Mike Rockwell “continues to seriously consider stepping down” as Apple‘s vice president of Siri engineering and could leave the company altogether next year Gurman described the potential move as a major blow to Apple
If Rockwell departs or moves to another role, responsibility for Siri would likely fall to one of two people. Amar Subramanya is a Google veteran hired last year to shore up Apple’s AI efforts, and Sebastien Marineau, a deputy to software chief Craig Federighi, leads the teams integrating AI into iOS. Marineau is said to be seen by some inside Apple as a possible eventual successor to Federighi himself, and as someone “more all-in on the AI revolution.”
As for Rockwell, he created the Vision Pro, before being put in charge of Siri’s turnaround, but only after “an embarrassing two-year delay,” as Gurman puts it. Reports of him weighing an exit from Apple first surfaced in April.
Hair Force One, however, isn’t going anywhere, it seems. A succession to Federighi remains “a distant prospect,” reckons Gurman. Federighi “maintains a firm grip” on Apple’s software engineering organization and “has done little to prioritize succession planning or establish a clear path for a successor,” according to his sources. Gurman adds that Federighi, who has led the organization for more than a decade, has given no indication that he is among Apple’s senior leaders considering an exit in the coming years.Tags: Mark Gurman, Siri, Siri AI
This article, “Apple’s Siri Boss May Leave – Here’s Who Could Take Over” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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