Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke to employees on Friday during a rare all-hands meeting at the company’s Cupertino campus, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The gathering followed strong quarterly earnings and focused on Apple’s next big priority: artificial intelligence.
Cook called AI a massive shift on par with the internet and smartphones. “Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,” he told staff. “We will make the investment to do it.”
He admitted Apple has often lagged behind on major trends, but said that hasn’t held the company back. “We’ve rarely been first,” Cook said. “There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod.” He added, “This is how I feel about AI.”
Apple has hired 12,000 people in the past year, with 40% joining R&D. Cook urged teams to move faster. “All of us are using AI in a significant way already, and we must use it as a company as well,” he said. “To not do so would be to be left behind, and we can’t do that.”
On regulation, Cook said, “The reality is that Big Tech is under a lot of scrutiny around the world,” and warned that some rules “destroy the user experience and user privacy and security.”
Cook also teased future products: “The product pipeline, which I can’t talk about: It’s amazing, guys. It’s amazing.”
SVP Craig Federighi said Apple had to ditch its original hybrid Siri update. “We realized that approach wasn’t going to get us to Apple quality,” he said. A full rebuild is now underway, which he says has “supercharged” progress.
Apple has faced criticism for showing up late to the AI race, especially after its early version of Apple Intelligence underwhelmed. Whether Siri can catch up to ChatGPT or Google Gemini remains to be seen—but Apple’s betting big on it.
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Apples big successes have always revolved around interface. First the mouse, then touch. The next obvious interface revolution is going to be voice. If Apple wants to continue the trend they’re going to have to revolutionize the voice interface.
The voice isn’t the issue, it works superbly at understanding me. Problem is, it can’t any of it. That’s not interface.
The company that launched Siri well ahead of its time is now pathetically behind the competition.
Tim’s nonstop inhalation of Trump’s fumes seems to have melted his brain. He’s like Siri stuck in a feedback loop spitting out nonsense.