Apple AI Mega Restructuring Insider: Vision Pro Lead Rockwell Cross-domain Rescue, Iron-handed Cleaning of Siri Team

According to Constellate Beating's monitoring, in early 2025, an emergency closed-door executive meeting was held in a conference room next to Apple's Software Engineering Department, without CEO Tim Cook's attendance. Due to the lackluster response to the first-generation Apple Intelligence, the crucial overhaul of Siri was facing delays, and competitors such as Google and OpenAI were advancing rapidly. Senior Vice President Eddy Cue even internally warned, "AI may disrupt the iPhone business within the next decade." At that time, Cook had lost confidence in the then AI head, John Giannandrea. The remaining executives decided to bypass the head and directly discuss solutions, submitting recommendations to Cook. The meeting not only prompted Cook to break his long-standing hands-off style, start personally and deeply involve in and fine-tune AI development details, but also initiated a comprehensive self-rescue and restructuring of Apple's AI business.

During the meeting, Mike Rockwell, who had just led the development of Vision Pro, stepped forward and volunteered to be the "AI Firefighter." Rockwell wanted to report directly to Cook and be promoted to Senior Vice President. However, Software Chief Craig Federighi staunchly defended the department's control and insisted that the AI business should not be separated from the department. Although Rockwell initially considered retreating because he believed Federighi lacked a sense of urgency, he eventually accepted a compromise and took on the role of reporting to Federighi as the head of Siri. After taking office, Rockwell quickly cleansed the original Siri leadership team, brought in Vision Pro's key members, and faced reality on the technical roadmap: realizing that their in-house models lagged behind industry standards, Rockwell, in coordination with Federighi, Cue, and the competitor Google, reached an agreement to directly use Google's Gemini model and Google Cloud technology to support the new Siri operation.

The self-rescue plan of introducing external models will make its debut at WWDC 2026. Apple will release an independent Siri app comparable to ChatGPT and a generative photo editing feature, completely overturning the previous executive's attitude of rejecting chatbots and generative image editing. WWDC 2026 will also serve as Cook's final performance on September 1 before officially stepping down and handing over the reins to the new CEO, John Ternus. The success or failure of the new Siri will not only affect Cook's career evaluation but also directly determine the future of the Ternus era. Constrained by the underlying AI technological bottlenecks, hardware such as desktop robots (delayed until 2028), smart screens (delayed until the end of 2026), and AI glasses (delayed until the end of 2027) have all been forcibly postponed. The results of the overhaul will determine whether Apple can reclaim its dominance in the next generation of computing.