Mark Gurman has just reported that Apple is reshuffling the Siri team’s leadership in light of the recent Apple Intelligence controversy. They are putting Mike Rockwell, the man behind Vision Pro, in charge of the effort and taking AI chief John Gianndrea off the project.

While you can lament the well-documented array of Vision Pro shortcomings, the software: visionOS is an impeccable achievement. It was one of the most polished 1.0s the company has ever shipped despite missing some features. It has a gorgeous design and is chock full of functionality, plus it was largely stable out of the gate. Putting the guy who led the development of the most advanced piece of technology Apple has ever made in charge of Siri is the right move. I trust that he will productize whatever technology comes from the LLM group really well and ensure that they do not get over their skis again. Maybe he will even scrap what they have and fast track an entirely new solution. Ultimately, this is good news and it means a fresh perspective. More on why I am excited about the much-needed course correction below.

This news immediately brought to mind a report from early 2023 via The Information that detailed how the Vision Pro team wanted to develop its own voice control software, instead of using the existing version of Siri. 9to5Mac highlighted a particularly important and now very relevant series of lines from the story:

Inside Apple, Siri remains widely derided for its lack of functionality and improvements since Giannandrea took over, say multiple former Siri employees. For example, the team building Apple’s mixed-reality headset, including its leader Mike Rockwell, has expressed disappointment in the demonstrations the Siri team created to showcase how the voice assistant could control the headset, according to two people familiar with the matter. At one point, Rockwell’s team considered building alternative methods for controlling the device using voice commands, the people said (the headset team ultimately ditched that idea).

The frustration with Siri has finally boiled over and I am extremely optimistic now. If anyone at Apple can turn around Siri, it is someone who recognized the problem long ago but was not given the opportunity to fix it. Until now.