{"id":47153,"date":"2025-03-21T16:17:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T20:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=47153"},"modified":"2025-04-25T11:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T15:59:08","slug":"apple-shifts-siri-from-giannandrea-to-rockwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/21\/apple-shifts-siri-from-giannandrea-to-rockwell\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Shifts Siri From Giannandrea to Rockwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Gruber<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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Whole Reddit thread<\/a> examining this simple question: “What month is it?” and Siri’s “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” response (which I just reproduced on my iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 18.4b4). One guy changed the question to “What month is it currently?” and got the answer “It is 2025.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

David Price<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’d like it to be known that I hated Siri before it was cool. I’ve written<\/a>numerous<\/a>articles<\/a> on the subject. I’m an anti-Siri hipster. But when a bandwagon comes along, you better believe I’ll be sitting up front.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

What is surprising is that it’s actually getting worse. And people are noticing. This needs to change, and soon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I’m not sure whether it’s getting worse<\/em> for my purposes, but after so many years it doesn’t seem to be getting better. I personally don’t care that much about the world knowledge questions. What bothers me is the service itself. It still feels slow in the normal case and sometimes takes 10 or more seconds to fail and do nothing. After a sequence of commands when controlling it with AirPods, it still sometimes stops working, saying that I need to unlock my iPhone (which is not easily reachable—that’s why I was using the AirPods). Reminders still get split, with words lost, or mangled as it tries to parse what was meant to be literal text. Music controls still seem worse than pre-Siri.<\/p>\n\n

Mark Gurman<\/a> (article<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Apple Vision Pro Chief Mike Rockwell will take over Siri, which is being removed from AI Chief John Giannandrea, I’m told. Rockwell & Siri will report to Craig Federighi. Giannandrea is staying in larger AI role.<\/p>

The moves have been several months in the making and were planned before Apple confirmed the Siri AI delays earlier this month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Ryan Jones<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Told ya.<\/p>

Tim didn’t “fire” JG “immediately”. Just took away his team.<\/p>

(Followed by mutually parting ways in a few months.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I would have assumed they’d keep him around running AI research, but Jones has good instincts on this stuff.<\/p>\n\n

Mark Gurman<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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Siri — the AI division’s main consumer product — has had a number of bosses over the years. When Apple first launched the voice assistant in 2011, it was overseen by software executive Scott Forstall. It was then given to services chief Eddy Cue in 2012 and transferred to the current software head, Federighi, in 2017. Giannandrea took it over a year later. Now it will be led by Rockwell, with oversight returning again to Federighi.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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My quick take on this is that it’s a turf battle that Craig Federighi just won. It’s not just putting a new executive in charge of Siri, it’s moving Siri under Federighi’s group.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Somehow, Teflon Federighi<\/a> never seems to get blamed for Apple’s software failures, even though they extend way behind Siri and seem to coincide with his tenure. Siri has always been a mess, but macOS used to be really solid and better designed.<\/p>\n\n

Mike Rockwell<\/a> (not the one above):<\/p>\n

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It’s wild to me that there are so many people that see the Apple Intellegence thing as the indication that Apple fell off.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gordon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The volume of Apple bugs I encounter continues to increase. I think it is going exponential.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I think the question Gruber didn’t explore is, why doesn’t Mike Rockwell now report directly to Tim Cook, when John Giannandrea ran Siri and reports directly to Tim Cook?<\/p>

To me it looks like a tacit admission that Tim Cook failed in directly overseeing the Siri group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Ryan Jones<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Fascinating how certain people are just 10x. Rockwell has lead AR, VR, Vision Pro, and now Siri.<\/p>\n

Rockwell (53) is the new Mansfield (65).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The anecdotes I’ve been told about Mike Rockwell don’t bode well for third party developer support and Siri’s AI efforts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

M.G. Siegler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

First and foremost, while I made<\/a> the quick, cheap, and obvious joke yesterday that Apple was putting the person in charge of the Vision Pro in charge of Siri, this does actually seem like good news<\/em> for all involved – including us, the end users. While these two projects are linked as two largely unsuccessful ones for Apple, they’re really almost the opposite of one another. Vision Pro isn’t a huge hit for Apple because the strategy around the device was a mess<\/a>. But the product itself does everything it aims to do and does it increasingly well<\/a>. Siri, meanwhile, has a strategy that makes sense, especially in our age of AI. But the product is a complete and utter mess<\/a>. And has been for 14 years running<\/a>.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Rockwell doesn’t have the clout needed to recruit (and retain) the top AI talent that Apple will need here, but JG still does. The mistake seemed to be putting him in charge of the entire org, including the AI user-facing products, when he should have probably been more behind-the-scenes, managing the more technical aspects. He’ll apparently now be able to do that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Unlike the Siri feature delay, I do not think the Vision Pro’s launch affects the company’s credibility at all. It can keep pushing that thing and trying to turn it into something more mass-market. This Siri stuff is going to make me look at WWDC in a whole different light this year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There’s no doubt that Apple sacrificed the Vision Pro’s launch in favor of putting all its effort and energy into Apple Intelligence — that pull-back was clear in the months leading up to it shipping to stores as the company got cold feet.<\/p>

There was an awful lot of hubris, arrogance in how Apple treated developers and potential partners (no surprise), but a complete lack of buy-in from the rest of Apple’s engineering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Also, of note, Apple’s Vision Pro group has lost its leadership in the change, which underscores what I was saying earlier. Apple made a decade-long bet on AR\/VR then threw it all away for some snake oil.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n