Apple’s much-hyped Apple Intelligence, unveiled with grand promises of revolutionizing its ecosystem, has stumbled badly, with its flagship AI-powered Siri upgrade mired in delays and dysfunction. Touted as a game-changer at WWDC 2024, the revamped Siri—meant to leverage personal data and on-screen context for smarter interactions—remains vaporware, plagued by engineering setbacks and unmet expectations. As competitors like xAI, OpenAI, and rivals Microsoft and Google surge ahead in the AI race, Apple’s failure to deliver a functional, cutting-edge Siri has eroded its credibility, leaving users and investors questioning the company’s ability to innovate in a field it once pioneered.
So, Tim Cook – who is ultimately (but, seemingly never will be held) responsible – has trotted out two high-level executives on a gaslighting… or as M.G. Siegler so cleverly calls it, “Liquid Glasslighting” tour.
Joanna Stern for The Wall Street Journal:
For years, Apple events felt haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs. This week, a different ghost hovered: Siri.
A year ago, on this same sunny and pristine Apple Park campus at the Worldwide Developers Conference, the company unveiled its grand vision for artificial intelligence.
“Apple Intelligence” was a suite of generative-AI tools with an exciting centerpiece: a Siri that was finally smart. Some Siri features arrived, but the coolest—where Siri can respond to things you’re doing on your phone, as if it were your sidekick—never did. Apple quietly pulled plans, even stifling an ad it had run to hype the feature.
After announcing new operating systems this week, Apple executives are defending the company’s AI strategy. Big time. In fact, they are now saying the company is rebuilding Siri from the ground up.
“This stuff takes hard work, but we do see AI as a long-term transformational wave as one that’s going to affect our industry and of course our society for decades to come,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, told me in an interview at the company’s headquarters. “There’s no need to rush out with the wrong features and the wrong product just to be first.”
Only Apple wasn’t first, not even close. Its Silicon Valley competitors are running laps around it in terms of AI smarts. The promised Apple intelligence features that did arrive? I don’t use them. I bet you don’t either.
MacDailyNews Take: Attempt, yet fail – laughably.
Great hair, though! (No, not you, Joz.)
See also:
• Apple to strip not-so-secret robotics unit from struggling AI chief John Giannandrea – April 25, 2025
• Apple removes Siri from John Giannandrea, hands it over to Mike Rockwell – March 20, 2025
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The post Apple execs attempt to defend Apple Intelligence vaporware and the Siri disaster appeared first on MacDailyNews.
