perfectly quaffed hair for years now telling us Siri is amazing and is just getting better.

Craig hasn’t been in charge of Siri since 2017.
He only regained control of it last month.

 

[azentropy]

It is one of those things that Siri just does such a horrible job with me in dictation, I don't know how they think it could even jump to interacting on that when they don't even get that right.

I always said the same thing about my Tesla (7+ year owner) where Elon would say full autonomous self drive end of the year (for the past how many years) when their auto sensing wipers are still crap.

 

[Numbah One]

TL;DR - Risk aversion and poor leadership are at the heart of Apple's inability to execute large projects.

 

[vkd]

Confirms my suspicions that AI is a government project, not an Apple-specific one. Thats why they're not specifically getting behind it. Its like an 'order that came down from on high' and not something that they are really interested in.

 

[falkon-engine]

The tale of the Committee (present day Apple) vs a Singular Visionary (Steve Jobs era).

 

[ab2c4]

I have ai disabled on my 16 Pro and I honestly think I won’t enable it, possibly ever.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Also, parts of this article are verifiably false.
Several members of the press were given a demo of Apple Intelligence right after the keynote in June, and several of them, including MKBHD, confirm that plenty of features, including the notification summaries, writing tools and pretty much everything that shipped in the initial 18.1 build were functional.
Also, these early features were added in the developer beta only a month and a half after WWDC.
So the idea that literally the only thing that was working was the new Siri animation is literally, verifiably false.

 

[parameter]

Will someone with knowledge on the topic please educate me?

What properties exist in current open-source models that are at odds with Apple's privacy vision? Is there a theoretical way for Apple to employ a good, open-source model while simultaneously satisfying their own vision? The available models seem good - even a slightly knocked-down version would be better than what they're working with today.

It depends how well they actually use the open source models. I personally would not want them touching Deepseek, the Chinese originating model.

Why?
Apple just said "do whatever it takes". That means likely cutting corners in unknown places. If they go with a model, especially one that was made in China, that is a disaster just waiting to happen. Sadly at this point, I think Apple will probably do anything required to catch up since they are so far behind and I think that also includes not keeping the Apple "Privacy" standards that we are normally used to.

Sure open source code can be looked at, but I don't trust Deepseek whatsoever, and Apple has said that they've actually considered that model. Why do you think the paid API is so insanely cheap to use? No other reason than to completely undercut any and all other AI company's API prices (which I also agree, are for the most part extremely high).

And just because they made the model parts open source, does not mean that Apple will keep up and actually go through the code for each update. They absolutely should, but again "whatever it takes" has a very ominous tone when it comes to things at this stage at Apple. I don't think they care at this point when things are on fire over there.

I'd feel ok if they used other models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral or even Meta. But I don't think that is where they're headed. While all of those companies collect absurd amounts of data for training and re-training, to me, I would still place that as 100% safer to use than using Deepseek in any form.

I would do whatever it takes in order to keep my data from going directly into the hands of the Chinese government. So if Deepseek is the future of Apple Intelligence, even if used for 0.0001% of requests, I'm done with it. My trust in Apple would be completely gone at that point.

EDIT: I'm sure I'll get hell for this comment. But please think about it before you thumb it down. Things are definitely heating up and shortcuts are being taken with even more coming with things like this. And this is only the part that has been made public, imagine what they're discussing behind closed doors, I hate to even think about how much further they're pushing things outside of the usual, older Apple-"Safety" box.

 

[dcingie]

As soon as they did the whole “Mother Nature” cameo with that woman crashing their fake board meeting, and pulled the best phone case they’ve ever made, I knew Apple had lost the plot.

 

[rp2011]

"overly relaxed culture, as well as a lack of ambition and appetite for taking risks"

Can you imagine someone saying that regarding Apple when Jobs was still there? Heads would have rolled way before that. Without strong leadership and a sense of urgency, companies tend to disappear. Complacency seems to be a side effect of success.

 

[bladerunner88]

What's wrong with a more emotional responsive Siri for gods sake? Put's the Personal in Personal Assistant