Apple Executives Say Reliability Took Priority Over Deadline Amid Siri Delay: 'It Would've Been More Disappointing To Ship Something That Didn't Hit Our Quality Standard'

Apple Inc. AAPL executives Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering and Greg Joswiak, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, have addressed the delay of the promised Siri upgrade, explaining that the company chose reliability over meeting an initial deadline.

What Happened: At WWDC last year, Apple revealed plans for an upgraded Siri that would have context awareness and the ability to take actions within apps.

However, in March 2025, Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy confirmed the delay, stating, “We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps.”

Adding, “It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features, and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”

On Tuesday, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Apple's two top executives pushed back on rumors that the revamped Siri showcased at WWDC was just "demoware," stressing that the software was real but didn't meet the company's quality standards in time for a broader release.

Federighi said that the company had developed a two-phase architecture to upgrade Siri, with an initial version already functional ahead of the WWDC showcase. However, He acknowledged that the system didn't meet Apple's reliability standards in time for a full rollout.

“It didn’t converge in the way, quality-wise, that we needed it to,” he stated.

Joswiak, Apple's marketing chief, echoed this sentiment. "There's this narrative out there that it was just demoware—no," he said.

“We don’t wanna disappoint customers. We never do. But it would’ve been more disappointing to ship something that didn’t hit our quality standard, that had an error rate that we felt was unacceptable,” he continued, adding, “So we made what we thought was the best decision. I’d made it again.”

Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox.

Today's Best Finance Deals

Why It's Important: The delay comes as tech rivals Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL GOOG Google and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN ramp up efforts to advance their AI-powered voice assistants.

Earlier this year, it was reported that Apple decided to shift responsibility for Siri from AI chief John Giannandrea to Mike Rockwell, the executive behind the Vision Pro.

The change came after prolonged delays and missed targets tied to Apple Intelligence. Internally, the situation was described as chaotic, with developers unclear on timelines for major feature rollouts.

These issues are said to have led Tim Cook to question Giannandrea's ability to deliver.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs continues to hold a bullish outlook on Apple despite the stock dipping after its WWDC 2025 keynote on Monday. Notably, Siri received only a few mentions this year, significantly down from the 54 times it was referenced during WWDC 2024.

Price Action: Apple shares ended Tuesday at $202.67, up 0.61% during regular trading. In after-hours, the stock saw a further modest gain of 0.11%, according to Benzinga Pro data.

Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings indicate a downward trend for Apple across short-, medium-, and long-term timeframes. More detailed performance data is available here.