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Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#71

Post by Culonavirus »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #68
jonplackett wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to stop shooting for the moon and just release some incremental improvements. Like you say, Siri is borderline completely useless. Just timers for me. Even just the most basic LLM integration, without even giving that LLM any personal data would be a massive improvement. They even have this ChatGPT integration that Siri seems totally incapable of using in any meaningful way.

I might be completely wrong, but by making “pro-privacy bets”, they shot themselves in the foot. Average customer ended up really not caring about the benefits that we try to promote, which hinders the development and features in some sense. Also, it’s still a pain for them to integrate AI in their second biggest market — China.

Maybe go all in on local on device low latency LLMs? They make their own hardware so they could probably do it and do it well with enough focus and investment.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#72

Post by saagarjha »

vessenes wrote: post #64

We're at an inflection point in the last few months that means Apple might finally be able to do something good with Siri. Fundamentally, Siri's great promise (well in the last few years) has been that it could hook into all of the scripting facility made available by iOS apps. There are tons and tons of AppleScript hooks on many, many apps -- if only Siri could, you know, access them. This is traditionally not Apple…

Are you familiar with how app intents work?

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#73

Post by hansmayer »

travisgriggs wrote: post #4

I wonder if there’s any “doers” in that top 100? Or is it all just “discussers” and “deciders”. I’ve owned Apple products forever. But as long as Pournelles Law of Bureaucracy remains on full display, these shuffling of the titanic deck chairs will continue. I wish it could be otherwise. I wish a company could introspect on itself and say “hey, our doer/decider balance is out of whack, let’s correct” but that just ne…

No it's more like 'visionaries' (with a flawed vision though :))

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#74

Post by chippiewill »

varunnrao wrote: post #15

imo, Apple are actually ahead when it comes to the hardware side of the whole thing. Their vertical integration gives them an edge not many can match, when it comes to running ML models. It's a no-brainer for Apple to reduce the barriers for devs to build really cool native Mac/i{Pad}OS applications and incentivize them to leverage the built-in AI/ML abilities to a greater extent. The iPhone in part took off _because…

> Their vertical integration gives them an edge not many can match, when it comes to running ML models.

They have an advantage when it comes to running them locally, but it feels like they're trying to push it onto consumer hardware before consumer hardware is at the point of actually being able to run useful LLMs.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#75

Post by xvector »

I worked at Apple for a couple years and it wasn't uncommon to see org level dysfunction.

But Siri is such a terrible product that it amazes me that the org hasn't been deleted, and that Siri hasn't been ripped out of products.

I have seen Apple delete bad orgs a couple times before so I find it strange they let Siri survive. It does not "have good bones," it is not a good product and it never will be.

It is actively frustrating to use and I deeply regret migrating to HomeKit as well, primarily because of the usage experience via Siri.

Truly a total/spectacular failure of an org and product. It ought to be a case study for how not to product manage.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#76

Post by saagarjha »

LoganDark wrote: post #14
helveticabold48 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess: Their privacy centric image/strategy is a two-edged sword. You can only do so much on device locally.

This has already been solved since last year with Private Cloud Compute.

Assuming they are actually ready, that is.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#77

Post by rusk »

Culonavirus wrote: post #71
tokioyoyo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be completely wrong, but by making “pro-privacy bets”, they shot themselves in the foot. Average customer ended up really not caring about the benefits that we try to promote, which hinders the development and features in some sense. Also, it’s still a pain for them to integrate AI in their second biggest market — China.

Maybe go all in on local on device low latency LLMs? They make their own hardware so they could probably do it and do it well with enough focus and investment.

No reason why most apps couldn’t be cloud hosted and devote all the significant local edge compute to such a digital companion.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#78

Post by sgt »

saagarjha wrote: post #72
vessenes wrote: post #64

We're at an inflection point in the last few months that means Apple might finally be able to do something good with Siri. Fundamentally, Siri's great promise (well in the last few years) has been that it could hook into all of the scripting facility made available by iOS apps. There are tons and tons of AppleScript hooks on many, many apps -- if only Siri could, you know, access them. This is traditionally not Apple…

Are you familiar with how app intents work?

App intents have a purpose but not anywhere nearly as impressive as AppleScript hooks.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#79

Post by netcan »

Kind of tangent, but it is often surprising what order the future arrives in.

From the perspective of 1960, early "robots" were expected to be physically capable and mentally feeble. Good at logic. Capable of making a sandwich. Weak at empathy and whatnot.

Even from the perspective of 2025... most people don't understand how slowly robotics has advanced. Human-level performance at laundry folding remains a distant dream. Empathy is increasingly trivial.

So Siri.. and voice UIs generally. The bottlenecks have been in unexpected places.

In general, we just don't have very good UI paradigms for voice. Voice recognition is finally good. LLMs theoretically add a lot of capability. But... there just isn't a great UI.

It's like trying to use a smartphone with a nipple mouse instead of touch. You can slowly hack your way to making specific tasks/features work... but there is no radiation event where lots of tasks become possible.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#80

Post by diggan »

AnonC wrote: post #55

IMO, Craig Federighi is quite good at presentations and his own style of humor, but he doesn’t seem to have a good grip on the quality of software across all of Apple’s (buggy) platforms and apps. I don’t believe that moving Siri under him (i.e., his reporting structure) is a good idea. Only time will tell. There are far more bugs and issues that are to be fixed (but don’t get attention) than Siri. Anyway Siri has be…

> Nobody outside of Apple has any expectations on it.

Well, apparently some people have at least some expectations, after Apple pushed ads touting Siri's new abilities (and Apple AI) but failed to launch them on time, and now Apple been hit with a federal lawsuit against them: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/20/apple-suit-false-advertisin...

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