Apple could mitigate the Siri crisis with one simple move

The Siri crisis is showing no sign of ending, with a blistering attack by a high-profile commenter, and even senior Apple execs admitting that the delayed features are embarrassing.

At this point, there isn’t anything Apple can do to completely recover from the embarrassment, but a report on an internal Siri team meeting did seem to indicate a potential way to at least mitigate the damage …

The Siri crisis

Apple recently had to admit that plans for three new Siri features are “going to take us longer than we thought” – with no real explanation, and no new delivery date. As we noted at the time, these are the very features which promise to make Siri truly intelligent:

• Personal context (understanding things like “When is my mom’s flight landing?”)
• On-screen awareness (being able to do things like “Add this address to her contact card”)
• In-app actions (for example, “Make this photo pop, and add it to my Miami 2025 note”)

The company also quietly deleted an iPhone 16 ad in which it promoted these features, and added new disclaimers to its website.

Many criticized the company for advertising non-existent features, and even John Gruber – who Apple used to make a statement – had had enough.

With Apple not even sure whether the promised features will launch in iOS 19, the issue isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

But there is a way to mitigate the damage

The biggest charge leveled at Apple was that it was behaving like some AI startup – showing a concept video of features that don’t currently exist.

But Bloomberg’s report did suggest that this isn’t quite the case.

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 — which is to say it doesn’t work every one out of three times. He said the group “can make more progress to get those percentages up, so that users get something they can really count on.”

Now, it’s possible that the “up to” in that sentence is doing some heavy lifting. But giving a range of two-thirds to four-fifths does seem to suggest that it works the majority of the time.

Please don’t misunderstand me: that kind of hit-rate is absolutely not acceptable for a release product, or even for a public beta. But given that the public perception now is that these features don’t have any reality beyond a concept video, I think there can only be upside to Apple demonstrating that they exist, however imperfectly.

Here’s what I think Apple should do

Invite some members of the media to private demos of the new Siri features.

Show honest, real-life demonstrations that illustrate what the features deliver on the 67%-80% of the occasions they work properly. Let the press see that the new Siri exists as something much more than a concept video.

But also show what happens when it doesn’t work, why it can’t be released now, and share the work the company is doing to address these issues.

I know Apple hates to show work-in-progress. It likes to maintain secrecy until it’s ready to show the final result, with the ‘magic’ of the reveal. But for the new Siri, that ship has sailed. The company has already done the reveal. It was a mistake, perhaps one driven by either desperation or optimism, but what’s done is done.

Where we are right now is even normally-sympathetic voices expressing doubt and displeasure. At this point, there is only upside to showing that the new Siri is not a conceptual fiction, but a real-life feature which works the majority of the time, but isn’t yet good enough for public release.

With that move, Apple could regain the credibility it has currently lost.