Apple CEO Ternus Pressures Software Chief Federighi to Accelerate AI Development

Apple Chief Executive John Ternus has urged software engineering head Craig Federighi to accelerate the company's artificial intelligence development, according to reporting by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and relayed by The Next Web . In a closed-door meeting held in recent weeks, Ternus pressed Federighi to expand Apple's efforts beyond incremental upgrades to Siri, driven by concern over the company's pace relative to rival technology firms.

The executive confrontation points to strategic friction at the top of Apple as competitive platforms shift from conversational assistants toward autonomous agents and desktop tool use. While competitors such as OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic have introduced persistent agents and direct computer-control capabilities, Apple has prioritized privacy constraints and deliberate development cycles, relying on underlying models licensed from Google to power its redesigned voice assistant.

The internal exchange stands in contrast to Ternus's public framing. During Apple's quarterly earnings call, the chief executive praised the rebuilt Siri AI while outlining an evolutionary path. "It’s primarily request-based today, but as we talked about at WWDC, it’s built on a modern orchestrator-driven architecture that gives us real room to expand its capabilities over time," Ternus said on the call, adding that Apple views agentic capabilities as "promising tools for users." A month earlier, Ternus told Wired that Apple would not ship artificial intelligence features merely for their own sake.

Federighi assumed leadership of Apple's AI group last year after the departure of former division head John Giannandrea. Within Apple, Federighi has maintained a reputation as an AI skeptic, according to Bloomberg, expressing caution regarding the technology's implications for user privacy, system security, employment, and broader societal impacts. Colleagues cited in the report described a hands-on management approach centered on 12-to-18-month planning horizons, a cadence that can diverge from the multiyear roadmaps governing Apple's hardware divisions.

Leadership across Siri engineering may see further transitions. Mike Rockwell, Apple's vice president of Siri engineering, is actively weighing whether to step down next year from his post or leave Apple altogether. Should Rockwell depart, operational responsibilities are expected to shift primarily to Amar Subramanya, a former Google engineering leader hired last year, and Sebastien Marineau, a vice president under Federighi who is regarded internally as a potential candidate to succeed him.

Near-term product updates will focus on in-app task execution rather than full autonomy. In the current iOS 27.3 beta, Siri can perform discrete actions across Apple's first-party apps, such as organizing Safari tabs, managing folders in the Files app, editing and sharing photos across several steps, and unsending messages in iMessage. Gurman reported that these features could launch publicly as early as December, with integration for third-party services—including OpenTable and Uber Eats—anticipated in spring updates with iOS 27.5 or iOS 27.6.

Those additions leave Siri functioning on direct user command, trailing systems such as Meta's Muse, Grok, or OpenAI's ChatGPT Dots, which manage continuous background objectives across sessions. Apple also lacks native screen-control tools comparable to those from Anthropic and OpenAI, which parse display output, position cursors, and interact directly with user interfaces. Bloomberg reported that Apple aims to introduce more agentic behavior to Siri as early as next year.

To accelerate software iteration, Apple has modified its engineering schedules for upcoming platforms. During the initial development milestone for iOS 28, iPadOS 28, and macOS 28, the company replaced its traditional split of four weeks of coding and four weeks of feature integration with a schedule allocating six weeks to coding and two weeks to integration. Engineering teams begin work on the second milestone—where features are formally finalized—this week.