Mike Wuerthele
Apple's one-time head of Siri development Bill Stasior has left Apple, and is going to be one of Microsoft's vice presidents of technology.
Stasior's shift to Microsoft following seven years of work on Apple's Siri has been confirmed in a brief statement by the Windows developer. In a remark to The Information, Microsoft said that Stasior will " work to help align technology strategies across the company."
Sources inside Microsoft told The Information that Stasior will be the head of an artificial intelligence group inside the company. Whether Stasior will be put in charge of a new division, or take over an existing one isn't clear.
Siri was a big priority for Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who made it a point of focus for Scott Forstall. Stasior was hired by Scott Forstall to be the Siri lead, following a tenure at Amazon.
Under Stasior, the Siri division was allegedly plagued by infighting as focus for the product changed away from a true conversant digital assistant to a search-focused tool. John Giannandrea was hired in April of 2018.
Giannandrea was promoted to Senior Vice President in December 2018. Stasior stepped away from Siri following another shift in company priorities, leaving Giannandrea in charge uncontested.
Stasior remained at Apple until May before the shift to Microsoft.
Stasior is only the most recent exit under Gianandrea's restructure. Tom Gruber departed in July 2018, and was the last of Siri's founders to leave the company. Apple's search lead Vipul Ved Prakash started working for Apple in 2013 , and left when Gruber did.
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14 Comments
What a fall!
Stasior is a “what is Apple working on?” hire by Microsoft.
Siri is something that touches everything at Apple... AR, Cars, TVs, etc. Stasior might not know the nitty gritty, but he knows the plans and status of everything.
I don’t know which of the Siri leaders’ vision for Siri is anything like mine but I hope several things get done. Yes, Siri is something that goes across all OS versions and I would like to be able to have her tell me the things that are useful to me -for example pollen count when giving the weather would be very helpful. I’d like to be able to ask her what my Apple ID account balance is and not have her tell me to go to the App Store. I used to be able to ask her what my battery level was if I was not looking at the iPad and had my hands in something cooking, but suddenly one day she stopped doing that. I don’t want to have to use Shortcuts to do these things, I’d rather have them baked into the OS. Mostly because I don’t always remember the exact phrase that I used with the short cuts, and even though I attended college for 2 1/2 years I still have difficulty constructing them. I’ll be honest. I want Jarvis. 😀