We’re one week removed from Apple’s decision to indefinitely delay the “more personalized” version of Siri that was first announced at WWDC 2024, and the blowback hasn’t let up.
Now, Bloomberg has the details from an all-hands meeting for the Siri division inside Apple, where the Apple Intelligence delays were panned as “ugly” and “embarrassing.”
The meeting was led by Robby Walker, a senior director of “Siri and Information Intelligence” at Apple. Walker has been at Apple since 2013, working across Siri technologies. During the meeting, Walker reportedly emphasized that “it’s unclear” when the promised Siri features will launch. This includes Siri with personal context, in-app actions, and on-screen awareness.
Apple’s goal remains to ship these features at some point in the iOS 19, but Walker said “it doesn’t mean that we’re shipping then.” In its current form, the new Siri features only work properly “up to two-thirds to 80% of the time,” Bloomberg reports:
“We have other commitments across Apple to other projects,” Walker said, citing new software and hardware initiatives. “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.” He said decisions on timing will be made on a “case-by-case basis” as work progresses on products planned for next year.
“Customers are not expecting only these new features but they also want a more fully rounded-out Siri,” he said. “We’re going to ship these features and more as soon as they are ready.”
As far as accountability is concerned, Walker told staffers that there is “intense personal accountability” shared by John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, and software boss Craig Federighi.
Bloomberg reports that Apple “doesn’t plan to immediately fire any top executives over the AI crisis.” It is, however, planning “management adjustments” in response to the problems, including “moving more senior executives under Giannandrea to assist with a turnaround effort.”
Walker also called out Apple’s marketing department’s decision to promote these features even though they weren’t ready. This decision “[made] matters worse,” according to Walker.
But when Apple demonstrated the features at WWDC using a video mock-up, it only had a barely working prototype, Bloomberg has reported. Walker told staff in the meeting that the delays were especially “ugly” because Apple had already showed off the features publicly. “This was not one of these situations where we get to show people our plan after it’s done,” he said. “We showed people before.”
Despite the struggles, Walker also praised the team for the “incredibly impressive” features and doubled down on the goal of shipping “the world’s greatest virtual assistant.” He told staff they should “feel really proud of innovative work” they’ve done up to this point.
Walker defended his Siri group, telling them that they should be proud. Employees poured their “hearts and souls into this thing,” he said. “I saw so many people giving everything they had in order to make this happen and to make incredible progress together.”
But Apple wants to maintain a high bar and only deliver the features when they’re polished, he said. “These are not quite ready to go to the general public, even though our competitors might have launched them in this state or worse.”
Walker compared the endeavor to an attempt to swim to Hawaii. “We swam hundreds of miles — we set a Guinness Book for World Records for swimming distance — but we still didn’t swim to Hawaii,” he said. “And we were being jumped on, not for the amazing swimming that we did, but the fact that we didn’t get to the destination.”
While Apple has not shown public demos of the promised SIri upgrades, Walker did highlight several examples of the features working during this meeting.
Read the full report at Bloomberg.
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