Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by ToucanLoucan » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:45 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #174

JimDabell wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's constant change for the sake of change.

This is far from isolated to Apple, too. It's a cancer that's infested virtually every single software company in the entire world at this point, and it's endlessly frustrating. If they don't have some New Shiny Version to show off to the tech media and blogosphere everyone starts acting like the software itself is a dead man walking. I also think it's partially down to all these same companies trying to justify subscription billing with a constant trickle of "new stuff" that the application in question does that you're meant to feel like you'd be missing out on.

I don't ascribe to this notion whatsoever. I in fact far prefer my software that barely changes at all over time. My most reliable and useful computer is my huge Ubuntu box that lives in my laundry room which handles... I mean frankly it would be easier to say what it doesn't handle, which is anything Apple adjacent because that's all proprietary, and it doesn't handle my security cameras because I couldn't find a linux-based solution for that. Literally every other automated function outside those two categories is handled by that machine, with a mix of software I've downloaded and configured and a fair bit that I've written myself.

I say all this to say that machine barely changes at fucking all. I do security updates of course and occasionally have to tweak something but the apps on it are the same, it serves the same internal websites, it runs the same scripts, like clockwork. I LOVE that thing and my life would be in an utter shambles if some overpaid tech executive had the power to randomly change how it works to justify his salary.

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

#252

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:47 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #215

mapmap wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Were you using Macs before Jobs came back? I think he was :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(video_game)

Well I feel dumb for asking him :) Yeah I had that game on my Mac LCII back in 1992 and Parena was great too. The point still stands though. The operating systems were horrible back in the mid 90s and both Macs I had back then - the Mac LCII and PowerMac 6100 - were cripple by being a half speed bus. Back before it was necessary.

You're objectively right. I have been running emulators recently with System 6.0 and was surprised at how much crashing I must have just tolerated. I shouldn't have made it appear that I was defending the quality of pre-OSX Mac OS. (Although we were talking about how quality has come down of late.)

As an engineer before Jobs came back — and for a few years too after he was back — there was still a sense that engineers could call the shots with their own frameworks/apps. Copland, Pink, all that — you can dismiss them as failures but they were engineering trying to toss off the "technical debt" of no true multitasking. So, again, it was bottom up and was at least a joy to be an engineer working on the OS at the time.

As I say, for a few years Jobs let engineering call the shots as NeXT became integrated in the OS. I was on the Graphics team then and a whole new graphic architecture and window server were created more or less from scratch (heavily borrowing from NeXT of course since most of the graphics engineering team were NeXT).

At some point though the major changes were in and management began to take over. "Quality" was eventually measured in unit-test code coverage, for example. (Sigh.)

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

#253

Post by cloverich » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

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 heard a Steve story from a relation that was a high level exec during his tenure. They were running a meeting about failure rates of (Macbooks, phones, I can't remember which exactly). They knew their stats well, parts, how to source, costs, etc. They spent months on research. They presented it to him from an operations nature, e.g. the costs and such. His response was along the lines of: TV's are amazing technology, they've improved in every way, and are cheaper than ever. But when is the last time your TV broke? They don't break. They never break. And they always work. That's our strategy. Make it happen.

Obviously it didn't quite work out that good (although I guess in my personal use cases, it has). But the point of telling me the story anyways, which I think matches here, is he had a way of pattern matching the average persons expectations based in reality, and applying it to their technology, and then aligning people towards ambitious goals that were on some level based in reality (i.e. people use TVs, they are similar technology, people don't expect them to break). I don't know how much credit is him or others and all. But I know from these kinds of stories, and from my own experience elsewhere, that some people just regularly and instantly "get it", and Steve Jobs seemed to be one of those people, and to also have the station to force others to go along.

Here I think its pretty obvious Apple is both the worst performer in AI, and also the best positioned to capitalize on it. In that sense their current state is clearly demonstrative of some major failure. Its hard to imagine someone like Jobs being in the same position in today's rate. LLM's are phenomenal technology and their use cases are vast. And we've all got these devices ready to take advantage of them, ready to listen, to respond, to coordinate, etc. And here i am asking Siri to turn down the volume and it either turns it up, gets confused, or misinterprets and goes on some tangent. There's a wildly large gap in what Siri does now, and what we 100% know it could do based on the existing tech many of us are using every day.

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

#254

Post by whynotminot » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

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…

People keep talking in this thread about iOS / macOS being bug-ridden messes. I have to wonder if this is from users still on Intel chips.

My work MacBook with a now 3+ year old M1 Max? Rock solid. Rarely run into any problems at all. My iPhone? Also rock solid. Rarely run into any problems.

My Intel-based MacBook? Buggy mess. Like Apple has left the Intel side of the house to die on the roadside. As someone who still uses that at the time expensive device, I find this annoying. But I understand why they’re not investing resources into Intel bug fixing.

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

#255

Post by no_wizard » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

codr7 wrote: post #241

no_wizard wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using any Bluetooth headsets designed for their special sync protocol? I noticed no issues with any certified headsets but any of my nice Bluetooth headsets from a few years ago that don’t leverage the newer protocol instead only standard Bluetooth have issues syncing and such. This tends to be an Apple issue. They introduce proprietary thing and eventually unless your hardware supports said thing it will hav…

We use to have a saying for this behavior, embrace and extend something...

I think the difference is intentional vs unintentional.

Apple has the MFI program for these things. You can get certified and tested in relatively short order.

They also aren’t removing the original protocol support or anything like that.

What I will say is that I think they don’t devote as much QA resources to getting it right as they do their own protocols, hence the difference.

With Microsoft it was very different. They wanted to subsume or shutdown whatever they targeted with EEE

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

#256

Post by numbsafari » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #237

ddp26 wrote: post #180

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…

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

> Putting too much trust on Eddy Cue

I've never understood the love for Eddy Cue. Apple pundits all seem to love him. Personally, I am really unimpressed by everything he's done. My understanding is he's been really good at negotiating big contracts.

I just don't think his execution or vision are exciting and, as you are hinting at, I don't think his moral compass points in the right direction. That said, despite some early pushback, my understanding is that Schiller was ultimately on-board with holding to the 30% cut.

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

#257

Post by FirmwareBurner » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

codr7 wrote: post #231

ddp26 wrote: post #180

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…

Alternatively, the rumors were true, and Alexa/Siri were actually real people working very cheap for a while.

[flagged]

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

#258

Post by creaturemachine » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:53 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #170

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…

What’s most improbable about this anecdote is there happening to be an open fish tank in the meeting room. ;)

As a pescatarian maybe he liked his snacks fresh XD

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

#259

Post by dmonitor » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:55 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #237

ddp26 wrote: post #180

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…

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

I don't see that being a strong case against Eddy Cue. Apple's 30% cut makes them tons of revenue, and as a whole those services probably make bank. Apple TV+ especially funds good television. Even if it loses money, funding the arts carries intrinsic value.

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

#260

Post by Larrikin » Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #244

Larrikin wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on race with an exception (sometimes) for which college you went to

I think you are being downvoted a bit unfairly, but you're also not fully right either. I'm pretty sure that who you are friends with matters much more for failing upwards. Who you know is very overvalued in today's business climate unfortunately Your post-secondary really only has influence because it somewhat influences who you wind up being connected to DEI stuff like race and sex... Might matter sometimes. It sho…

My point was about the original DEI. All the diversity and inclusion and affirmative action sometimes helped minorities get a foot in the door, but they had to have all the credentials checked twice needed for the job.

But they could never tank the company, run unsuccessful or soon to fail projects and get a golden parachute or be promoted for it. They just got fired.