Apple is not exactly the kind of company that likes to be late or cancel announced products. However, this happens to it too (remember AirPower). Also, the Siri voice assistant functions with Apple Intelligence integration, demonstrated at WWDC 2024 and later shown in the iPhone 16 advertising campaign, have still not appeared in the iPhone and Mac. And time is running out, competitors are not waiting.
As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports, there have been changes in the development team that should save the situation. The insider learned that this week Tim Cook will replace John Giannandrea (a former Google employee who has been in charge of AI issues at Apple since 2018) with Mike Rockwell (at Apple since 2015, before that he was responsible for the development of the Apple Vision Pro).
John Giannandrea will remain at Apple and will continue to work on research, testing, and other technologies related to artificial intelligence. The Apple Vision Pro development team will be led by Paul Mead, who worked in the same department under Rockwell.
Mike Rockwell himself will now report directly to Craig Federighi, Apple's head of software. According to the insider, Rockwell has a reputation for being a good fixer and sometimes taking on the role of "futuristic technology evangelist." Moreover, he has proven himself well by launching the Apple Vision Pro from scratch, managing a division with hundreds of employees.
Also, when developing the Apple Vision Pro, a certain amount of emphasis was placed on Siri's help in controlling the device, which in fact has not (yet) happened. And Rockwell criticized the voice assistant:
"Inside Apple, Rockwell hasn’t been shy about criticizing Siri, according to people familiar with the matter. For years, he has pitched senior vice presidents on ideas for overhauling the voice assistant to make it more personalized. He has also been advising the AI group in recent weeks," writes Gurman.
And indeed, Siri is quite lacking in new features, especially against the background of, for example, replacing Google Assistant with Gemini, where new features appear almost every week. It is also hoped that Mike Rockwell's successes will not take long to come, because the next WWDC presentation is in a few months, and demonstrating "new features a second time" will not help the value of Apple's shares.
Apple is not officially commenting on the current situation.