I feel like the difference between Steve Jobs’ and Tim Cook’s leadership styles is that Cook is really good at optimizing existing processes, but does not have the vision to capitalize on what’s next.
Apple got into the smartphone game at the right time with a lot of new ideas. But whatever the next big shift in technology is, they will be left behind. I don’t know if that is AI, but it’s clear that in AI they are already far behind other companies.
I feel like, today, most of the other LLM providers can do what "Apple Intelligence" promised - it'll link with my email/calendar/etc and it can find stuff I ask with a fuzzy search.
That said, I don't really use this functionality all that often, because it didn't really (effortlessly) solve a big need for me. Apple sitting out LLMs means they didn't build this competency along the way, even when the technology is now proven.
I think the same thing is true was VR - except Apple did invest heavily in it and bring a product to market. Maybe we won't see anything big for a while, and Silicon Valley becomes the next Detroit.
To be fair no one has solved ai assistant at consumer level yet.
I agree. It’s still being figured out.
My prediction is that Apple is the hardware and platform provider (like it’s always been). We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix.
I think their proprietary chips and GPUs are being undervalued.
My feeling is that they’re letting everyone move fast and break things while trailing behind and making safe bets.
It's easy: make my life easier.
Instead they choose to optimize for shareholder value.
Original, far more detailed article that techcrunch is just regurgitating[1].
> Testers have also reported accuracy issues, as well as a bug that causes Siri to cut users off when they’re speaking too quickly. And there are problems handling complex queries that require longer processing times.
> Another challenge: The new Siri sometimes falls back on its existing integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT instead of using Apple’s own technology. That can happen even when Siri should be capable of handling the request.
Honestly seems crazy that Apple hasn't seen a class action suit. They were promising features and selling expensive hardware on those promises back in 2024 and they have yet to deliver anything nearly two years later. Huge black eye for a company that has built a reputation for doing demos and then immediately having the product ready to ship.
Google recently shipped Magic Cue as their tentpole new AI feature on the Pixel 10 despite it not working.
> “The right info, right when you need it.” That’s how Google describes Magic Cue, one of the most prominent new AI features on the Pixel 10 series. Using the power of artificial intelligence, Magic Cue is supposed to automatically suggest helpful info in phone calls, text messages, and other apps without you having to lift a finger.
However, the keyword there is “supposed” to... even when going out of my way to prompt Magic Cue, it either doesn’t work or does so little that I’m amazed Google made as big a deal about the feature as it did.
The number of people who bought an iPhone because of a promise of improved SIRI is less than negligible. Apple didn’t mention AI anything in the marketing for the latest iPhone and they saw record sales that could have been larger if it weren’t for chip shortages that are affecting them, Microsoft and Amazon according to their respective earning reports.
Of course the only people who make anything from class action lawsuits (snd there were) are lawyers
Because... user's don't care about AI anymore. They're fatigued by it.
The top 2 apps on the App Store are ChatGPT and Gemini. ChatGPT has been at 1st place on the App Store for many months straight.
What more concerning than the lawsuit is they have all the money in the world and can’t execute on getting Siri working right. That is not a good predictor for how well engineering is at Apple. :/
It's possible they're being conservative because whatever they launch they're going to be stuck with for a very long time. Things are shifting so quickly in the space that they could very well launch the greatest horse and buggy today, and next week everyone's shipping fusion-powered teleportation devices.
Then again it's very possible they are just flailing. I don't have strong beliefs either way.
Yeah you could be right. We never know. Though that they haven’t built out their own mega data centers means they are basically having to use models from the others. I think they should just buy Anthropic. Too late now that they awarded Siri to Gemini but idk I hope they pull this off cuz I love my iPhone.
> Too late now that they awarded Siri to Gemini
Apple won't ever allow anyone else to own and control their core technologies (as we saw with Google Maps back in the day). We can safely assume their deal with Gemini is for Google to sell them a model-as-a-service component that can be swapped out at any moment, with either another model like Claude, or with Apple's own future models.
I would say Apple's original exclusivity deal w/ AT&T shows they're comfortable letting a 3rd party control some of the user experience if that's the only way they can get to market.
It doesn't surprise me that Siri continues to be bad - Apple's current plan is to use a low-quality LLM to build a top-quality product, which turned out to be impossible.
What does surprise me is that Google Home is still so bad. They rolled out the new Gemini-based version, but if anything it's even worse than the old one. Same capabilities but more long-winded talking about them. It is still unable to answer basic questions like "what timer did you just cancel".
This was such a self inflicted own goal. Siri has needed work for years and every year they neglected it. When they first bought Siri it was state of the art and then it just languished. Pulling an Intel and sweating your assets until it is too late is never a good idea.
I worked at Siri (post acquisition) 13 years ago as one of the early data scientists. Let's just say I am not a bit surprised.
This is obviously a death march project. Just delay it indefinitely until the Google Gemini based Siri chatbot is ready. Why ship something half-assed?
But it’s been a complex undertaking. The revamped Siri is built on an entirely new architecture dubbed Linwood. Its software will rely on the company’s large language model platform — known as Apple Foundations Models — which is now incorporating technology from Alphabet Inc.’s Google Gemini team.
I'd rather they get it right than released it unfinished.
Mark Gurman said Apple "runs on Anthropic". Why don't they don't just vibe code it?
Having read Apple's git contents, Claude vibecoded results would be a massive improvement to their code-quality.
They might even have .... a test.
I got myself an iPhone 16 Pro because of the promised AI features. I had a vision in my mind of what it ought be like:
While driving past a restaurant, I wanted to know if they were open for lunch and if they had gluten-free items on their menu.
I asked the "new" Siri to check this for me while driving, so I gave it a shot.
"I did some web searches for you but I can't read it out to you while driving."
Then what on earth is its purpose if not that!? THAT! That is what it's for! It's meant to be a voice assistant, not a laptop with a web browser!
I checked while stopped, and it literally just googled "restaurant gluten free menu" and... that's it. Nothing specific about my location. That's nuts.
Think about what data and access the phone has:
1. It knows I'm driving -- it is literally plugged into the car's Apple CarPlay port.
2. It knows where I am because it is doing the navigating.
3. It can look at the map and see the restaurant and access its metadata such as its online menu.
4. Any modern LLM can read the text of the web page and summarize it given a prompt like "does this have GF items?"
5. Text-to-voice has been a thing for a decade now.
How hard can this be? Siri seems to have 10x more developer effort sunk into refusing to do the things it can already do instead of... I don't know... just doing the thing.
[deleted]
Is it not impressive what xai did with Grok? It's already integrated into twitter and my Tesla. So quickly? What prevented apple from doing the same but building out their equivalent of grok?
This is not a bad example. Tesla is indeed running a custom LLM, available in their vehicles, capable of acting as a general chatbot and issuing commands to the car, developed in-house. While Grok is not up-to-par with other frontier models, it's certainly far beyond Siri.
Not sure whether it's a language/pronounciation issue but for 15 years since siri was released i have not seen a single person using it successfully without having to yell at it for not waking up or not understanding the request correctly
I was cleaning up room today and while wiping dust from bookshelf homepod sits on, siri out of blue goes with "I thought so".
It'll be 15 years this October and I can't still use siri with my language.
Are Apple AI agent delays bearish for AI agents in general? Unless something else is the issue it’s normal behavior for Apple not to implement something everyone else already has until it’s very good and solid.
Apple wants to vertically integrate. Their AI strategy until recently was to develop their own LLM models that were small enough to run on device. But massive scaling is what makes LLMs so powerful, so all their internal models were terrible and unusable.
Basically they bet that compute efficient LLMs were the future. That bet was wrong and the opposite came true.
I feel like the difference between Steve Jobs’ and Tim Cook’s leadership styles is that Cook is really good at optimizing existing processes, but does not have the vision to capitalize on what’s next.
Apple got into the smartphone game at the right time with a lot of new ideas. But whatever the next big shift in technology is, they will be left behind. I don’t know if that is AI, but it’s clear that in AI they are already far behind other companies.
I feel like, today, most of the other LLM providers can do what "Apple Intelligence" promised - it'll link with my email/calendar/etc and it can find stuff I ask with a fuzzy search.
That said, I don't really use this functionality all that often, because it didn't really (effortlessly) solve a big need for me. Apple sitting out LLMs means they didn't build this competency along the way, even when the technology is now proven.
I think the same thing is true was VR - except Apple did invest heavily in it and bring a product to market. Maybe we won't see anything big for a while, and Silicon Valley becomes the next Detroit.
To be fair no one has solved ai assistant at consumer level yet.
I agree. It’s still being figured out.
My prediction is that Apple is the hardware and platform provider (like it’s always been). We’re not asking them to come up with a better social media, or a better Notion or a better Netflix.
I think their proprietary chips and GPUs are being undervalued.
My feeling is that they’re letting everyone move fast and break things while trailing behind and making safe bets.
It's easy: make my life easier.
Instead they choose to optimize for shareholder value.
Original, far more detailed article that techcrunch is just regurgitating[1].
> Testers have also reported accuracy issues, as well as a bug that causes Siri to cut users off when they’re speaking too quickly. And there are problems handling complex queries that require longer processing times.
> Another challenge: The new Siri sometimes falls back on its existing integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT instead of using Apple’s own technology. That can happen even when Siri should be capable of handling the request.
Honestly seems crazy that Apple hasn't seen a class action suit. They were promising features and selling expensive hardware on those promises back in 2024 and they have yet to deliver anything nearly two years later. Huge black eye for a company that has built a reputation for doing demos and then immediately having the product ready to ship.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-11/apple-s-i...
Google recently shipped Magic Cue as their tentpole new AI feature on the Pixel 10 despite it not working.
> “The right info, right when you need it.” That’s how Google describes Magic Cue, one of the most prominent new AI features on the Pixel 10 series. Using the power of artificial intelligence, Magic Cue is supposed to automatically suggest helpful info in phone calls, text messages, and other apps without you having to lift a finger.
However, the keyword there is “supposed” to... even when going out of my way to prompt Magic Cue, it either doesn’t work or does so little that I’m amazed Google made as big a deal about the feature as it did.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-o...
How is shipping a broken feature better for users than admitting that the feature needs more work?
Perhaps do a quick search before making bold claims.
https://clarksonlawfirm.com/lp/apple-intelligence-false-adve...
The number of people who bought an iPhone because of a promise of improved SIRI is less than negligible. Apple didn’t mention AI anything in the marketing for the latest iPhone and they saw record sales that could have been larger if it weren’t for chip shortages that are affecting them, Microsoft and Amazon according to their respective earning reports.
Of course the only people who make anything from class action lawsuits (snd there were) are lawyers
Because... user's don't care about AI anymore. They're fatigued by it.
The top 2 apps on the App Store are ChatGPT and Gemini. ChatGPT has been at 1st place on the App Store for many months straight.
What more concerning than the lawsuit is they have all the money in the world and can’t execute on getting Siri working right. That is not a good predictor for how well engineering is at Apple. :/
It's possible they're being conservative because whatever they launch they're going to be stuck with for a very long time. Things are shifting so quickly in the space that they could very well launch the greatest horse and buggy today, and next week everyone's shipping fusion-powered teleportation devices.
Then again it's very possible they are just flailing. I don't have strong beliefs either way.
Yeah you could be right. We never know. Though that they haven’t built out their own mega data centers means they are basically having to use models from the others. I think they should just buy Anthropic. Too late now that they awarded Siri to Gemini but idk I hope they pull this off cuz I love my iPhone.
> Too late now that they awarded Siri to Gemini
Apple won't ever allow anyone else to own and control their core technologies (as we saw with Google Maps back in the day). We can safely assume their deal with Gemini is for Google to sell them a model-as-a-service component that can be swapped out at any moment, with either another model like Claude, or with Apple's own future models.
I would say Apple's original exclusivity deal w/ AT&T shows they're comfortable letting a 3rd party control some of the user experience if that's the only way they can get to market.
It doesn't surprise me that Siri continues to be bad - Apple's current plan is to use a low-quality LLM to build a top-quality product, which turned out to be impossible.
What does surprise me is that Google Home is still so bad. They rolled out the new Gemini-based version, but if anything it's even worse than the old one. Same capabilities but more long-winded talking about them. It is still unable to answer basic questions like "what timer did you just cancel".
This was such a self inflicted own goal. Siri has needed work for years and every year they neglected it. When they first bought Siri it was state of the art and then it just languished. Pulling an Intel and sweating your assets until it is too late is never a good idea.
I worked at Siri (post acquisition) 13 years ago as one of the early data scientists. Let's just say I am not a bit surprised.
This is obviously a death march project. Just delay it indefinitely until the Google Gemini based Siri chatbot is ready. Why ship something half-assed?
The referenced Bloomberg source (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-11/apple-s-i...) says this about the delayed effort:
But it’s been a complex undertaking. The revamped Siri is built on an entirely new architecture dubbed Linwood. Its software will rely on the company’s large language model platform — known as Apple Foundations Models — which is now incorporating technology from Alphabet Inc.’s Google Gemini team.
I'd rather they get it right than released it unfinished.
Mark Gurman said Apple "runs on Anthropic". Why don't they don't just vibe code it?
Having read Apple's git contents, Claude vibecoded results would be a massive improvement to their code-quality.
They might even have .... a test.
I got myself an iPhone 16 Pro because of the promised AI features. I had a vision in my mind of what it ought be like:
While driving past a restaurant, I wanted to know if they were open for lunch and if they had gluten-free items on their menu.
I asked the "new" Siri to check this for me while driving, so I gave it a shot.
"I did some web searches for you but I can't read it out to you while driving."
Then what on earth is its purpose if not that!? THAT! That is what it's for! It's meant to be a voice assistant, not a laptop with a web browser!
I checked while stopped, and it literally just googled "restaurant gluten free menu" and... that's it. Nothing specific about my location. That's nuts.
Think about what data and access the phone has:
1. It knows I'm driving -- it is literally plugged into the car's Apple CarPlay port.
2. It knows where I am because it is doing the navigating.
3. It can look at the map and see the restaurant and access its metadata such as its online menu.
4. Any modern LLM can read the text of the web page and summarize it given a prompt like "does this have GF items?"
5. Text-to-voice has been a thing for a decade now.
How hard can this be? Siri seems to have 10x more developer effort sunk into refusing to do the things it can already do instead of... I don't know... just doing the thing.
Is it not impressive what xai did with Grok? It's already integrated into twitter and my Tesla. So quickly? What prevented apple from doing the same but building out their equivalent of grok?
This is not a bad example. Tesla is indeed running a custom LLM, available in their vehicles, capable of acting as a general chatbot and issuing commands to the car, developed in-house. While Grok is not up-to-par with other frontier models, it's certainly far beyond Siri.
Not sure whether it's a language/pronounciation issue but for 15 years since siri was released i have not seen a single person using it successfully without having to yell at it for not waking up or not understanding the request correctly
I was cleaning up room today and while wiping dust from bookshelf homepod sits on, siri out of blue goes with "I thought so".
It'll be 15 years this October and I can't still use siri with my language.
Are Apple AI agent delays bearish for AI agents in general? Unless something else is the issue it’s normal behavior for Apple not to implement something everyone else already has until it’s very good and solid.
Apple wants to vertically integrate. Their AI strategy until recently was to develop their own LLM models that were small enough to run on device. But massive scaling is what makes LLMs so powerful, so all their internal models were terrible and unusable.
Basically they bet that compute efficient LLMs were the future. That bet was wrong and the opposite came true.
[dupe] Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-11/apple-s-i... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46980039)
It’s paywalled for me. But I’m wondering if it’s apple or googles fault for the delay.
It appears that Gurman has been the one pumping the timeline. He's now clarified that Apple has only ever said 2026 with nothing beyond that.