- Apple shakes its Siri development team up
- Mike Rockwell, the man behind Vision Pro, takes over from John Giannandrea
- Could this be the pivotal change that Apple needs to bring an upgraded Siri to the market?
There is a big shaker at the top of the Apple Food Chain as Tim Cook chooses a new manager to help the company bring Apple Intelligence-driven Siri to life.
Following reports from earlier this week that Apple Intelligence would be a focal point for Apple’s off-site Top 100 Exec meeting, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is now reporting that AI leader John Giannandrea will no longer oversee Siris Revision.
According to Gurman, “[Apple CEO] Tim Cook has lost confidence in the AI leaders’ ability to perform product development, so he moves over another top manager to help: Vision Pro Company Mike Rockwell. “
Rockwell will now be responsible for Siri, according to Gurman’s sources who have asked not to be named and he will report directly to software manager Craig Federighi.
With Giannandrea no longer responsible for Siri, he will now work on other AI projects. The decision was made during the Apple Top 100 meeting and is said to be confirmed to the employees later this week.
Assuming Gruman is right, this big Exec change is coming at a central time for Apple – once a pioneer in the Voice Assistant game, but now just a pure passenger – as it tries to devise a solution for Siri.
Apple had announced its flagship iPhone 16 Pro as the best device for Apple Intelligence, but still almost seven months after launch, customers have not yet seen the real benefits of AI.
With Apple’s Siri delay of a public disaster, this shift in leadership can be the catalyst for success needed to make the personal contextual conquest of Siri.
Siris Redemption Arch?
At WWDC 2024 in June, we heard directly from Giannandrea about his vision for the then newly-advertisement Siri. He said that Siri with Apple Intelligence has a “rich understanding of what’s on your device,” and to voice assistant’s knowledge base “would only get richer over time.”
Almost a year later, Siri still can’t tell you what month of the year it is and certainly does not understand what is on your device.
Rockwell, who can take credit for Apple’s Vision Pro Development, has the potential to get Siri’s development back on track. While the mixed reality headset has not necessarily been a commercial success, it achieves some incredible feats.
Tim Cook probably expects Rockwell’s ability to innovate, as shown in Vision Pro, to make Siri as good as the company advertised back at WWDC. And if he does, all Naysayers will have to accept that Apple is really back on the field.
