- Apple’s progress with Siri and artificial intelligence has been slow, and features promised in June remain delayed.
- At a Siri team meeting, senior director Robby Walker acknowledged the frustration within the team, describing the delays as “ugly.”
- Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.
- Challenges include quality issues that caused these features to malfunction up to a third of the time and conflicts with Apple’s marketing division over showcasing incomplete features.
- Apple has withdrawn related advertisements and added disclaimers on its website, citing extended development times.
- Senior executives, including Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea, are reportedly taking personal accountability for the delays.
- Walker emphasized that the team’s work is impressive and that the delayed features will be released once they meet Apple’s standards.
The whole industry is a shit show right now with the “AI race”
I don’t want to be a software developer anymore because it’s become a permanent deathmarch toward the next buzzword.
This is what happens when you get pressure to please shareholders instead of customers. Historically, Apple has been good about revealing and delivering at the same time. But caught with their pants down during the AI hype, they fell into the trap so many other tech companies do. (Tesla is the undisputed heavyweight champ here)
Now that they’ve been burned by all this, here’s hoping they learn from it and return to form.
Historically, Apple has been good about revealing and delivering at the same time.
I’m not so sure about that. MobileMe, iTunes Ping, Vision Pro, and AirPower (their wireless charging pad) come to mind.
“You’re holding it wrong”
All of these things except the AirPad were released at about the same time they were announced. That’s what I was getting at.
Apple has had so many misses recently. The current AI stuff, Vision Pro and maybe the 16e (too early to tell) form stuff that has released. But also this Siri AI, Air Power wireless charging pad, Apple Car project.
The Apple Watch is probably the last hit they had (the M series chips are good but not really new products, but maybe that’s me being overly harsh)
Well, first they’ll need to dig up and reanimate the corpse of Jobs. It’s amazing to see how they repeat the same failure track when he’s not pushing them to innovate. Even when he was (back) in the top dog seat, they still fell behind the competition and took forever to come up with features that other companies had been doing for years.
That’s always been their MO though. Take a recent innovation, and implement it better. That always means it’s later than tech from other places, but they get it “right”. Yes, I know that’s subjective.
In the case of AI, they scrambled to announce the feature with barely any work done on it. Had they kept mum about Apple Intelligence features for a year or so and then revealed, that would be the Apple way.
these features to malfunction up to a third of the time
That’s “ai” for you lol
Dropping rapidly, and using reasoning models can solve most of it today.
How is this bad news? Dire situation?? They are not where they want to be with this “feature” so they delay it. Sounds like a smart move. Probably second best option to just dropping it
Exactly. I thought the article was going to be about how they’ve been shoe-horning “Apple Intelligence” into recent updates, which everyone turns off immediately. Instead it’s:
The company has officially delayed features first promised last June intended to modernize Siri and give Apple a much-needed boost in the AI race.
HA! First of all the “AI race” is an ass-grabbing competition between insane corporate overlords who can’t wait to burn another hundred billion on something that doesnt’ work.
Secondly, last June was still in the bubble of AI hype when everyone and their dog was forced to comment on it ortherwise the idiot herds would affect stock price.
Thirdly, this isn’t about Apple not getting something to work, this is about Apple understanding what an abysmal shitshow the generative AI functionality is, and trying to land the plane before anything else catches fire.
Ridiculous.
Biggest issue is they had a huge marketing campaign based on all these things Apple Intelligence could do, with dates saying when it will come and that you needed to buy the newest iPhone for them to happen. Those dates have come and gone and still no signs of it. If the next iPhone comes out and they still haven’t released it, they risk a huge lawsuit of mis-advertising. It doesn’t matter whether users use the feature or not, it was advertised, and very directly.
Normally, Apple is cautious/careful how they phrase things about their devices so they could back away if something doesn’t go right or doesn’t do what was suggested/implied. But they can’t this time.
Everyone who cheer-led the AI garbage trucks moved up in the world. Across the board. All over ther world.
Turns out they were very, very wrong and quite stupid.
Now Apple (and everyone else) has to roll all that back and try to save face.
I don’t want that on my phone. I just want a dumb program that sets alerts and schedules, I don’t want it interpreting information and I doubt most people really need that function on a phone.
Yeah, but smartphones have stopped offering anything new. I recently upgraded my 8-year-old device, and I hardly notice any difference. I bet other customers see that too. They are desperately trying to find the next big thing. It’s astonishing, however, that all these companies completely ignore the fact that their customers don’t even want AI features.
But but but . … they’ve spent Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on this!!! You HAVE to buy it!!! Noooooooooo
If they know Siri’s shit then why can’t I have my power button back?
Would be nice if any voice assistant actually did what I asked.
Anyone who isn’t completely high from huffing AI brainfarts saw this coming.
Features like Siri understanding personal context and taking action based on a user’s screen are still not ready and may not make it into iOS 19.
Tech companies not understanding exponential complexity is one of the funnier things to come out of recent years.
AI is overrated in almost every implementation that isn’t scientific research. The buzzword stock hype machine fake growth cycles are going to kill the tech industry.
baffles me why anyone supports a company that’s a decade behind their competitors
