this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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  • 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  • Apple has withdrawn related advertisements and added disclaimers on its website, citing extended development times.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.
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[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 253 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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.

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 73 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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"

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 65 points 1 day ago (1 children)

All of these things except the AirPad were released at about the same time they were announced. That’s what I was getting at.

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 11 points 1 day ago

While they did get released when they said, they didn't get released in the state that was stated/indicated though.

[–] DrCake@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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)

maybe that’s me being overly harsh

That's actually probably fair: the M-chips are impressive, but they're just an evolution that's come out of the A-series stuff for their phones.

Which, of course, Apple bought and did not actually create. (I'll let someone else argue the merits of buy vs do it yourself, especially when you give your aquisition endless R&D funds to make good shit.)

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 10 points 1 day ago

I don't think tech companies got caught with their pants down, they just hit the far end of the S curve regarding growth.

A lot of other "tech" companies in the past saw massive leaps in tech capabilities, then hit a wall once tech got to a certain level. Computing has hit its wall.

[–] IAmLamp@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 164 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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.

[–] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe your boss can develop software all by his or her self now lop.

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[–] ileanallama@lemmy.world 68 points 1 day ago (2 children)

they should embrace it and be the anti AI tech giant

Hell, if they genuinely do that, I might even consider switching sides.

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[–] Oisteink@feddit.nl 47 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I don't fucking want AI in my phone, so take it out and be done with it.

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[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

these features to malfunction up to a third of the time

That's "ai" for you lol

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[–] Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] midori_matcha@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Apple Intelligence hasn't been much better than old Siri on unsupported devices.

For a third of the time, she has a hard time recognizing the trigger word the first time (usually "Siri" rather than "Hey Siri"), and not perform my commands when all I want her to do is act as a voice-activated light switch.

What exactly is the trillion dollar company struggling with here?

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 hours ago

Honestly I don’t really want a smart context-aware Siri, I just want something I can give simple, straightforward voice commands to, and get predictable, reliable results.

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago

Anyone who isn't completely high from huffing AI brainfarts saw this coming.

[–] twinnie@feddit.uk 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

If they know Siri’s shit then why can’t I have my power button back?

[–] brap@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Would be nice if any voice assistant actually did what I asked.

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[–] ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago (3 children)

AI isn’t the answer. Plain and simple.

[–] RichardDegenne@lemm.ee 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] derpgon@programming.dev 17 points 18 hours ago

LLMs are the question, "no" is the answer.

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[–] ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 18 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 16 points 8 hours ago

Marketing over promising and making it developments problem. A tale as old as time.

[–] roguesignal@lemm.ee 15 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Siri is so useless. All these years and I use her to basically set timers and reminders.

[–] MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca 8 points 7 hours ago

Sure, here's a station just for you.

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[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A while ago I set up a Siri shortcut that opens ChatGPT in voice mode. Now I can just say “hey siri, ask the demon” and in a moment start talking to ChatGPT with no further commands and zero buttons pressed throughout. It answers in voice mode.

This is pretty useful for things like doing units conversions while my hands are sticky during cooking, or just doing simple information lookups while my hands are busy. I use ChatGPT responsibly, never trusting it for things that aren’t one-dimensional information retrievals and summarization. It works great for me for like 50-60% of the things I used to Google. Internet search is, once again, just for finding websites, like it should be.

What’s my point? We don’t need Siri Apple Intelligence to ship. There’s already something better. And it runs on my iPhone 14, which isn’t even compatible with Apple Flatulence.

[–] invertedspear@lemm.ee 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I’ve never used Apple intelligence and Siri alone has done a fine job for unit conversions, info lookups, and most any other things. No need to fire up chat GPT for those basic uses

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[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 12 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

This whole thing is a textbook example of how bad shady marketing today and can really cause you a lot of pain tomorrow. If Apple had not been so quick to let PR write checks their ass was not ready to cash the conversation around Siri would still just be the casual jokes about it sucking, and not more serious public blackeyes.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 11 points 12 hours ago (2 children)
  • Take screenshot of screen
  • Send screenshot to Claude 3.7 or any other decent chatbot. Even GPT-3 is light years smarter than current Siri, but I don’t know it if can analyze images
  • Run Claude’s response through a text-to-Siri-speech layer

There, now Siri can see your screen. Why can’t Apple accomplish this? Why are megacorps so inept?

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Spend 5 minutes creating a bash script

Spend 5 billion dollars on an overly complicated summarizer

Why the fuck would I wanna write bash

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[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] drperil@lemm.ee 10 points 14 hours ago (4 children)

Ok… this is what it is I suppose, every business wants to be on the AI train, but, this seems like an opportunity to make the next iPhone, or at least a version of it, without AI as a selling point.

I’d be very happy indeed to have an option that was entirely devoid of, and incompatible with, any form of AI and I know I’m not alone in that. Sell it as prioritizing privacy or respecting consumers desire to opt out, whatever the marketing folks come up with. But that would be my next phone in a heartbeat.

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[–] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 9 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

does anyone buy a product for AI or Assistant features?

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[–] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 hours ago

A) No executives anywhere are taking personal accountability for anything

B) I upgraded from the 12 to the 16 for Apple Intelligence and I have yet to see it offer value. A substantial portion of hey Siri voice requests return with “I’m sorry I didn’t get that” even when using the voice transcription feature gets the words right

[–] thisphuckinguy@lemmy.world 9 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Terrible voice assistant. I preferred Google assistant, but even that is becoming slow.

[–] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 10 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

They neutered Google Assistant because it was costing too much money. Now it's ass.

[–] T156@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago

They're likely also winding down development in favour of their new LLM, which certainly isn't going to help matters.

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 9 points 13 hours ago

"Taking personal accountablility", but not a paycheck.

[–] Cocopanda@futurology.today 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I can careless for Ai Siri. There’s no real need. I barely use Siri anyways.

[–] NotJohnSmith@feddit.uk 17 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I think the phrase is "I couldn't care less".

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