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Darren Haas, one of the last remaining members of the original team that developed Siri, has left Apple to work at General Electric, reports The Information. Haas worked on Siri before it was purchased by Apple in 2010 and has been at Apple since then working on cloud engineering services.
Haas's departure follows the departure of Steve D'Aurora and comes amid rumors that Apple's efforts to move its cloud infrastructure in-house has been slowed by "political infighting" between the iCloud and Siri engineering teams.
Political infighting has engulfed Apple's engineering ranks after the company decided to extend the software platform built by Siri's team to Apple's other Internet services such as iCloud and iTunes. At GE, Messrs. Haas and D'Aurora are working on a similar cloud software platform.
Earlier this week, other members of the original Siri team, including co-founders Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, debuted Viv, a next-generation AI bot able to carry out complex tasks by mimicking the "spontaneity and knowledge base" of a human assistant.
In a demonstration at TechCrunch Disrupt, Viv was shown to be far more advanced than Siri with improved contextual awareness and an ability to craft in-depth responses to complicated questions on the fly. Viv's creators plan to build it into a range of products from cars to smart refrigerators.
Top Rated Comments
Political infighting is torture.
There's infighting with different ways to develop technology, and there's common sense. Just as an example, why Siri doesn't have any offline functionality from 5 years of development is beyond me. Siri seems to be the unloved middle child of Apple's already dysfunctional services family.I dunno. It seems people clammer for the most obvious of features, complain endlessly, and then when Apple finally release them, they act like they've had a prophetic vision and are doing an incredible service to the consumer.
I imagine nobody here would mind as much if they weren't self-professing how they're changing the world like they're the second coming. Maybe it's the attitude, not the products.
You assume he ever was in control. But recall the staffing issues early in his tenure with Forstall, Mansfield, Browett, the ignominious debut of Maps, the miscalculation of announcing the 27" iMac at Xmas time even as he knew supply would be near zero. The AW pre-order was massively screwed up because of a production foul up that happened even before they announced the pre-sale date.Has Cook lost control?
And unlike SJ, instead of sticking his nose to the grindstone on products, TC seeks out the media and personal press like a Kardashian. A lot of amateur hour stuff if you ask me. He had a ton of good will when Jobs passed because he inherited unfillable shoes. But he's squandered much of that AFAIC. Maybe he'll surprise us at WWDC.
Maybe Apple could license and use Viv and retire Siri.
Has Cook lost control? An ineffective leader of Apple?