Mike Rockwell, the new head ofSiri, is reportedly turning over much of the development work to his previous team for Apple Vision Pro.First Apple "fixer"Kim Vorrathmoved to the Siri team, then previous headJohn Giannandreawasabruptly replacedbyApple Vision Prochief Rockwell. Now, according toBloomberg, Rockwellhas restructuredthe Siri team specifically to bring in people from his Vision Pro work.The restructuring has begun withRanjit Desai, being placed in charge of the underlying Siri system group. Rockwell reportedly told staff that Desai would help Siri reach a “new level” because of his knowledge of "high-performance, low-latency systems."Olivier Gutknecht is taking over the user experience team, having also previously been a senior executive on the development of the Apple Vision Pro. Nate Begeman, who worked onvisionOS, is to work on underlying architecture, as is Tom Duffy, previously on the iPhone’s Core OS team.Then former Tesla executive Stuart Bowers, is moving from Apple Vision Pro data, training and evaluation teams, to working on Siri’s user responses. David Winarsky, who has been with Siri for a long time, will take over a new team concentrating on speech.Overall, the existing Siri team appears to be being pushed out or at least sidelined, in favor of people who worked on the better-received Apple Vision Pro. Mike Rockwell has not entirely left the headset behind, though, as he remains also in charge of the visionOS team.The shakeup follows analleged decade-longseries of managerial failures with Siri, which hasembarrassed Apple.Apple has delayed the release of the much-promised new version of Siri usingApple Intelligence, which wasonce expectedto come iniOS 18.4in 2025. It’s now said to be coming late in the year, orearly in 2026.Alongside the failure to update Siri withthe announcedApple Intelligence features, Apple has also somehow managed to make the existing Sirinoticeably much worse.
First Apple "fixer"Kim Vorrathmoved to the Siri team, then previous headJohn Giannandreawasabruptly replacedbyApple Vision Prochief Rockwell. Now, according toBloomberg, Rockwellhas restructuredthe Siri team specifically to bring in people from his Vision Pro work.
The restructuring has begun withRanjit Desai, being placed in charge of the underlying Siri system group. Rockwell reportedly told staff that Desai would help Siri reach a “new level” because of his knowledge of “high-performance, low-latency systems.”
Olivier Gutknecht is taking over the user experience team, having also previously been a senior executive on the development of the Apple Vision Pro. Nate Begeman, who worked onvisionOS, is to work on underlying architecture, as is Tom Duffy, previously on the iPhone’s Core OS team.
Then former Tesla executive Stuart Bowers, is moving from Apple Vision Pro data, training and evaluation teams, to working on Siri’s user responses. David Winarsky, who has been with Siri for a long time, will take over a new team concentrating on speech.
Overall, the existing Siri team appears to be being pushed out or at least sidelined, in favor of people who worked on the better-received Apple Vision Pro. Mike Rockwell has not entirely left the headset behind, though, as he remains also in charge of the visionOS team.
The shakeup follows analleged decade-longseries of managerial failures with Siri, which hasembarrassed Apple.
Apple has delayed the release of the much-promised new version of Siri usingApple Intelligence, which wasonce expectedto come iniOS 18.4in 2025. It’s now said to be coming late in the year, orearly in 2026.
Alongside the failure to update Siri withthe announcedApple Intelligence features, Apple has also somehow managed to make the existing Sirinoticeably much worse.