Apple’s digital assistant is under new management.
Along with updating its corporate leadership page to include its two newest VPs, Apple also revealed that it has replaced Eddy Cue as Siri’s boss and given the task over to software VP Craig Federighi.
Craig’s biography page was updated this morning with the following paragraph:
“Craig Federighi is Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. Craig oversees the development of iOS, macOS, and Siri. His teams are responsible for delivering the software at the heart of Apple’s innovative products, including the user interface, applications and frameworks.”
(emphasis ours)
Can Craig Fix Siri?
The change isn’t much of a surprise considering Craig was the one presenting all the changes Apple made to Siri at WWDC 2017. Cue is more of a media and services guru. He was tasked with fixing Siri after Scott Forstall was kicked out of the company back in 2012 following the disastrous launch of Apple Maps.
Handing the reigns over to Federighi could mean big things for Siri in the future. During his presentation of at WWDC, Federighi revealed that Apple is doubling down on its push to make Siri a more useful tool by adding better machine learning features.
Siri can do more than ever in iOS 11 thanks to the updated SiriKit framework that lets third-party apps tap into her powers. Once iOS 11 is released this fall, Siri will know your voice, the context of your query, your interests and how you use your device. Ultimately, that will let Siri know what you want next, said Federighi on stage.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
2 responses to “Siri gets a new boss”
Good, I don’t understand why Eddy Cue is still with Apple. It’s like a mean joke where they let the village idiot have control just to laugh at him.
Because he’s drinking buddies with Tim Cook. I thought he should have been gone a long time ago too.
This is a good move for the future of Siri and I’m surprised he had it under his supervision in the first place because he’s supposed to be in charge of “services” rather than features of the OS.s
Siri should have been part of the OS from the very beginning. I’m glad Craig has it, he has a much more pragmatic way of improving the OS. Unfortunately, it may take a year or for us to see any drastic improvement, unless they have some miraculous thing happen. Siri today is OK, but not great.