Apple enlists veteran software executive Kim Vorrath to help fix AI and Siri

Apple is enlisting a seasoned professional to tackle its AI challenges. Kim Vorrath, who has spent 36 years with the company, is moving to the AI and machine learning division. Her new role will concentrate on enhancing Siri and other AI initiatives under the supervision of AI head John Giannandrea.
Vorrath has been instrumental in the development of several of Apple’s major products, from managing the initial iPhone software to supervising the operating systems for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Her most recent project involved software development for the Vision Pro spatial computing headset.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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The move helps bolster a team that’s racing to make Apple a leader in AI — an area where it’s fallen behind technology peers. The company has struggled to match the capabilities of OpenAI, Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. And its Apple Intelligence platform has suffered from a slow and bumpy rollout.
The Siri digital assistant, groundbreaking when it was unveiled in 2011, has come to symbolize Apple’s shortcomings in AI. Upstarts like OpenAI have created their own, more versatile chatbots, and smartphone rival Samsung Electronics Co. has been faster to weave artificial intelligence features into its software. Amazon.com Inc. also is adapting its Alexa platform for the AI world.
Vorrath joins the new team from Apple’s hardware engineering division, where she helped launch the Vision Pro headset… The move signals that AI is now more important than the Vision Pro, which launched in February 2024, and is seen as the biggest challenge within the company, according to a longtime Apple executive who asked not to be identified… It has been clear for some time now that Giannandrea needs additional help managing an AI group with growing prominence, according to the executive.

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MacDailyNews Take: At this point, sigh, we’ll just wish good luck to Vorrath and review:
Apple pays and has been paying John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, millions upon millions of dollars for years. WTF of any import does he really do? WTF of any import has he really delivered? Have you used Siri lately? Yup, it’s still a steaming pile of dogshit.
Where’s Apple’s generative AI, John? “Too hard; too late; look for partners; gimme my paycheck and stock options.”
AAPL shareholders need to start asking real questions of these executives, especially those who are supposed in charge of Apple’s “AI Strategy,” when the company clearly has none. How about some accountability for once? – MacDailyNews, March 18, 2024
Note: Apple’s (virtual, of course) 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders is scheduled for February 25, 2025 at 8:00 am P.T.
Apple was caught flat-footed, due to a lack of vision on the part of leadership… So, the only solution is to partner with a [Google, OpenAI, Baidu, etc.] for the real GenAI stuff while pretending (marketing) really hard that some on-device AI Apple has whipped up in a few months is “insanely great Apple innovation” that’s at the heart of Apple’s 2024’s AI announcements when it’s really just an adjunct… Watch Apple make a big show of its on-device AI at WWDC and run many ads touting it from June onwards.
Apple hopes to buy time for the data center buildouts and investments that will be required for them to someday own their own AI technology and not have to license it from the likes of [Google, OpenAI, Baidu, etc.].
This is what happens after a decade plus with a caretaker CEO at the helm after he hits the last page of his iteration playbook, yet attempts to stay in the game for too long. – MacDailyNews, April 1, 2024
Clearly, Apple is not as innovative as it was under Steve Jobs who even started the company’s work on Apple Silicon, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro, but, thanks to Jobs and Cook’s subsequent management of iterations of products and services conceived during Jobs’ tenure, including the retail store buildout which is responsible for a significant portion of Apple’s growth, the company now has more than enough money to make up for Cook’s lack of vision. – MacDailyNews, April 23, 2024
The new “AI features” for iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS to be revealed at WWDC is mainly a marketing exercise. The pressure is on Apple’s marketing team to position the company as an innovator in the space (“only Apple does so much on-device AI which enhances users’ privacy to ‘stunning’ effect,” etc.) that also makes “smart partnerships” with other AI companies (OpenAI, for example; even though it’s currently forced to partner if they want to offer any real GenAI features). Now, more than ever, finding themselves so far behind, Apple needs to sell, sell, sell! – MacDailyNews, May 28, 2024
When you’re caught flat-footed like Tim Cook’s Apple, you pop into scramble mode to try to catch up. Early on, you hit it with a big marketing flourish (WWDC24) in order to buy some more time. Then you dribble out features as they get finished and actually exist. Classic vaporware. – MadDailyNews, July 31, 2024
MacDailyNews, September 10, 2024:
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Executing a vaporware strategy is an unfortunate necessity without a visionary CEO and it takes time to actually realize (code, test, build out datacenter infrastructure, etc.) a grand marketing vision.
You know, some people get upset when we point out that Tim Cook is a boring, reactive caretaker who’s not really the best person to be running Apple today or for at least the past several years.
Operations manager Cook should have been a 3-5 year stopgap after Steve Jobs’ untimely passing, running the iteration playbook, providing continuity for the company while it found a real CEO. Instead, he hung on — and keeps hanging on — well past his sell-by date.
Sigh.
You can be upset with us for having the temerity to call it like we see it, but the fact remains that Apple would be doing significantly better today with a visionary who’d have seen AI on the horizon, who’d have recognized the intrinsic importance of Siri and therefore invested in it instead of criminally neglecting it, and who wouldn’t have squandered the company’s gigantic leads in things like personal assistants and podcasting. – MacDailyNews, August 22, 2024
Larger displays on iPhone 16 Pro models, and hundreds of millions of iPhones that are 4+ years old, will do the heavy lifting for iPhone sales and iPhone’s average selling price (ASP).

Until it gets another visionary leader (fingers crossed; Apple’s history has shown – cough, Sculley, Spindler, cough – that the next CEO could be far, far worse than the very competent caretaker Cook), Apple can afford to miss things like generative AI – which they clearly did – and then use its huge war chest to catch up – which they’re doing right now (fun times and 80-hour weeks inside Apple Park!) – and, hopefully, [someday] surpass rivals (or at least be as good). Apple will very likely unveil their catch-up work within months (this June at WWDC 2024) in iPhones (and iPads, Apple Watches, etc.) with built-in on-device generative AI and other new AI-driven features. – MacDailyNews, February 14, 2024
Apple needed new blood years ago, but the old blood simply won’t let go. – MacDailyNews, January 22, 2025

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