Something interesting happened this week. Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak sat down with The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern for what felt like a damage control interview. The topic? Apple’s much-criticized AI strategy and the elephant in the room – Siri’s delayed transformation.

It’s rare to see Apple executives on the defensive, but here we are. After months of criticism about being “behind” in the AI race, watching competitors like ChatGPT and Google Assistant evolve rapidly, Apple’s top brass decided it was time to set the record straight. But are they right to defend their approach, or is this just corporate spin?

The Great Siri Promise That Wasn’t

Let’s rewind to June 2024. At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the company made bold promises about Siri’s future. Apple unveiled its vision for AI at the Worldwide Developers Conference, with the main plans being to make Siri smart. The demonstrations were impressive – Siri would understand personal context, carry out complex actions across apps, and finally become the intelligent assistant Apple had promised for years.

Fast forward to 2025, and those features are nowhere to be found. These updates to Siri have still not taken effect, leaving users with the same old Siri that struggles with basic requests and seems stuck in 2015.

The delay isn’t just embarrassing – it’s symbolic of Apple’s broader AI struggles. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become a household name and Google’s AI assistant can handle increasingly complex tasks, Siri remains the digital assistant that can barely understand what you’re asking for, let alone actually help you get things done.

What Apple Executives Are Actually Saying

In their recent interview, Apple executives are defending the company’s AI strategy and are now saying the company is rebuilding Siri from the ground up. Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief, offered a fascinating insight into what went wrong.

“We found that when we were developing this feature that we had, really, two phases, two versions of the ultimate architecture that we were going to create,” said Federighi. “Version one we had working here at the time that we were getting close to the conference, and had, at the time, high confidence that we could deliver by the end of the year.”

This admission is remarkable for Apple, a company that typically keeps its internal struggles private. Federighi is essentially saying they had a working prototype but chose to scrap it for something better. It’s either a bold commitment to quality or a costly mistake – depending on your perspective.

The executives are pushing back against the narrative that Apple is falling behind in AI. Greg Joswiak, Apple’s marketing chief, seems particularly frustrated with this characterization. Their argument is simple: Apple isn’t behind – it’s just taking a different approach.

The Quality vs. Speed Debate

Apple’s defense centers on a familiar theme: quality over speed. While competitors rush to market with AI features that sometimes hallucinate or provide incorrect information, Apple claims it’s taking time to get things right.

This isn’t entirely unreasonable. We’ve all seen the embarrassing AI failures from other companies – chatbots giving dangerous medical advice, image generators creating inappropriate content, or voice assistants making bizarre purchases. Apple’s cautious approach could be seen as responsible, especially given their massive user base.

But there’s a flip side to this argument. Apple overpromised and underdelivered, failing to deliver a vaguely promised end-of-year Apple Intelligence Siri update in 2024 and admitting by spring 2025 that it would not be ready any time soon. When you promise something publicly and then fail to deliver, the “quality first” explanation starts to sound like an excuse.

The technology world moves fast, and Apple’s perfectionism might be costing them market position. Users don’t experience the theoretical perfect AI assistant that might arrive someday – they experience the current reality of Siri struggling with basic tasks while their friends show off ChatGPT’s capabilities.

The Real Challenge: Architecture vs. Marketing

What’s interesting about Federighi’s explanation is the technical detail. He talks about having two different architectural approaches and choosing the more ambitious one, even though it meant delays. This suggests Apple’s problems aren’t just about marketing timelines – they’re about fundamental technical challenges.

The assistant was designed to understand personal context and carry out actions across apps, which is significantly more complex than a chatbot that just answers questions. Apple is trying to build something that integrates deeply with your personal data and apps, while maintaining their privacy-first approach.

This is genuinely difficult. It’s one thing to build a chatbot that can have conversations – it’s another to build an assistant that can understand your personal context, access your apps securely, and perform actions on your behalf without compromising your privacy.

But here’s the problem: most users don’t care about architectural elegance if the end result doesn’t work. They want an assistant that can help them now, not a perfect one that might arrive eventually.

The Competition Isn’t Standing Still

While Apple works on their perfect AI assistant, the competition continues to evolve. ChatGPT has become integrated into countless apps and services. Google’s AI can help with increasingly complex tasks. Even Microsoft’s Copilot is showing up in productivity tools that people use daily.

Insiders say continued failure to get artificial intelligence right threatens everything from the iPhone’s dominance to plans for robots and other futuristic products. This isn’t just about Siri anymore – it’s about Apple’s entire future in a world where AI is becoming central to computing.

The iPhone’s success has always been about providing a superior user experience. But if other phones can offer genuinely helpful AI assistants while the iPhone is stuck with a frustrating Siri, that value proposition starts to erode.

The Privacy Paradox

Apple’s executives lean heavily on privacy as a differentiator. While other companies send your data to cloud servers for processing, Apple processes much of its AI locally on your device. This is genuinely valuable – your personal information stays private.

But privacy shouldn’t be an excuse for poor functionality. Users want both privacy and capability, and Apple’s challenge is delivering on both fronts. If they can’t figure out how to build effective AI while maintaining privacy, they might find users willing to make that trade-off elsewhere.

The privacy argument also feels a bit hollow when Apple’s AI features are so limited. It’s easy to maintain privacy when your AI barely works – the real test is maintaining privacy while delivering powerful capabilities.

What This Means for Regular Users

If you’re an iPhone user waiting for Siri to become actually useful, Apple’s message is essentially: “Trust us, we’re working on it.” The executives are asking for patience while they build something better.

But patience has limits. Apple’s AI rollout has been rocky, from Siri delays to underwhelming Apple Intelligence features. Users have been waiting for years for Siri to live up to its potential, and each delay erodes trust in Apple’s AI capabilities.

The practical impact is that iPhone users are increasingly looking elsewhere for AI assistance. They’re using ChatGPT, Google Assistant, or other AI tools instead of Siri. This isn’t just a Siri problem – it’s an ecosystem problem that could affect Apple’s long-term competitiveness.

The Bigger Picture: Apple’s AI Identity Crisis

This controversy reveals something deeper about Apple’s position in the AI era. For years, Apple has been the company that “just works” – they took existing technologies and made them more user-friendly and reliable. But AI is different. It’s not just about polishing existing technology – it’s about fundamental breakthroughs in how computers understand and interact with humans.

Apple’s traditional approach of waiting until they can perfect something before releasing it worked well for hardware products. But AI is more like software – it improves through iteration and real-world usage. The companies that succeed in AI are those that ship early, learn from users, and improve rapidly.

This creates a fundamental tension with Apple’s brand. They’ve built their reputation on products that work beautifully out of the box. But effective AI requires a different approach – one that embraces imperfection as a path to improvement.

The Verdict: Defense or Admission?

Apple executives’ decision to publicly defend their AI strategy is telling. Companies don’t usually feel compelled to explain their delays unless they’re feeling real pressure. The fact that Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak sat down for this interview suggests Apple is genuinely concerned about the narrative around their AI efforts.

Their explanations are plausible – building truly personal AI while maintaining privacy is genuinely difficult. But explanations don’t change the user experience. Apple executives defended the company’s AI strategy this week after acknowledging that major Siri features announced at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference remain undelivered and were quietly pulled from development plans.

The real test won’t be in interviews or explanations – it’ll be in the products Apple actually ships. Users will judge based on whether Siri becomes genuinely helpful, whether Apple Intelligence adds real value, and whether Apple can catch up to competitors who are already delivering useful AI features.

What Comes Next

Apple’s executives are promising that better AI is coming. They’re asking users to trust their process and wait for something that will supposedly be worth the delay. But in the fast-moving world of AI, being late to market has real consequences.

The question isn’t whether Apple will eventually deliver good AI – they probably will. The question is whether they’ll be too late to matter. In technology, being right eventually isn’t always enough if you’ve already lost users to competitors who were good enough, sooner.

For now, Apple’s AI defense feels like a company trying to control a narrative that’s already gotten away from them. The real answer will come when they finally deliver the AI features they’ve been promising. Until then, users are left with the same old Siri and the growing sense that Apple might not be as far ahead as they once seemed.

The AI revolution is happening now, and Apple’s perfectionist approach might be perfect for hardware but problematic for the fast-evolving world of artificial intelligence. Their executives can defend their strategy all they want, but ultimately, the market will judge based on results, not explanations.