Apple CEO Tim Cook should go public to explain the delay in integrating advanced Siri capabilities across its ecosystem, rather than Apple releasing the news quietly via a tech site last week, according to prominent Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
The tech giant showcased an AI-powered Siri at its WWDC event in 2024, as part of its Apple Intelligence initiative. While the virtual assistant does now have some AI smarts, the more advanced features — including personalized responses, task completion across multiple apps, and on-screen awareness –have been delayed until next year at the earliest.
Writing in a post on X on Thursday, Kuo acknowledged that developing great AI services “was never going to happen overnight, so the delay of Apple Intelligence is entirely understandable.”
He can also see why Apple announced Apple Intelligence at last year’s WWDC, “even though they knew it couldn’t be completed on schedule,” saying that while this “was not a good move, [it] is still understandable given the pressure from the board and shareholders.”
But Kuo said the “worst part” came just recently “when it came time to admit that Apple Intelligence (Siri) development wasn’t going as planned,” with Apple choosing to “break the news to the world through an unofficial channel.”
He added: “This is how the world’s most valuable company handles a PR crisis.”
Kuo said that Apple should have handled the matter in a similar way to how Cook’s predecessor, Steve Jobs, dealt with the so-called “antennagate” crisis with the iPhone 4 in 2010, when a design flaw caused signal loss that resulted in a lot of upset among customers. Jobs handled the situation head on, calling a press conference in which he acknowledged the problem and offered free bumper cases to mitigate the issue.
“The way Steve Jobs personally addressed the iPhone 4 antennagate PR crisis back in the day provides a great example,” Kuo said in his post.
But Cook, too, has been known to face difficult matters in a more public manner, evidenced by the way he handled the Apple Maps debacle in 2012 when the buggy software was released way before it was ready, causing widespread disappointment and frustration among users.
Cook didn’t hold a press conference, choosing instead to post a letter of apology on Apple’s website in which he said the company “fell short” of its commitment to deliver world-class products, while promising to do better.
But the difference between those two issues — antennagate and Apple Maps — and the AI Siri delay is that this time around there’s no user backlash or sense of crisis about the situation. Of course, if Apple launches the all-new Siri well before it’s ready, and it performs horribly, then Cook might well be compelled to confront the situation publicly.
For now, Apple is intent on avoiding an Apple Maps-type error, and therefore won’t be releasing the enhanced Siri tool until it’s sure it’s ready. So no, don’t expect Cook to be holding a press conference about it anytime soon.