Stephen Silver
The day after an account surfaced that laid out the troubled history of Apple's Siri feature before, at, and after launch, a few of the report's key players are arguing about it on Twitter.
The piece, authored by The Information's Aaron Tilley and Kevin McLaughlin, detailed various stories of behind-the-scenes turmoil before, during and after Siri's launch, which the story argues has led to Siri falling behind its competitors to various degrees.
Jessica Lessin, the founder of the Information, tweeted a link to the article Thursday, while including a quote from former top Apple executive Richard Williamson about how "after launch, Siri was a disaster.. 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."
"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."https://t.co/McJCTucXFv
— Jessica Lessin (@Jessicalessin) March 14, 2018
This led to a response from a member of that original Siri team, Dag Kittlaus, who was cofounder and CEO of Siri before Apple acquired it, fired back. And he was sure to bring up William's greatest career embarrassment, Apple Maps:
This statement, wholly false, was made by the architect and head of the biggest launch disaster in Apple history, Apple Maps. In reality Siri worked great at launch but, like any new platform under unexpectedly massive load, required scaling adjustments and 24 hour workdays.
— Dag Kittlaus (@Dagk) March 14, 2018
Kittlaus wrote in a subsequent tweet that "Siri wasn't perfect but it was the first of its kind and set a completely new bar for conversational assistants that, ten years later, every top tech company is attempting to replicate and dominate." Journalist Brian X. Chen, now with the New York Times, backed up Kittlaus' side:
As an early reviewer of the iPhone 4S, I definitely remember Siri working great at launch - especially when only about a dozen of us reviewers were grilling it with questions. It wasn't until a huge amount of people started using Siri that it had reliability problems. https://t.co/068MdSVeG6
— Brian X. Chen (@bxchen) March 15, 2018
The Information's piece, which relied on a dozen anonymous sources, laid out a history of how the Siri product was rushed forward before it was ready with the launch of the iPhone 4S in 2011, which coincided with the passing of Steve Jobs the same week of its unveiling. Also alleged in the account is that the Siri team has lacked strong leadership since launch, and that the product has fallen behind Amazon's Alexa in part due to its failure to sufficiently court the developer community.
-m.jpg)
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew Orr
30 Comments
Losing Forstall was a huge change, and the management realignment that followed hasn’t fully recovered from it while Apple expanded to having 3 more platforms (watchOS, tvOS, whatever HomePod is using). They need another SVP, at least. Like organize for a SVP for macOS and iOS and an SVP for watchOS, tvOS and HomePod, basically, a SVP for large screen operating systems and a SVP for embedded operating systems.
There is going to be a wearables OS, based on iOS, that will run on future headphones too, so it isn’t a small job, and voice is going to be a big part of it. Siri should be folded into whoever is running watchOS, tvOS, etc.
They’ve gotten so much bigger since Siri launched, but their management org has been the same since 2012. Stuff is falling through the seams.
I go back to what I said in other thread on this topic, Apple bought a product which was already on the market, how could Apple have issues releasing a product which was already available.
I have to agree with Richard Williamson, the problem falls into the laps of the original developers, they must have delivered a half baked product to Apple. it is one thing to be a standalone app which a limited number of people use, then becoming part of the OS with 100's of millions of people using it in various languages. Then all original developers ran from the ship they build can claim creative difference lead them to leave.
who knows if siri is actually finally fixed and is just awaiting release in the next wwdc? all this news coming out is just to draw attention and renew awareness of the assistant.