Something is ‘rotten’ about Apple and it could ‘collapse upon itself’, says longtime positive commentator after AI problems

Something is “rotten” about Apple and its recent rollout of long-promised AI features for the iPhone, according to a longtime positive commentator.

The company is in “disarray if not crisis”, its credibility is “now damaged” and it has “squandered” its reputation for shipping good updates and products, claimed John Gruber. Mr Gruber, who runs the blog Daring Fireball, has long been among one of Apple’s most supportive reviewers and commentators.

Mr Gruber’s unexpected attack came after Apple announced last week that it would not be able to ship some of its most hyped and widely-promoted updates on time.

In June, Apple had introduced Apple Intelligence, a wide range of AI-powered features that were intended to improve the iPhone and other products. While they covered a host of updates – some of which have shipped, such as an app to generate AI images – the most prominent was updates to Siri that would allow it to undertake a vast array of tasks on its owner’s behalf.

Apple suggested that those features would be out this year. But on Friday it said that they would not be ready, and that they were instead expected in the “coming year”, which could mean late 2026.

“Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT,” Apple said in a statement then

“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. 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.”

Mr Gruber said that the decision to promote features that were clearly not ready were a sign that the company was promoting “bullshit”, and that it was “a sign of a company in disarray, if not crisis”. Apple should have known that the features would not be ready and time and should not have promised them if they were not likely to be available, he said.

That failure had already damaged Apple’s reputation for announcing and then successfully launching products, he said. But he suggested that it could do dramatic damage to the company as a whole.

He noted that after previous Apple failures, founder and former chief executive Steve Jobs had held a meeting to hold staff accountable and force them to fix the company. He said that Tim Cook should already have held a meeting to “rectify this Siri and Apple Intelligence debacle”.

“If such a meeting hasn’t yet occurred or doesn’t happen soon, then, I fear, that’s all she wrote. The ride is over,” he wrote. When mediocrity, excuses, and bullshit take root, they take over.

“A culture of excellence, accountability, and integrity cannot abide the acceptance of any of those things, and will quickly collapse upon itself with the acceptance of all three.”