Apple Moves Kim Vorrath to Siri / Apple Intelligence Team

Mark Gurman has an interesting scoop at Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. executive Kim Vorrath, a company veteran known for fixing troubled products and bringing major projects to market, has a new job: whipping artificial intelligence and Siri into shape.

Vorrath, a vice president in charge of program management, was moved to Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning division this week, according to people with knowledge of the matter. She’ll be a top deputy to AI chief John Giannandrea, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the change hasn’t been announced publicly. [...]

Over the years, Vorrath has had a hand in several of Apple’s biggest endeavors. In the mid-2000s, she was chosen to lead project management for the original iPhone software group and get the iconic device ready for consumers. Until 2019, she oversaw project management for the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems, before taking on the Vision Pro software.

Somehow Vorrath’s name has never before appeared on Daring Fireball, but she’s renowned within Apple, legendary even, for her leadership role in managing the creation and development of the software for the original iPhone, effectively serving as Scott Forstall’s chief of staff. Her reputation is that she’s a great manager — she gets shit done, knows how to ship, and talented people enjoy and thrive working for her. But outside Apple she’s largely flown under the radar — which only emphasizes how much of an Apple person’s Apple person she is.

I checked with a source who’s worked with Vorrath for years, and their comment says it all: “She kicks all the asses.”

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. Vorrath has a knack for organizing engineering groups and creating an effective workflow with new processes, the executive said.

My sense is that it’s less about Siri and Apple Intelligence being more important than VisionOS, and more about Siri being a mess. More about urgency than importance. But perhaps it’s both more urgent and more important long-term. Either way, assigning Vorrath — perhaps Apple’s best fixer, and without question one of Apple’s best fixers — makes sense. As my piece yesterday illustrated, something is rotten in the state of SiriLand.

Also very interesting: Gurman citing “a longtime Apple executive” as his source. Not “a source familiar with the matter”, but “a longtime Apple executive”. No “former” in there either. Apple generally doesn’t want personnel changes made public, but this one, I think is an exception. Siri is terrible, far behind the competition, and everyone from Cupertino to Wall Street knows it.

Apple sending in Kim Vorrath is like Marsellus Wallace sending in Winston Wolfe.

Friday, 24 January 2025