Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman over the weekend reported a potential move that could be a major blow to Apple. Gurman says Apple’s vice president of Siri engineering, Mike Rockwell, “continues to seriously consider stepping down,” and could leave the company altogether next year.
If Rockwell leaves the company or simply moves to another role, responsibility for Siri could fall to one of two people. The top two candidates are Amar Subramanya, a Google veteran hired last year to shore up Apple’s AI efforts, and Sebastien Marineau, a deputy to software chief Craig Federighi, who leads the teams integrating AI into iOS. Some Apple insiders see Marineau as a possible eventual successor to Federighi himself, thanks to someone that is “more all-in on the AI revolution.”
During Rockwell’s time at Apple, he created the Vision Pro, before being put in charge of Siri’s turnaround, but only after “an embarrassing two-year delay,” as Gurman puts it. By April, Rockwell was replacing staffers with people from his Apple Vision Pro work.
Word of him considering an exit from Apple first leaked back in April.
No matter who is considered the top candidate for Craig Federighi’s spot, they shouldn’t start redecorating Federighi’s office quite yet, as he “maintains a firm grip” on Apple’s software engineering organization and “has done little to prioritize succession planning or establish a clear path for a successor,” according to Gurman’s sources. Federighi has led the organization for more than a decade, and has apparently given no indication that he is considering an exit in the coming years.
