Apple's Ternus Presses Federighi to Speed Up AI Work Beyond Siri Fixes, Bloomberg Says

In a closed-door meeting, Ternus urged Federighi to "accelerate the company's road map and move quickly beyond merely making necessary improvements to Siri," according to the report. Gurman wrote that Ternus is "frustrated by what he sees as a reluctance to embrace AI with the same urgency as competitors." Apple has not publicly commented on the account.

The report points to a gap in outlook between Apple's new chief executive, who succeeded Tim Cook, and the executive whose organisation decides what ships in the company's operating systems. Federighi is described as more sceptical of AI, with concerns about "the technology's privacy, security, societal and employment implications." Some employees find that his management style leaves little room for competing ideas, according to the report, although Federighi also oversaw delivery of the rebuilt Siri after years of delays.

That rebuilt Siri, released with iOS 27, delivered much of what Apple promised in 2024, but it still cannot carry out long, multi-step tasks in the background the way some rival assistants can. Ternus acknowledged the limit on Apple's November 2 earnings call. "It's primarily request-based today," he said, adding that the assistant is "built on a modern, orchestrator-driven architecture that gives us real room to expand capabilities over time." He called agentic capabilities "promising tools for users" and said "there's still so much more we plan to do."

According to Gurman, Apple wants Siri to act eventually as an autonomous agent that handles ongoing tasks without step-by-step commands, and that shift could begin as early as 2027. Ternus took a more measured line in public at his first product event on September 9, when he argued that the iPhone is already the best AI device and that Apple places more weight on data privacy than its rivals.

The report also describes unsettled leadership around Siri. Mike Rockwell, the vice president of Siri engineering who previously led development of the Vision Pro headset, is weighing leaving his role or Apple altogether next year and feels he has not received enough credit for fixing Siri, according to Bloomberg. If he goes, his responsibilities could pass to Amar Subramanya, a Google veteran hired last year to strengthen Apple's AI work, and Sebastien Marineau, one of Federighi's deputies.

Apple is also changing how it builds software. For iOS 28 and its other next major operating system releases, the company is shifting time in the development calendar towards coding, exploration and feature work, and away from folding changes into the operating systems, Gurman reported. Employees have reacted well to the change, according to the report. Critics of a faster pace have questioned whether it will bring more bugs, a test that will come with next year's releases.

The nearer test is iOS 27.3. Apple is preparing Siri features for that update that include organising Safari tabs, editing messages and carrying out several actions in a row in Photos, according to Bloomberg. Support in Apple's own apps could arrive as early as December, with deeper integration for third-party apps to follow next spring.