Apple's Siri history was plagued by infighting, mistakes and developer alienation, report says

With dissatisfaction with Siri threatening to hurt various product lines now, several former employees on the Siri team have spoken out about blunders that took place during the rolling out of the technology back in 2011, as well as infighting and turf battles afterward.

According to a piece published Wednesday on technology site The Information, the company rushed Siri's technological development, leading to problems still being felt today. The account cited a dozen former Apple employees, all speaking anonymously as to avoid breaching confidentiality agreements.

Multiple sources told The Information that Apple "rushed Siri into the iPhone 4s before the technology was fully baked," leading to debates about "whether to continue patching up a flawed build or to rip it up and start from scratch."

Also alleged is that the Siri team leadership has been a revolving door, without any strong vision backing the product, and that the product's significant ambitions have been scaled down over time. Apple CEO Steve Jobs was cited as a reason for the confusion, as he spawned champions within the company that continued to advocate for the technology being done his way, even after the executive passed away the day after Siri was unveiled in October 2011.

The piece also reveals that a major breakdown of the software took place shortly after its launch. Further infighting led the technology's co-founders to leave Apple in the first couple of years of the product. Some of them founded a rival company, Viv Labs, but were later banned from Apple's campus, once brass realized they were continuing to visit Cupertino to play basketball with their former colleagues.

While Siri, due to the iPhone's ubiquity, is likely used by more users than Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant, it has failed to capitalize on developer innovation in the way that Alexa has. Many of the original Siri team had hoped Siri would lead to "an App Store for AI," but that never quite shook out that way. SiriKit was ultimately unveiled in 2016, even as Amazon eventually drew much greater developer interest.

Fallout from the infighting and confusion persists. As AppleInsider and other publications noted in HomePod reviews earlier this year, Siri functionality is "lacking" in the device, compared with Alexa and other competitors.

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65 Comments

eye.surgeon

said about 6 years ago

"The account cited a dozen former Apple employees, all speaking anonymously as to avoid breaching confidentiality agreements."

To avoid breaching the agreement? Actually it's to avoid getting caught breaching the agreement, since they all breached the agreement.

thrang

said about 6 years ago

Truth or click-bait, none of this matters, as the need/desire to speak commands to your electronics is so miniscule compared to the totality of all other methods of inputs and interactions. Saying Amazon is winning is like saying a team than went on a 6 game winning streak in May is destined to win the World Series. It's soooo early in the "season" - and I suspect voice recognition, while increasing in importance over time, will remain niche compared type, touch, and perhaps much more advanced forms of AI interpretation (location, proximity, body, facial, eye analysis, sensors, habit analysis..) Part of the limitation for wider home adoption currently is feedback is very limited (assuming one does not want to keep picking up their iPhone or iPad). But an Apple TV, which can become the visual side of an enriched Siri response, is very intriguing.

king editor the grate

said about 6 years ago

The oddest thing to me is Siri seems to have gotten dumber over the years with non sequiturs increasing. That could be confirmation bias, however.

racerhomie3

said about 6 years ago

Alexa still sucks.
And people still use it for useless things like timers only.
So I would say Siri is doing just fine.

slurpy

said about 6 years ago

"Former Apple employees".

Isn't is amazing how the the clickbait, hit-piece, troll magnet trash reports have come from former employees? yeah, let's all take these at face value. In this case, the report is highlighted by people fired 7 years ago, who clearly have zero clue or insight as to Siri's current development details.

Oh, and Siri has always worked fine for me, and it's only improved over time. Depends on everyone's use case, but for what use it for (basic info checks, timers, reminders, weather, scores, controlling my lights, etc) I've never had any real issue with it, apart from the periodic, universal imperfections of audio recognition and connectivity. Because of the infinite variabilities in accents and context, voice assistants will ALWAYS be limited until they can read your minds. Even if Alexa or Google are slightly better in some respects, I have no desire to introduce these ecosystems into my home.

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