Breaking just a little while ago via Bloomberg, Apple’s AI head John Giannandrea is no longer leading Siri. To make a long story short (because you should read the article, as it goes way more in-depth on all of this), Apple’s Vision Pro leader — Mike Rockwell — will be taking over in his place. Giannandrea will remain at Apple. Finally, Rockwell will report to Craig Federighi, while his former team over on Vision will be headed by Paul Meade (hardware engineering on Vision Pro).
Look, I think we all saw this coming. The launch of Apple Intelligence has been meh at best, and botched at worst. It has been filled with promises that were made to consumers with the launch of iPhone 16 that will not be fulfilled for a long time–and Apple isn’t apologizing for that. Which doesn’t look great, by the way!
However, outside looking in now, it really does seem like Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is cleaning house. The truth is, even with Rockwell leading the team now, it remains to be seen when these features will come out. We could still very well be looking at next year. Which means the features will be two years late, even if Apple quietly updating their website removes any mention of the original timeline they gave.
But this likely isn’t a big deal anyway. Pew Research found that Americans are more concerned about AI than excited about it. It doesn’t really feel like these features will see mass adoption regardless. Google is folding Assistant into Gemini — and if I had to guess, that’s being done to boost marketshare on the AI front. Apple likely couldn’t catch up to the user base, so they’ll have to compete on features (which is what they’re struggling with right now.)
One last thing I wanted to mention from Mark Gurman’s excellent piece:
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the moves.
Apple’s VP of Worldwide Communications, Kristin Huguet Quayle, is a longtime executive and I am willing to bet real money she’s pushing against making any sort of apology to customers for intentionally or unintentionally misleading them. The company’s embarrassed, they know they messed up, and that’s likely why they’re not commenting.