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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

#171

Post by roydivision »

JimDabell wrote: post #99
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…

Apple have never learnt how to build software sustainably. They let the bugs, misfeatures, and tech debt pile up over time. They addressed this once with a huge “0 new features” iteration with Snow Leopard to catch up on the worst of it, but never resolved the root of the problem, so it started to build up again. Now it seems like they don’t care enough about software quality to even do that. They need somebody else…

I have no idea how Apple prioritise their bug fixing, but it really looks to me like bugs only get fixed when adding new features, if at all.

This is such a trivial big win as well, create a software dev team to focus on the outstanding bugs. Head it with one or two senior developers, make it the first step in onboarding new developers. What a great way to learn, and make a difference.

This is not rocket surgery, and Apple really do have a bad reputation here, even with the muggles.

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

#172

Post by vessenes »

apetresc wrote: post #89
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…

Wait, what? There’s AppleScript on iOS? Since when?

Sorry, I meant App Intents.

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

#173

Post by vessenes »

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?

That’s what I was thinking of on iOS. At minimum Siri hooking into App Intents would provide world’s better experience.

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

#174

Post by lapcat »

JimDabell wrote: post #99
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…

Apple have never learnt how to build software sustainably. They let the bugs, misfeatures, and tech debt pile up over time. They addressed this once with a huge “0 new features” iteration with Snow Leopard to catch up on the worst of it, but never resolved the root of the problem, so it started to build up again. Now it seems like they don’t care enough about software quality to even do that. They need somebody else…

> They addressed this once with a huge “0 new features” iteration with Snow Leopard to catch up on the worst of it

This is a myth, though a myth created by Apple itself and Bertrand Serlet's tongue-in-cheek keynote slide. Snow Leopard actually had a number of new features: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard#New_or_c...

Moreover, Mac OS X 10.6.0 was much buggier than its immediately predecessor Mac OS X 10.5.8. There were some really bad bugs in those early Snow Leopard releases.

The Snow Leopard that everyone remembers and loves was not version 10.6.0 but rather version 10.6.8 v1.1, which was released almost two years after 10.6.0.

Major OS updates invariably introduce more bugs than they fix. That's an iron law of software development. What Apple used to do, which they no longer do, is spend a long amount of time just fixing bugs in minor updates to the operating system. Now, unfortunately, Apple is on a rigid yearly OS update schedule. Worse, Apple doesn't just fix bugs between those yearly updates; instead they keep introducing new features even in the "minor" updates. So we never get a "stable" version. It's constant change for the sake of change.

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

#175

Post by vekatimest »

alexpotato wrote: post #164

I've heard this story about Steve Jobs and both his communication style and attention to detail (it may be apocryphal): "Steve was in a meeting with several senior engineers at Apple and asked: 'Can we make the phone smaller?' The engineers responded 'No, it's as small as we can make it' Steve then picked up the phone and threw it into a fish tank. As everyone watched the phone sink into the tank, Steve turned and sa…

I think this originates from Isaacson's biography and was about the iPod?

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

#176

Post by racl101 »

korale wrote: post #124

Apple needs a major change in the way they do software overall. AI is one concrete manifestation of their issues but it runs much deeper. They still produce great hardware but it's held back by their software. Would love to see them rethink the entire stack from the OS APIs and SDKs, dev tools, WatchOS, to features like extensibility, Shortcuts, and of course, how they leverage AI. At this point, they should probably…

Agreed.

Crazy, given that they are so good at marketing, that they haven't thought about retiring the name Siri, a name which now, has connotations of being an inept and unskilled assistant.

Maybe for the next one they need to do a 180, and give the AI a name seems like she would be on top of everything and runs a tight ship and conveys that old school cold, calculating, no nonsense image.

Like Frau Farbissina or Geraldine or Gertrude.

I would trust a Geraldine with my books.

Kinda like how they use Afred or Jeeves for butlers.

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

#177

Post by programmertote »

alexpotato wrote: post #164

I've heard this story about Steve Jobs and both his communication style and attention to detail (it may be apocryphal): "Steve was in a meeting with several senior engineers at Apple and asked: 'Can we make the phone smaller?' The engineers responded 'No, it's as small as we can make it' Steve then picked up the phone and threw it into a fish tank. As everyone watched the phone sink into the tank, Steve turned and sa…

Not relevant to what you are discussing related to attention to detail (which I agree with).

This is my imaginary scenario -- if Steve Jobs were to tell me in a meeting, "I see air bubbles coming out of the phone", I (as an engineer) would reply to him, "Dude, that air is carrying excess heat out of the phone via convection. If you don't leave any space in between hot electronic components, your phone will be a toaster or a clothes iron".

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

#178

Post by margorczynski »

ninkendo wrote: post #127
korale wrote: post #124

Apple needs a major change in the way they do software overall. AI is one concrete manifestation of their issues but it runs much deeper. They still produce great hardware but it's held back by their software. Would love to see them rethink the entire stack from the OS APIs and SDKs, dev tools, WatchOS, to features like extensibility, Shortcuts, and of course, how they leverage AI. At this point, they should probably…

There’s no easy answer here, starting from scratch and rethinking everything carries a very high risk of disaster. They just need to start giving a shit. Care about bugs for once. The whole software org needs to take the time to go through their (clearly) enormous backlog of bugs, and shore up what they have. The problem isn’t the architecture or vision or rethinking their stack, it’s that what they have is barely ho…

Maybe the problem is how the goal and objectives are set up which results in maligned incentives - "innovating" for the sake of innovation instead of fixing existing problem. The first results in nice power point presentations, the second doesn't.

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

#179

Post by layer8 »

samtheprogram wrote: post #167
diggan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I’m one of them. I saw demos at _last year’s_ WWDC that I’ve been excited to get. And now with this announcement I don’t think that will happen before this year’s event.

Last year’s “demos” weren’t demos, but concept videos. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen this year nor next year, to the level implied by the ads. Incidentally, what the original Siri ads showed also never materialized.

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

#180

Post by ddp26 »

John Giannandrea (JG) was running the Google Assistant when I was there. That didn't go so well. (Pre-LLM assistants as a category have done badly - Alexa/Siri did _ok_ but presumably everyone working on them had higher hopes.)

I remember being surprised when JG seemingly "failed up" to become head of Apple AI. It's been many years and it's hard to point to anything that's gone well in that category.

Seems like there's a deeper story here.

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