Former Apple Employees Reflect on Siri's 'Squandered Lead' Over Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant

The Information has published an in-depth look at how Siri has transitioned from one of Apple's most promising technologies into a "major problem" for the company. The article includes interviews with a dozen former Apple employees who worked on the various teams responsible for the virtual assistant.

siri 4s
The report claims that many of the employees acknowledged for the first time that Apple rushed Siri to be included in the iPhone 4s before the technology was fully ready, resulting in several internal debates over whether to continue patching up the half-baked product or start from scratch.

Siri's various teams morphed into an unwieldy apparatus that engaged in petty turf battles and heated arguments over what an ideal version of Siri should be—a quick and accurate information fetcher or a conversant and intuitive assistant capable of complex tasks.

The team working on Siri was overseen by Apple's then iOS chief Scott Forstall, but his attention was reportedly divided by other major projects, including the upcoming launch of Apple Maps. As a result, Forstall enlisted Richard Williamson, who was also managing the Apple Maps project, to head up the Siri team.

According to the report, several former employees said Williamson made a number of decisions that the rest of the Siri team disagreed with, including a plan to improve the assistant's capabilities only once a year.

Williamson, in an emailed response to the report, wrote that it's "completely untrue" that he decided Siri shouldn't be improved continuously.

He said decisions concerning "technical leadership of the software and server infrastructure" were made by employees below his level, while he was responsible for getting the team on track.

"After launch, Siri was a disaster," Mr. Williamson wrote. "It was slow, when it worked at all. The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me."

Forstall and Williamson were both fired by Apple in 2012 following the botched launch of Apple Maps on iOS 6. The former employees interviewed said they lamented losing Forstall, who "believed in what they were doing."

Another interesting tidbit is that the Siri team apparently didn't even learn about the HomePod until 2015. Last year, Bloomberg News reported that Apple had developed several speaker prototypes dating back to 2012, but the Siri team presumably didn't know due to Apple's culture of secrecy.

In a sign of how unprepared Apple was to deal with a rivalry, two Siri team members told The Information that their team didn't even learn about Apple’s HomePod project until 2015—after Amazon unveiled the Echo in late 2014. One of Apple’s original plans was to launch its speaker without Siri included, according to a source.

The report says that Siri is the main reason the HomePod has "underperformed," and said Siri's capabilities "remain limited compared to the competition," including Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

The most notable failure in Siri's evolution is that it still lacks the third-party developer ecosystem considered the key element of the original Siri vision. Apple finally launched SiriKit in 2016 after years of setting aside the project and shifting resources away to other areas. […]

But SiriKit has yet to fulfill its promise. So far it includes just 10 activities—Apple calls them "intent domains"—such as payments, booking rides, setting up to-do lists and looking at photos. Several senior engineers who worked on SiriKit have left Apple or moved off the project.

Some former employees interviewed noted that "while Apple has tried to remake itself as a services company, its core is still product design."

Apple responded to today's report with a statement noting Siri is "the world's most popular voice assistant" and touted "significant advances" to the assistant's performance, scalability, and reliability.

"We have made significant advances in Siri performance, scalability and reliability and have applied the latest machine learning techniques to create a more natural voice and more proactive features," Apple wrote in its statement. "We continue to invest deeply in machine learning and artificial intelligence to continually improve the quality of answers Siri provides and the breadth of questions Siri can respond to."

The full-length article is a worthwhile read for those interested in learning more about Siri's internal struggles and shortcomings.

The Information: The Seven-Year Itch: How Apple's Marriage to Siri Turned Sour

Popular Stories

iphone 16 pro ghost hand

5 Reasons to Skip This Year's iPhone 17 Pro

Thursday July 10, 2025 4:54 am PDT by
Apple will launch its new iPhone 17 series in two months, and the iPhone 17 Pro models are expected to get a new design for the rear casing and the camera area. But more significant changes to the lineup are not expected until next year, when the iPhone 18 models arrive. If you're thinking of trading in your iPhone for this year's latest, consider the following features rumored to be coming...
apple wallet drivers license feature iPhone 15 pro

Apple Says iPhone Driver's Licenses Will Expand to These 8 U.S. States

Tuesday July 8, 2025 11:26 am PDT by
In select U.S. states, residents can add their driver's license or state ID to the Wallet app on the iPhone and Apple Watch, providing a convenient and contactless way to display proof of identity or age at select airports and businesses, and in select apps. Unfortunately, this feature continues to roll out very slowly since it was announced in 2021, with only nine U.S. states, Puerto Rico,...
macbook pro blue green

M5 MacBook Pro No Longer Coming in 2025

Thursday July 10, 2025 12:38 pm PDT by
Apple does not plan to refresh any Macs with updated M5 chips in 2025, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Updated MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models are now planned for the first half of 2026. Gurman previously said that Apple would debut the M5 MacBook Pro models in late 2025, but his newest report suggests that Apple is "considering" pushing them back to 2026. Apple is now said to be...
iPhone 17 Pro in Hand Feature Lowgo

Leaker Reveals Amount of RAM in iPhone 17 Through iPhone 17 Pro Max

Wednesday July 9, 2025 8:08 am PDT by
Three out of four iPhone 17 models will feature more RAM than the equivalent iPhone 16 models, according to a new leak that aligns with previous rumors. The all-new iPhone 17 Air, the iPhone 17 Pro, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max will each be equipped with 12GB of RAM, according to Fixed Focus Digital, an account with more than two million followers on Chinese social media platform Weibo. The...
iPhone 17 Pro in Hand Feature Lowgo

iPhone 17 Pro to Reverse iPhone X Design Decision

Monday July 7, 2025 9:46 am PDT by
Since the iPhone X in 2017, all of Apple's highest-end iPhone models have featured either stainless steel or titanium frames, but it has now been rumored that this design decision will be coming to an end with the iPhone 17 Pro models later this year. In a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo today, the account Instant Digital said that the iPhone 17 Pro models will have an aluminum...
Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature 1

Foldable iPhone Display Production Begins Ahead of Launch Next Year

Wednesday July 9, 2025 10:59 pm PDT by
Production of foldable OLED displays for Apple's first foldable iPhone have begun ahead of its expected launch next year, Korea's ETNews reports. The first foldable iPhone's displays are being produced by Samsung Display, who are establishing a production line dedicated to the upcoming Apple device its A3 factory in Asan, Chungcheongnam-do. The production line will make displays exclusively...
apple tv 4k new orange

New Apple TV Expected Later This Year With These New Features

Saturday July 12, 2025 3:09 pm PDT by
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year, and a handful of new features and changes have been rumored for the device. Below, we recap what to expect from the next Apple TV, according to rumors. Rumors Faster Wi-Fi Support The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports ...
iphone 16 pro pro max

iPhone 17 Pro Models With BOE Displays Will Be Sold in China Only

Thursday July 10, 2025 11:59 pm PDT by
iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max models with displays made by BOE will be sold exclusively in China, according to a new report. Last week, it emerged that Chinese display manufacturer BOE was aggressively ramping up its OLED production capacity for future iPhone models as part of a plan to recapture a major role in Apple's supply chain. Now, tech news aggregator Jukan Choi reports...

Top Rated Comments

HumpYourWayUp Avatar
96 months ago
Best Line in the article:

"Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me"

LOL thats the attitude for effective teamwork!
Score: 106 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Regime2008 Avatar
96 months ago
Significant advances? Siri seems about the same since its launch...
Score: 82 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jjhny Avatar
96 months ago
Tim would rather virtue signal. Or sing carpool karaoke than do the visionary thing.

His background is making a supply chain work. Not very helpful for envisioning the future.
Score: 64 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Brookzy Avatar
96 months ago
...resulting in several internal debates over whether to continue patching up the half-baked product or start from scratch.
I can't help but think that starting from scratch might still be the best option...
Score: 48 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tkukoc Avatar
96 months ago
Significant advances? Siri seems about the same since its launch...
Well they changed her from a wavy bar to a bunch of floating colors in a circle..that took.. Courage! o_O
Score: 43 Votes (Like | Disagree)
andromedaan Avatar
96 months ago
Anyone who has ever used Google Assistant knows how crappy and inferior Siri is. It's a SHAME!
Score: 40 Votes (Like | Disagree)