Vision Pro Creator Taking Over Siri After Apple Intelligence Setbacks

[JOLoughlin]

People have no idea what they mean in regard to Vision Pro’s measure of “success” or “flop” and for whom, what are Apple’s own measures of success, developer’s, customer’s, businesses. There are different actors. Apple’s measure is likely customer sat and in-store demos, so I usually ignore shallow takes. Vision Pro is estimated to pull in $1.47b in revenue with hardware sales alone with est. ~420k units sold (unknown on the R&D costs).

Assuming reports are true I have no idea on Rockwell’s background in AI but Siri needs that level of engineering leadership.

 

[novagamer]

What this proves to me is that either Tim Cook doesn’t use Siri, or he’s never used a competing product. Either thing is a real indictment of his responsibility to be familiar with the state of the art.

Hope this change pays dividends internally and gets people focused and moving in a better direction.

The fact this rolls up to Craig now is good. Craig is one of the only Execs I’ve ever heard talk about a competing product, at least since Steve. I think he’s been handcuffed for years and hopefully this is Tim giving him some real power to make change.

 

[Rogifan]

According to Gurman, Giannandrea has considered Rockwell his eventual successor. So either that’s just Apple spin or this isn’t really some major shakeup but Giannandrea ready to hand the reigns over to someone else. Of course Bloomberg and Gurman are going to spin it something major even if it’s not.

 

[xander49x]

Hmm, not optimistic that Siri will change for the better considering Vision Pro hasn't been the glowing success it's said to be.

how has the Vision Pro not been a glowing success? example, please. What evidence do you have? Or is it mere conjecture?

 

[JoeMaj]

Vision Pro is a technological achievement, regardless of its commercial success. If Mike Rockwell can push through the development of the Vision Pro OS, he should clearly be able to get Siri 2.0 off the ground. I say why not. Good move Tim.

 

[SanderEvers]

So we'll get a $ 3500 Siri upgrade? (joke)

 

[iSaul]

Tim Cook put Siri in the hands of the Vision Pro guy, which is ironic considering Siri has been failing in plain sight for years—no headset required.

IMO any issues with vision pro are about product/market fit not the actual polish of the product itself.

We already know people want voice assistants. They just need to make one that functions properly. Seems like if you can make the vision pro a reality, getting siri to tell me the weather correctly 100 times out of 100 should be a breeze.

 

[antiprotest]

I don't know Mike Rockwell, but I know Tim Cook, because as a consumer I have suffered under his decisions for years now. So if it is Tim Cook who chose Rockwell, I'd say he's the wrong man for the job and will not fix Siri. Remember, it is also Tim Cook who chose Giannandrea. They might be right for other roles. The root of the problem is not in these individuals, but Tim Cook.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Seems like if you can make the vision pro a reality, getting siri to tell me the weather correctly 100 times out of 100 should be a breeze.

Those are totally unrelated technology and product challenges

 

[ThailandToo]

Original Apple Maps guy declined the opportunity?

The one blamed for Apple Maps was Scott Forstall. He is a genius and should be the AAPL CEO right now. Cook had to fire everyone who was a threat to him, and that sucks for all of us. I think Ive and Forstall would have an innovative Apple right now. May not be a $4T company, but would have far more goodwill with customers than Tim Crook who only cares about his shareholders which ensures he keeps making money himself.

 

[nathansz]

sounds like Vision Pro is abandoned

 

[The Doctor11]

I don't get it, Apple's been ahead of the curve. Everyone is just now making terrible AI LLMs that hallucinate and have turned the web into a dead mall of recursively generated slop, but Siri has been crappy for years!

I think you should revisit chat bots, yes they still have some issues but it’s already worlds better than the early days.

Try googles Gemini live feature, it’s exactly what Siri should’ve been a while ago, and truly impressive.

 

[ThailandToo]

I've lost confidence in Tim Cook. It's not like he didn't know that Giannandrea's demo was bogus and that the product couldn't ship when promised. Or if he in fact did not know those things, that's arguably worse. And while this is Apple's mot high-profile failure, it's far from the only one in recent years.

Apple needs a CEO who is a product visionary and who can re-instill highly exacting standards at Apple. Moving executives around below the CEO level won't fix what's really wrong with Apple.

I don’t believe Tim Crook knows anything about what can be done with technology hardware or software. He knows how to make money, but that’s far worse for the long-term outlook of AAPL. Made money for shareholders but created such a bad environment for every stakeholder who doesn’t profit in the top 1% by owning shares of AAPL. It’s sad, because Tim was supposed to be a stopgap until Scott Forstall was ready to go within three to five years. It’s been going on 14 years, and the best Apple was a few years after Steve’s death when his pipeline of products were humming. Since then it’s just about making an anticompetitive ecosystem and locking in people with the stickiness of all the products. Every stakeholder should be furious at this point. Shareholders should leave, as the stock is triple the price of its value at this point. Apple’s best days are long behind it; it needs Cook to retire and a real innovator to regain the trust of the stakeholders - all of them not just the shareholders.

 

[Joe Rossignol]

Very unfair editorializing. To say the features were concept videos is untrue. Recent reports state that the features work, but not reliably. This is not a defense of Apple, just a simple statement of fact.

That is not known to be the case as of WWDC 2024 keynote day.

 

[e-coli]

These two things are NOT similar.

If Siri has a foundational architecture problem, or a multi-model integration issue, no hardware expert on earth will ever be able to sort this issue.

Not encouraging.

 

[surferfb]

The one blamed for Apple Maps was Scott Forstall. He is a genius and should be the AAPL CEO right now. Cook had to fire everyone who was a threat to him, and that sucks for all of us. I think Ive and Forstall would have an innovative Apple right now. May not be a $4T company, but would have far more goodwill with customers than Tim Crook who only cares about his shareholders which ensures he keeps making money himself.

I see this all the time on here, but if Forstall was so great and such a genius, why hasn't he done anything of note since leaving Apple? Steve got kicked out of Apple and made Next, what has Forstall done? From all reports he was an absolute nightmare to work with and managed to piss off just about every other executive at Apple - and that's why he got fired, not because Tim Cook thought he was a threat.

 

[ThailandToo]

I see this all the time on here, but if Forstall was so great and such a genius, why hasn't he done anything of note since leaving Apple? Steve got kicked out of Apple and made Next, what has Forstall done? From all reports he was an absolute nightmare to work with and managed to piss off just about every other executive at Apple - and that's why he got fired, not because Tim Cook thought he was a threat.

He has enough money he never has to work again. Exited with over $100m. Would you really want to go work if you could play the rest of your life and never worry about money??? If you would, more power to you. Scott obviously is happy watching Apple fail and Tim’s fall from grace. I don’t think any one person could replace Steve, but Forstall and Ive were a much better product focused leadership duo than Tim Crook.

 

[macfacts]

Hmm, not optimistic that Siri will change for the better considering Vision Pro hasn't been the glowing success it's said to be.

The problem with the vision pro was it was released too early(released before the price of parts came down, released before a killer app could be made), hard to fix that.

 

[vertsix]

Give us John Ternus as CEO please!

 

[uniquestevejobs]

It’s time to Take a breath and focus fully on the new Siri. I’m sure if it’s finished it will be the most leading assistant ever in a smartphone. Siri needs more training and functionality and maybe a beta test before fully release.

 

[ThailandToo]

The problem with the vision pro was it was released too early(released before the price of parts came down, released before a killer app could be made), hard to fix that.

The concept is definitely the future. It shows what will one day be amazing technology. But this is the problem with Tim Cook, he doesn’t know what to say yes to as he doesn’t understand the products. For years he was touting augmented reality and what Apple was going to do was amazing. After the flop of the Vision Pro, Tim says it wasn’t a mass market product. Well, it’s probably five to ten years from being down to the weight of a pair of eyeglasses. When it gets down to that size, it will be amazing technology. Right now, it’s just a concept product that Tim wanted to sell when his whole team said no way.

 

[xander49x]

So they’re promoting the guy who heads up a product no one wants to head up Siri, a product everyone hates….

I think it’s time for the head of Apple to change!

Please show me the evidence of where no one wanted the AVP. I know a whole community with the AVP and they and I love it we share our use cases and it is amazing, try using a product for a while and then give your opinion.

 

[jarman92]

Hmm, not optimistic that Siri will change for the better considering Vision Pro hasn't been the glowing success it's said to be.

It’s state-of-the-art hardware and fantastic software.

 

[iSaul]

Those are totally unrelated technology and product challenges

A great leader is problem agnostic. Doesn't matter if they are unrelated.

 

[canadianreader]

Vision Pro is such a success I'm sure Siri is in good hands.