Leaked Apple Meeting Shows How Dire the Siri Situation Really Is (theverge.com) 29
A leaked Apple meeting reveals significant internal struggles with Siri's development, as AI-powered features announced last June have been delayed and may not make it into iOS 19. The Verge reports: Bloomberg (paywalled) has the full scoop on what happened at a Siri team meeting led by senior director Robby Walker, who oversees the division. He called the delay an "ugly" situation and sympathized with employees who might be feeling burned out or frustrated by Apple's decisions and Siri's still-lackluster reputation. He also said it's not a given that the missing Siri features will make it into iOS 19 this year; that's the company's current target, but "doesn't mean that we're shipping then," he told employees. "We have other commitments across Apple to other projects," Walker said, according to Bloomberg's report. "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."
The meeting also hinted at tension between Apple's Siri unit and the marketing division. Walker said the communications team wanted to highlight features like Siri understanding personal context and being able to take action based on what's currently on a user's screen -- even though they were nowhere near ready. Those WWDC teases and the resulting customer expectations only made matters worse, Walker acknowledged. Apple has since pulled an iPhone 16 ad that showcased the features and has added disclaimers to several areas of its website noting they've all been punted to a TBD date. They were held back in part due to quality issues "that resulted in them not working properly up to a third of the time," according to Mark Gurman.
[...] Walker told his staff that senior executives like software chief Craig Federighi and AI boss John Giannandrea are taking "intense personal accountability" for a predicament that's drawing fierce criticism as the months pass by with little to show for it beyond a prettier Siri animation. "Customers are not expecting only these new features but they also want a more fully rounded-out Siri," Walker said. "We're going to ship these features and more as soon as they are ready." He praised the team for its "incredibly impressive" work so far. "These are not quite ready to go to the general public, even though our competitors might have launched them in this state or worse," he said of the delayed features.
The meeting also hinted at tension between Apple's Siri unit and the marketing division. Walker said the communications team wanted to highlight features like Siri understanding personal context and being able to take action based on what's currently on a user's screen -- even though they were nowhere near ready. Those WWDC teases and the resulting customer expectations only made matters worse, Walker acknowledged. Apple has since pulled an iPhone 16 ad that showcased the features and has added disclaimers to several areas of its website noting they've all been punted to a TBD date. They were held back in part due to quality issues "that resulted in them not working properly up to a third of the time," according to Mark Gurman.
[...] Walker told his staff that senior executives like software chief Craig Federighi and AI boss John Giannandrea are taking "intense personal accountability" for a predicament that's drawing fierce criticism as the months pass by with little to show for it beyond a prettier Siri animation. "Customers are not expecting only these new features but they also want a more fully rounded-out Siri," Walker said. "We're going to ship these features and more as soon as they are ready." He praised the team for its "incredibly impressive" work so far. "These are not quite ready to go to the general public, even though our competitors might have launched them in this state or worse," he said of the delayed features.
What if America's Tech Platforms are hiding... (Score:3, Interesting)
The media had spent years promoting Amazon's claims about their brand new, fully automated retail operations and then the media realized it was actually powered by 1,000 Indian workers. They were watching the video and manually entering the purchases for items they saw customers pick up on camera from the other side of the world. Folks were 100% sure that Amazon had some novel new tech but all they really had was access to a very cheap source of foreign labor and some webcams
What if Big Tech is actually hiding many examples of this? That the biggest tech companies in the world are still hiding the fact that large portions of their functionality is being generated by cheap foreign labor in countries that we're now in a trade-war with..
I've been using an iphone since the 3gs and I remember when Siri rolled out. It was pretty darn useful. It was good with dictation and answering simple questions. Right now, after an AI boom, this same software is less effective at the exact same exact functionality. In my opinion, the only way this makes sense is there's some hidden resource powering these services that isn't reflected in the software and that this resource is getting harder or more expensive to acquire and hide.
The liquor industry knows where it's liquor is coming from. The automobile industry knows where cars are made. But a lotta folks working in American Tech are reliant on foreign labor without actually knowing it. American Tech can't adapt to this trade war if they have aren't even aware that their supply chain crosses through those countries?
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You post intriguing ideas.
But on your point, "Right now, after an AI boom, this same software is less effective at the exact same exact functionality." - the old adage applies, never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
To me, it all looks like the companies are just wearing the emperor's new clothes as the follow the pied piper to jump on the bandwagon full of lemmings - to put AI onto anything. What better way to nail AI onto a product than onto those you already make.
Imagine some
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Actually Amazon's "just walk out shopping" works fine in the small Amazon Go stores, and it really is a fully automated system. The problems came when they attempted to scale up to grocery store size. The Indian contractors were brought in to sanity-check the automated system, they found that the system "mostly" worked adequately without them. Unfortunately customers are not going to be content with a bill that's "mostly" correct, and though even with the Indian contractors they were saving money on cash
Good for them (Score:3)
Not releasing something which doesn't work as intended until it's ready. Unlike Microsoft which seems to be their mantra.
I just read a story (not the one I'm linking to) about Steve Jobs' reaction to Apple's launch of MobilMe. In short, it was a disaster. After firing off an email to the team [cultofmac.com], he gathered everyone for a meeting which went something like this:
The tone of the email, which delivered an honest appraisal of the service’s failures, differed wildly from the tongue-lashing Jobs gave to those responsible for the MobileMe disaster. After gathering employees in the Apple auditorium, Jobs asked them, “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?”
When a few bold individuals began to answer him, Jobs snapped: “So why the f**k doesn’t it do that?”
He spent the next hour berating the group. He scolded them for tarnishing Apple’s reputation. And he told them they “should hate each other for having let each other down.”
He then fired the head of the team, replacing him with Eddy Cue.
Call him a dick (which he was), call him a narcissist, call him a charlatan. What you can't call him is not devoted to getting things right. As he said, the failure of MobilMe tarnished Apple's reputation. It let their customers down. Perhaps this delay in launching Siri is Apple's way of not having a second MobilMe situation.
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I dunno. This last statement reads like something that was intended to "leak". That makes me think this whole story is PR, and Apple is actually still trying to let PR handle the mess instead of someone high up making a more public apology. And, quite frankly, they really should just publicly apologize, since this is a bigger failure than Apple
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I also am expecting a class action suit from iPhone 16 buyers any day now.
Over siri?
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Specifically from all the people who (at least will claim to have) bought the iPhone 16 specifically because of the Apple Intelligence promises.
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Just the name "apple intelligence" screams gimmick. If anything I'd be more likely to sue over the unpatchable hardware vulnerability baked into the USB port.
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My wife uses it.
One time she asked it for directions to a hair shop. Siri responded, "but I like your hair the way it is."
Fuck that. Turn that shit off.
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Jobs wasn't a "designer, developer or innovator" either, he was simply one of the most talented marketing geniuses of his generation. Edward Bernays would have been in awe of his ability to get people to pay premium prices for a crippled OS on substandard hardware capable of running less than five percent of the programs or peripherals available, and then get them to sleep in line to buy the next new piece of shiny offered. I'm still amazed at the fanboi fanaticism.
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What does Steve Jobs have to do with this? You know he's dead, right? And Apple is now run by a corporate raider and private-equity hatchet man? Tim Cook isn't a designer, developer or innovator.
He's also not a private-equity hatchet man or a corporate raider.
Tim Cook ran Apple's operations for a really long time before Steve passed away. Nobody, and I mean nobody at Apple knows more about how stuff gets made at Apple than Tim. He made lots of parts of Apple a lot more efficient.
But you're right that he isn't a designer, or a developer. He keeps the company running. And Apple is missing that spark lately. The folks who had that spark have mostly left, probably at least in part because they kep
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And Apple actually got caught using human within th
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Is your Microsoft comment based on something that actually happened, or just your prejudice against "PC guys"?
When it comes to AI specifically, Microsoft began investing in OpenAI 10 years ago. Copilot is among the best, most mature AI systems out there. It's certainly miles ahead of "Apple Intelligence."
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Not releasing something which doesn't work as intended until it's ready. Unlike Microsoft which seems to be their mantra.
Vision pro was all apple.
What you can't call him is not devoted to getting things right.
And remember, mobileme actually launched to the market. When the apple 2 was the only thing keeping their company afloat, he kept shitting on it internally while he was working on Lisa, which was a total shit show. He only worked on Macintosh when basically forced to do so, and years before that was even out he still kept shitting on the company's only money maker. And that money maker was not of his design, which is probably why he hated it so much.
Calling him a dick is an understa
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It's insane how many happily brown nose his rotting anus.
I see a similar pattern with Musk, Trump, maybe Thiel. What is it with people and this BS misplaced hero worship?
They don't have the talent (Score:1)
I thought Apple was going to wait until AI is more mature. The comment about it failing a third of the time means they are not using deterministic type of ai, which seems strange to me.
Reminds me of Shortcuts/Workflow which is constantly breaking, undocumented and nonfunctional.
Too Much LSD In The Code (Score:1)
Dat shit be trippin', man.
Translation ChatGPT failed (Score:2, Troll)
Dire, you say? I say Siri-ous... (Score:3)
Everyone's in such a rush to put AI in everything, whether it's ready or not.
Sure, go ahead. Just *please* give me a setting to turn it off for each thing you're trying to do. Even if that only sticks for a month at a time before it resets, it'd be worth it...
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Everyone's in such a rush to put AI in everything, whether it's ready or not.
Or even if people want it or it.
Well, they can't even get auto-correct to work (Score:2)
Mixed systems guy here. My regular phone is a pixel, but I got an iPad because of a killer app that I don't need anymore. So the iPad became my not-at-a-computer-browser. Trying to post comments is unbelievably bad. If I type a wrong character and backspace, AC ignores the backspace and thinks I typed something different. You have to make special effort for it not to correct something you typed correctly after the backspace. What a sloppy POS feature.
I got a Pixel tablet, and it is just darn near perf
Monopoly rents corrupt (Score:2)
Leaked? (Score:3)
Sounds more like this is a cleverly created PR piece that was supposed to be "leaked". "Oh good on Apple for having their customer's best interests at heart." Sorry, I just don't trust anything I read about these big tech companies any longer.
Someone at Apple bought into the false AI prophecy (Score:2)
One day they will maybe get it right.