Apple CEO Ternus wants Siri to work like an agent

Apple's new CEO has looked at the agents his rivals ship, and he wants one.

That is the read from Mark Gurman's Bloomberg Power On newsletter on Sunday, Nov. 8. Per MacRumors' account of it, Gurman says Apple could make Siri work "more like an agent" as early as next year.

Nothing is announced. This is reporting from Gurman's sources, and the exact design is still unknown.

Ternus told Federighi to move faster

In a closed-door meeting in recent weeks, CEO John Ternus told software chief Craig Federighi that Apple needs to "accelerate" its software roadmap and "move quickly beyond merely making necessary improvements to Siri," Gurman reports, per MacRumors.

9to5Mac's summary of the report says Ternus is frustrated by what he sees as "a reluctance to embrace AI with the same urgency as competitors."

It also says Federighi plans on 12 to 18 month timeframes, shorter than the multiyear roadmaps hardware uses, and that there is no sign he is leaving. Mike Rockwell, Apple's VP of Siri engineering, is still seriously considering stepping down, possibly next year.

The yardstick is now OpenAI's and Meta's agents

Gurman spells out what Apple is measuring itself against. "Dots, Muse and Grok can keep track of goals, determine what needs to happen next," he writes, and keep working on a task without a command for each step. Apple "ultimately wants to go in this direction," per MacRumors.

Yes, Apple promises a smarter Siri every year. This one reads differently because the pressure comes from the CEO's chair, and the bar is an AI agent that tracks goals on its own, well past last year's Siri.

Apple is also changing how it builds software. Per 9to5Mac, it is testing a process that gives engineers 50% more time to code and explore, with less time on integration, because coding agents have improved.

That detail is the tell. A company that rewrites its own calendar around agentic coding is betting agents can do real work. Siri is where that bet meets customers.

What it means for your app

An agent-style Siri that tracks a goal across apps would call your app in the middle of a task the user started somewhere else. Apps whose actions Siri can already see are the ones it can use. Apps it cannot see are easy to skip.

TopFive covered Apple opening Siri AI to app developers on Nov. 4. That integration is the on-ramp. If you ship on iOS, get your app's actions exposed to Siri now.

If you only use an iPhone, nothing changes this year.

What to watch

Watch whether Rockwell stays. Watch the iOS betas for Siri chaining steps on its own, without a prompt for each one.

The betas will tell you before the keynote does.