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  • Apple has withdrawn related advertisements and added disclaimers on its website, citing extended development times.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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[–] midori_matcha@lemmy.world 12 points 8 hours ago

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?

[–] ileanallama@lemmy.world 47 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

they should embrace it and be the anti AI tech giant

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 17 points 10 hours ago

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

[–] ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

AI isn’t the answer. Plain and simple.

[–] RichardDegenne@lemm.ee 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] derpgon@programming.dev 5 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world 26 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] TheFriar@lemm.ee 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Right? Hink of everything else I can do with that space and computing power. Not to mention the fuckin environmental devastation we’d curb.

[–] absentbird@lemm.ee 2 points 8 hours ago

Siri has run locally since iOS 15

[–] Cocopanda@futurology.today 5 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] NotJohnSmith@feddit.uk 7 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] PeteZa@lemm.ee 3 points 8 hours ago

I only use it for voice controls.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 14 points 13 hours 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 15 points 12 hours ago

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

[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 210 points 20 hours 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.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 6 points 12 hours 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.

[–] Xatolos@reddthat.com 59 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours 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 53 points 19 hours 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 5 points 12 hours 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 13 points 19 hours 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.)

[–] IAmLamp@fedia.io 6 points 20 hours 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 24 points 19 hours ago (2 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.

[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 hours ago

It probably doesn't help that the tech in question, LLMs, are kinda shit, to put it plainly. You meant the shiniest, most polished turd and it's still just a turd. They are interesting and can be neat to play with but, they lack practical applications where cost to run them actually makes sense and benefits humanity. The iPod shuffle was more impactful, when measuring positive impact on people's lives.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago

Take a recent innovation, and implement it better.

Ah, the mad rush to be Second Place.

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 148 points 20 hours ago (1 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 12 points 17 hours ago

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

[–] Oisteink@feddit.nl 45 points 20 hours 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 33 points 20 hours 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 8 points 17 hours 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 17 hours 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.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 22 points 18 hours ago

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

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 32 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

these features to malfunction up to a third of the time

That's "ai" for you lol

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 18 hours ago

Dropping rapidly, and using reasoning models can solve most of it today.

https://github.com/lechmazur/confabulations/

[–] Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 26 points 19 hours 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 12 points 18 hours 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.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago

But but but . .. they've spent Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on this!!! You HAVE to buy it!!! Noooooooooo

[–] ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 14 points 18 hours 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.

[–] twinnie@feddit.uk 20 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] brap@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago

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

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Could you explain? I have never turned Siri on, but my power button works as normal.

[–] JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If Siri is enabled, then the default behavior of long-pressing the power button brings up Siri instead of turning off the device. IIRC you can disable that behavior without having to disable Siri, but there's no way to set the "action button" to open Siri; if you want a Siri button, it needs to be the power button.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 14 hours ago

Thank you! I am not a fan of assistants, so I’ve always kept it off.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 9 points 19 hours 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.

[–] ofcourse@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Apple fucked up no doubt. Given how hard they pushed AI as a key feature of IPhone 16 I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a class action lawsuit for this.

But it’s also interesting to read a few things from the article that makes me hopeful for when Apple finally releases the features:

  1. Let’s be honest, AI by Google, MS is shit right now. They are claiming the same promises which most of the time don’t work, but Apple chose to delay release until they could get better consistency.
  2. The executives are taking personal responsibility? I hope that’s the case and no developers are thrown under the bus for this. I’ve rarely seen an article mention personal executive responsibility from a tech firm for delays and qa issues.
  3. I hope marketing gets reigned in so they won’t push other unready features the next few years.
  4. I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.
[–] JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 3 points 14 hours ago

I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.

That's literally never going to happen. Closed-source proprietary stuff is their MO.