Apple's Siri Overhaul: Vision Pro Leader Mike Rockwell Takes Charge

How we know Mike Rockwell is the fixer Siri's been missing - 9to5Mac

Siri is under new leadership at Apple, with Mike Rockwell taking on managerial responsibility under Craig Federighi's oversight. Rockwell may seem like an odd choice considering his history leading Vision Pro and visionOS development, but per multiple reports his passion to fix Siri has been growing for years. Recently when Mark Gurman broke the news that Rockwell would be tasked with leading Siri, he wrote: Inside Apple, Rockwell hasn't been shy about criticizing Siri, according to people familiar with the matter. For years, he has pitched senior vice presidents on ideas for overhauling the voice assistant to make it more personalized. He has also been advising the AI group in recent weeks. Even before the management changes, Giannandrea long considered Rockwell a potential successor. Similarly, Gurman adds: When developing the Vision Pro, Rockwell believed that Siri could be a central way to control the $3,499 device. Now, it's only a limited element, with the company primarily focusing on hand-and-eye control. This corroborates a two-year-old report that mentioned Rockwell and his team "expressed disappointment in the demonstrations the Siri team created to showcase how the voice assistant could control [Vision Pro]". My big takeaway from these reports? Mike Rockwell has wanted to fix Siri for years, and that kind of passion was clearly absent with prior leadership. It's also exactly what Siri needs. I've followed Apple closely for a long time, including back in 2011 when the company wowed everyone with its very first Siri demonstration. Even from the beginning, though, Siri has struggled to live up to its potential. And sadly, from the outside at least, it's seemed like Apple has been okay with that. When Alexa debuted alongside the Amazon Echo, it didn't seem to do much to motivate Siri's team. Do you remember how long it took for Siri to support multiple timers? Years passed, and more recently ChatGPT launched. OpenAI's technology is clearly of a new breed of intelligence that Siri falls far short of. Yet again, from the outside at least, Apple's approach to Siri has been steady. Even as competitors launched big threats, Apple has slowly made small Siri refinements -- like being more forgiving when a user misspeaks -- rather than offering a truly next-gen assistant. But Mike Rockwell, it seems, "thinks different." Just in the short time he's been in charge, Rockwell has reportedly instituted big structural overhauls to Siri's internal teams, and a significant policy change. Also, per reporting from The New York Times, Siri's three major AI upgrades will launch this fall with iOS 19. When Apple first delayed them, its language implied we'd be waiting until 2026. These are encouraging signs for Siri's future. But what makes me even more optimistic is Rockwell's apparent passion to make Siri great. He clearly sees what the issues are, and is determined to fix them. That kind of Siri leadership, in my view at least, has been missing from Apple for a long time. And here's hoping that kind of leadership will propel Siri to new heights in the years ahead. How do you feel about Mike Rockwell being chosen as Siri's new leader? Let us know in the comments.

Siri Management Team Gets Overhaul After Apple Intelligence Failure

New Siri lead Mike Rockwell is overhauling the Siri management team in order to step up development on Apple Intelligence features, reports Bloomberg. He is demoting or replacing the managers who previously worked on Siri after the Apple Intelligence features demonstrated at WWDC 2024 failed to launch as expected. Rockwell, who worked on the Vision Pro software, took over the Siri team in March, with former Siri chief John Giannandrea being reassigned to artificial intelligence research. Rockwell is replacing Siri managers with members of the Vision Pro software group, while also restructuring Siri teams that handle speech, understanding, performance, and user experience. Longtime Vision Pro engineering lead Ranjit Desai will oversee Siri engineering, including the platform and systems groups. Vision Pro senior director Olivier Gutknecht will lead the team that designs the Siri user experience, and Vision Pro engineering director Nate Begeman and Core OS senior director Tom Duffy will work on Siri's underlying architecture. Employees were told that the management overhaul would help Apple reach its Siri development goals, as the additions to the team are considered some of Apple's top software engineering talent, according to Bloomberg. Rockwell is still overseeing the development of visionOS while he works on Siri, while the Vision Pro hardware team continues to report to John Ternus. Teams that were led by the executives moving to the Siri team will be overseen by Geoff Stahl, who has worked for Rockwell for years. Under Rockwell's lead, Apple is rearchitecting Siri to use an LLM-based system that will streamline the personal assistant's underlying technology and outward-facing capabilities. To ensure that Siri's planned functionality for integrating more extensively with apps is ready to go on time, Apple plans to work with third-party app developers.

Apple's New Siri Chief Enlists Vision Pro Talent to Start Comeback Bid

Siri has come to represent Apple's struggles to find its footing in AI Apple's new Siri engineering chief is overhauling the management team leading development of the beleaguered voice assistant, taking a step he assured employees would set the company up for success. Mike Rockwell, head of engineering for the assistant, is replacing much of Siri's leadership with lieutenants from his Vision Pro software group, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He's also restructuring teams related to speech, understanding, performance and user experience, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the changes are private. Rockwell was named head of Siri engineering last month in a management shake-up that involved stripping away some responsibilities from AI chief John Giannandrea and former Siri head Robby Walker. The move followed project delays and engineering snags, prompting Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook to seek new leadership. Fixing Siri has become one of the highest-profile challenges at Apple, which first unveiled the voice assistant in 2011. The technology has fallen behind that of rivals like Alphabet's Google, and OpenAI -- and it's come to represent Apple's struggles to find its footing in the fast-growing artificial intelligence field. In one of Rockwell's first moves, he enlisted Ranjit Desai, a longtime top deputy from the development of the Vision Pro. Desai will now be in charge of much of Siri's engineering, including the underlying platform and systems groups. Rockwell told staffers that the executive's background in "high-performance, low-latency systems" would help Siri performance reach a "new level." Olivier Gutknecht, a senior Vision Pro software executive, is taking over the team in charge of Siri's user experience. Nate Begeman and Tom Duffy, veteran Apple software engineering managers, are also joining the Siri team to run underlying architecture. Rockwell says that will lead to "world-class" and "scalable" technology. Begeman worked on the Vision Pro operating system, and Duffy previously oversaw fundamental elements of the iPhone software as part of a group known as Core OS. They're considered top software engineering talent who helped bring some of the company's toughest projects to market. Stuart Bowers, who has led data, training and evaluation teams, will get an expanded role working on Siri's ability to figure out how to respond to a user. David Winarsky, a longtime Siri leader, is taking over a new group responsible for all voice and speech-related components. The moves show that Rockwell is either demoting or replacing the prior managers in charge of Siri engineering. At the same time, he is turning to the people behind the Vision Pro to fix the long-plagued voice assistant. While Rockwell has taken over Siri, he remains in charge of the visionOS operating system -- software that runs on current and future Vision devices. The Vision hardware team is still part of the broader hardware engineering group, reporting to senior executive John Ternus. A spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment. Apple is moving over the former visionOS software teams belonging to the executives joining Siri to Geoff Stahl, a longtime Rockwell deputy who helps manage software engineering for Vision devices. Rockwell is keeping other visionOS managers in place, including apps head Jeff Norris and software program management lead Haley Allen. Apple's artificial intelligence and machine learning team -- mocked as "AI/MLess" by some employees -- had been struggling for months with management issues, philosophical disagreements and execution problems. When the company unveiled its Apple Intelligence platform last June, it announced a series of Siri upgrades, including the service's ability to tap into a user's personal data and analyze on-screen content to fulfill commands. The iPhone maker also showed an upgraded version of App Intents, a system for more precisely controlling actions and applications. Earlier this year, quality and engineering issues forced Apple to postpone the release of that technology to May from April. By March, the company delayed the trio of features indefinitely in a rare retreat. In an internal meeting, the prior head of Siri told staffers the system didn't work properly as often as a third of the time. He said employees may feel "embarrassed" due to the "ugly" situation. The current Siri essentially has two brains. One handles longstanding commands, such as setting a timer and other basic tasks. The other one is based on large language models -- the core technology behind generative AI -- and can execute more advanced jobs. It's been a struggle to have both parts of Siri operate at the same time, contributing to quality problems. So Apple is now revamping its architecture to use a single LLM-based system. The approach should enable a more conversational user interface, though the upgrade is expected to take a couple of years. To bring the new App Intents feature to market -- an effort now overseen by Gutknecht -- Apple is planning to work directly with large third-party app developers so that the technology works smoothly with their software. It's also integrating the capabilities deeply into its own apps. The feature should eventually allow a user to trigger a complex series of tasks with a single voice instruction: Siri could, say, find a photo, edit it and send it off via email or iMessage. The management shuffle began early this year, with Apple moving Kim Vorrath -- a veteran software engineering manager known for handling difficult projects -- over to the Siri team. She had previously been in charge of project management for the Vision Pro under Rockwell. Now, just months later, she was moved with Rockwell under Craig Federighi, the company's software engineering chief. Giannandrea remains Apple's head of artificial intelligence, reporting directly to Cook. He oversees core AI initiatives, including large language model development, infrastructure teams and testing operations, as well as a "measurement" group focused on improving AI performance. Walker still reports to Giannandrea and remains involved with Siri, although he lost hundreds of engineers to Rockwell. Given the sales struggles and early bugs tied to the Vision Pro, some employees and industry watchers have questioned the Rockwell takeover of Siri. But while the Vision Pro hasn't hasn't been a commercial hit, Rockwell has shown an ability to take on major projects and persuade top leadership to invest heavily. He also created an operating system and product that are considered strong from a technology standpoint. © 2025 Bloomberg LP

Report: Apple Vision Pro Managers Taking Lead of Siri Revamp | PYMNTS.com

Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell, who is the new Siri engineering chief, is bringing members of the Vision Pro management team to Siri, replacing or demoting previous managers of the voice assistant business, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (April 22), citing unnamed sources. Apple did not immediately reply to PYMNTS' request for comment. The company's efforts to fix Siri have encountered project delays and engineering problems and have come to symbolize Apple's difficulties in the artificial intelligence (AI) field, according to the report. While Vision Pro has not been a commercial hit, Rockwell's leadership of the development of the device showed his ability to take on major projects, gain support from top leadership and produce a well-regarding operating system and product, the report said. Those leadership changes followed an annual offsite meeting of Apple's senior leaders, the "Top 100," at which the company's AI efforts were a key topic of discussion. Rockwell had demonstrated with the Vision Pro his ability to ship new products, as he became one of the few Apple leaders over the past decade to take a major hardware device from conception to market. Siri was revolutionary when it debuted in 2011 but now lags behind competitors like Amazon's Alexa, Google's Gemini for Android devices, and Samsung's Galaxy AI -- all of which are ahead in incorporating more advanced AI features -- PYMNTS reported in March. Luc Julia, a co-designer of the original Siri and now chief scientific officer of French automaker Renault, told PYMNTS in March that one hurdle to moving faster is Apple's culture, as a product must be "nearly perfect" before it is introduced. "They are falling behind because of this fear of not being perfect," Julia said.

Apple's Siri chief revamps team with Vision Pro expertise - Bloomberg By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL).'s newly appointed Siri engineering chief, Mike Rockwell, is undertaking a significant overhaul of the voice assistant's management team. The move is part of an effort to revitalize the Siri project, which has faced a series of delays and engineering difficulties. Rockwell, who became head of Siri engineering last month, is bringing in several top members from his Vision Pro software group to replace existing leadership within the Siri team, according to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter. In addition to these leadership changes, Rockwell is also reorganizing teams associated with speech, understanding, performance, and user experience. The decision to appoint Rockwell as head of Siri engineering was part of a larger management reshuffling at Apple. This shift involved reducing the responsibilities of AI chief John Giannandrea and former Siri head Robby Walker. The changes were initiated by Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, who sought new leadership in an attempt to address the project's challenges and delays.