Siri delays hurt, but half-baked features could have been a real Apple crisis

Apple’s recent Siri delays have stirred up a mess of bad press, and reportedly led to an all-hands meeting where an exec called the affair “ugly and embarrassing.” But per another key quote from that meeting, there’s no doubt Apple saved itself a world of trouble with the move.

Reliability of new Siri features was reportedly very poor

Delaying new iOS features isn’t a great look. Especially when you get called out by the press with some very strong language.

But you know what’s indisputably worse? Shipping important features that just don’t work.

And per leaked notes from Apple’s recent all-hands meeting about the Siri delays, that’s exactly the bullet the company avoided.

Per Mark Gurman:

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. He said the group “can make more progress to get those percentages up, so that users get something they can really count on.”

iOS features that only work two-thirds of the time simply cannot be shipped.

Even if some features worked 80% of the time, that’s clearly still not good enough.

I can’t think of a scenario where it would be tolerable for Apple to ship features like that.

But with these Siri features in particular, it would be especially bad. For two reasons:

1. Apple announced these features last June, so if they arrived nearly a year later and still didn’t work, that would be especially embarrassing
2. More importantly though, the critical nature of these Siri features would make faulty performance especially problematic

Critical nature of Siri upgrades makes delay the best move

Regarding this latter point, the whole premise of the new Siri is that it’s supposed to function like a truly intelligent assistant.

Awareness of your personal context—the texts you’ve received, your calendar, and more—is supposed to mean you can rely on Siri for more important things.

But if Siri flubbed on those details two-thirds of the time, or even just 20% of the time, the consequences could be dire.

As John Gruber points out, inspired by Apple’s WWDC example of asking Siri about your mom’s flight info:

If Siri answers, “Your mom’s flight is arriving at 4:30 this afternoon, and it’s currently showing an on-time arrival,” you really want that information to be correct if you’ve promised to pick her up at the airport. You’ll be annoyed if you drive to the airport and it turns out she’s not actually landing until 7:30. And you’ll be in real trouble if she’s landing at 1:30 and you show up three hours later, having banked on Siri’s answer being accurate.

Scenarios like this show the tremendous potential of the upgraded Siri to act like a true assistant. But also how devastating it would be for Apple if these new features shipped and didn’t really work.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo legend, is often attributed the quote: “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”

Games and OS updates aren’t quite the same. And some dispute whether Miyamoto actually said that. In any case though, the point is clear.

A delayed Siri, we all hope, will eventually be good. But a rushed update would have been very, very bad for Apple and its users.

Do you think Apple made the right call in delaying Siri’s upgrades? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

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