Siri's Quixotic Swim to Hawaii
Mark Gurman
At some point, I'm going to stop writing about this topic, I swear. But today, sadly, is not that day. There are simply too many interesting little nuggets in Mark Gurman's report from an internal meeting about the Apple Intelligence fiasco. Kicking off:
Apple Inc.’s top executive overseeing its Siri virtual assistant told staff that delays to key features have been ugly and embarrassing, and a decision to publicly promote the technology before it was ready made matters worse.
Robby Walker, who serves as a senior director at Apple, delivered the stark comments during an all-hands meeting for the Siri division, saying that the team was facing a bad period. Walker also said that it’s unclear when the enhancements will actually launch, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the gathering was private.
Robby Walker is not a name most people will know, but he has been at Apple for 11 and a half years. In fact, he came over when Apple acquired the startup he co-founded, Cue (originally named Greplin – one of the OG "social search" products) back in 2013. Why did Apple acquire that company? Because Google – specifically, the product known as 'Google Now' – was destroying Siri, as Matthew Panzarino noted at the time. Siri, of course, was still not good, way back then. And Walker has been working to try to fix that within Apple ever since.1
Anyway, "it’s unclear when the enhancements will actually launch" is um, not a great look, but refreshingly transparent?
During the all-hands gathering, Walker suggested that employees on his team may be feeling angry, disappointed, burned out and embarrassed after the features were postponed. The company had been racing to get the technology ready for this spring, but now the features aren’t expected until next year at the earliest, people familiar with the matter have said.
Yeah I mean this is just depressing. For you, for me, for Apple.
The features — unveiled last June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference — are fundamental to making Siri a more effective personal assistant. The technology will allow the software to tap into users’ personal data to better respond to queries. It also will let Siri more precisely control apps and analyze content that’s on a user’s screen.
But when Apple demonstrated the features at WWDC using a video mock-up, it only had a barely working prototype, Bloomberg has reported. Walker told staff in the meeting that the delays were especially “ugly” because Apple had already showed off the features publicly. “This was not one of these situations where we get to show people our plan after it’s done,” he said. “We showed people before.”
Over/under on the next time Apple does that? My money is on "never". I do appreciate that Walker proceeded to throw Apple marketing under the bus for running with their touted on stage advancements.
Walker also raised doubts about even meeting the current release expectations. Though Apple is aiming for iOS 19, it “doesn’t mean that we’re shipping then,” Walker said. The company has several more priorities in development, and trade-offs will need to be made, he said.
“We have other commitments across Apple to other projects,” Walker said, citing new software and hardware initiatives. “We want to keep our commitments to those, and we understand those are now potentially more timeline-urgent than the features that have been deferred.” He said decisions on timing will be made on a “case-by-case basis” as work progresses on products planned for next year.
Um. Wow. This is seemingly a "well, we tried, but it didn't work, so we're back-burnering those ideas and moving forward". It raises a question that sounds like a troll but is actually legitimate at this point: are we ever going to see these features? Is this truly the AirPower of Apple Intelligence?
“Customers are not expecting only these new features but they also want a more fully rounded-out Siri,” he said. “We’re going to ship these features and more as soon as they are ready.”
Yes, true. But we've been waiting for that "full rounded-out Siri" for 13 years. What's the rush now? It's a joke, but it's also not.
Walker said that there is “intense personal accountability” about this effort shared by his boss John Giannandrea, the head of AI at Apple, as well as software chief Craig Federighi and other executives.
"Intense Personal Accountability" would be a pretty solid band name.
As of Friday, Apple doesn’t plan to immediately fire any top executives over the AI crisis, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That decision could theoretically change at any time. In any case, the company is poised to make management adjustments. It has discussed moving more senior executives under Giannandrea to assist with a turnaround effort. Already, the company tapped longtime executive Kim Vorrath — seen as a project fixer — to assist the group.
I'm of two minds here. The first: good – I obviously don't want anyone to get fired, but also it does feel like there are too many people to potentially blame here – which is perhaps part of the problem! The second is: yeah, this is not the Apple of Steve Jobs. Someone's head would have had to roll here. Maybe that's also a good thing? Maybe?
Walker said the decision to delay the features was made because of quality issues and that the company has found the technology only works properly up to two-thirds to 80% of the time. He said the group “can make more progress to get those percentages up, so that users get something they can really count on.”
In recent weeks, Federighi voiced concerns to other senior executives that the features weren’t working as advertised, ultimately prompting the decision to delay, Bloomberg reported. Issues with Apple Intelligence were clear from the start, with the company postponing the first batch of features last year and providing vague timelines during its launch event.
This is the real meat. As previously noted, there was some chatter that perhaps the delay was related to security. But all of the internal reports to date – all from Gurman – suggest that is not the case. Or, at the very least, not the primary reason for the delays. Instead, it all seemingly comes down to the product not being good enough. I both appreciate that restraint and at the same time think it's a major problem – obviously!
But Apple wants to maintain a high bar and only deliver the features when they’re polished, he said. “These are not quite ready to go to the general public, even though our competitors might have launched them in this state or worse.”
That's a great dig at the competition. Nice one, Walker. You're on a...
Walker compared the endeavor to an attempt to swim to Hawaii. “We swam hundreds of miles — we set a Guinness Book for World Records for swimming distance — but we still didn’t swim to Hawaii,” he said. “And we were being jumped on, not for the amazing swimming that we did, but the fact that we didn’t get to the destination.”
Oh boy. That's an awful analogy. Literally no one could swim to Hawaii without dying. It's like 2,500 miles! What the fuck? Does this mean to suggest the attempt to make Siri actually good was a quixotic mission? Why aren't people happy that we swam 2 miles of the 2,500 miles to Hawaii we promised – on stage and in commercials? Why are people so unrealistic?!
Walker said that some staffers may feel “relieved” over the delays. “If you were using these features in the build, you were probably wondering: Are these ready? How do I feel about shipping these to our customers? Is this the right choice?”
He added that some employees “might be feeling embarrassed.”
“You might have co-workers or friends or family asking you what happened, and it doesn’t feel good,” Walker said. “It’s very reasonable to feel all these things.” He said others are feeling burnout and that his team will be entitled to time away to recharge to get ready for “plenty of hard work ahead.”
The executive said he didn’t want things to get worse before they got better, saying that special attention will need to be paid to the integration of existing features into iOS 19.
Walker ended the meeting upbeat, saying that Apple will “ship the world’s greatest virtual assistant.”
Look, I don't want to be a dick – I really don't – but clearly, Apple is in trouble here. They need to make an acquisition – fast.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 You may have heard of one of Cue's other co-founders: Daniel Gross. He too was working at Apple for a time – specifically on their early entry into AI – but more recently, he's been better known as an investor in AI, and the co-founder of Safe Superintelligence.