Apple's first big boss 'paid the price' for Siri

According to internal sources cited by Bloomberg , Apple CEO Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability to deploy product development of John Giannandrea, head of the AI ​​department.

This has led to a shake-up in Apple's leadership, with Mike Rockwell, the engineer behind the Vision Pro launch, becoming the new head of Siri.

Apple announced the change to all employees on March 20. Mr. Rockwell will also report directly to software chief Craig Federighi on Siri's progress.

Real "genius"

Apple AR/VR VP Mike Rockwell, a former Dolby executive, was hired by Apple to develop its virtual reality headset nearly a decade ago. He has led the product vision and the Technology Development Group, overseeing the entire process from hardware to software to services.

Mike Rockwell, the engineer behind the Vision Pro launch, will be the new head of Siri. Photo: YouTube/Daring Fireball.

Despite some concerns about the product’s success, many were confident in Rockwell’s involvement. “He’s a true genius. If there’s only one person who can do this, it’s him,” said one anonymous team member.

As part of the change, Rockwell will leave the Vision Pro development team, the people said. Vision Pro’s software teams will follow him to the software engineering group headed by Federighi. The hardware group will remain under the management of John Ternus and under the management of Paul Meade, a hardware engineering manager who worked on Vision Pro.

According to Bloomberg , the decision was made after the iPhone maker's top executives — known as the Top 100 — held their annual closed-door meeting to discuss the company's future. AI was a major topic of discussion during the meeting.

Rockwell is known as the brains behind Vision Pro, a product that is considered a technical marvel despite not yet being a commercial success. Bringing the headset to market required a number of technical breakthroughs, including leveraging forms of artificial intelligence.

By appointing Rockwell, Apple is betting on a senior executive with a wealth of experience. In addition, he has demonstrated the ability to launch new products and manage engineering teams of thousands. More importantly, according to Bloomberg , Rockwell is a problem solver and often acts as an evangelist for future technologies.

Over the past decade, he has been one of the few Apple executives to take a major hardware device from “zero to one”—the industry term for conceiving a new product and bringing it to market. He joined Apple’s hardware engineering team in 2015, and the company launched Vision Pro in February 2024.

Even before the official changes, Giannandrea had long considered Rockwell as a potential successor, insiders also revealed.

Apple's urgent problem

The move underscores the predicament Apple faces: Its AI technology is seriously lagging behind its industry rivals, and shows little sign of catching up.

Despite being touted as the highlight of the iPhone 16, the Apple Intelligence platform has so far failed to launch in full functionality and has largely been a flop.

Siri is gradually being left behind by its competitors in the AI ​​race. Photo: The Verge.

The delay in Apple Intelligence makes the need to “rescue” Siri all the more urgent. Apple has struggled to deliver AI features it announced at its June 2024 WWDC event, including the ability to mine user data to perform queries.

Despite the technology not being ready, Apple has been promoting these improvements for months to sell the iPhone 16. However, after development hiccups, the company was forced to remove an ad related to the new Siri features on the iPhone 16, saying the updated version would be released at an unspecified time.

According to Bloomberg author Mark Gurman, software quality issues were the main cause of this delay.

In fact, according to Gurman, Siri had technical and quality issues long before Giannandrea took over. While he struggled to turn the technology around, there's no denying he made progress in other areas.

Apple Intelligence working on Vision Pro glasses. Photo: Apple.

Among these were attracting top AI researchers to Apple, and Giannandrea was also responsible for unifying Apple’s entire AI division, bringing together relevant technologies from across the company into a single department.

With a series of problems occurring, Gurman emphasized that this is an “AI crisis” at Apple. While the whole world entered the biggest technological revolution since the birth of the Internet, everything at Apple is still in disarray.

These factors lead to a sad reality: Apple — one of the most innovative companies in the world — is failing in the field of AI, at least so far.