Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman used Sunday’s Power On newsletter to sketch out three connected pieces of one story: Apple’s new CEO wants the software side of the company to move faster, the way Apple builds its operating systems has already changed, and Siri could start acting like a real agent as early as next year.
None of it is official. All of it is reported. But taken together, it’s the clearest picture yet of what the Ternus era means for the software on your iPhone and Mac.
Ternus told Federighi to “accelerate”
According to Gurman, as relayed by 9to5Mac and MacRumors, CEO John Ternus held a closed-door meeting in recent weeks with Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief and, since last year, its AI lead. Ternus pushed him to “accelerate” the company’s software roadmap and “move quickly beyond merely making necessary improvements to Siri.”
Gurman describes Ternus as frustrated by what he sees as a reluctance to embrace AI with the same urgency as competitors. The report also says Federighi typically plans on a 12 to 18 month horizon, compared with the multi-year roadmaps Apple’s hardware teams work to, and that his hands-on management style has left some engineers and designers feeling they have limited influence over product direction.
There’s no indication Federighi is leaving. 9to5Mac notes he has made succession planning a low priority.
Separately, Gurman reports that Mike Rockwell, who built Vision Pro and led the development of Siri AI, is still seriously considering stepping down from his role as vice president of Siri engineering, or leaving Apple altogether, next year.
iOS 28 is being built on a different schedule
The process change is already in motion. Per MacRumors, Apple normally splits each year’s OS development into three stages, each with four weeks of coding followed by four weeks of “convergence,” where features get integrated and stabilized.
For the first stage of iOS 28, macOS 28, and the rest of next year’s releases, Apple switched to six weeks of coding and exploration, then just two weeks of convergence. That’s 50% more time to build and try ideas before locking them in. Gurman says employees like the change, and 9to5Mac ties it to how much coding agents have improved.
No specific iOS 28 features were reported. The normal timeline would put a beta in June and a public release in September 2027.
Siri, but proactive
The most consumer-facing piece: Gurman says Apple “ultimately wants to go in this direction” of agent-style assistants that “keep track of goals, determine what needs to happen next and continue pursuing objectives without the user initiating every individual step,” and that he believes Apple “could make Siri more like an agent as early as next year.”
That would be a real step up from where Siri is today. The iOS 27.3 betas add more in-app Siri actions and a developer preview for custom actions and skills that help Siri chain multiple steps, but you still kick off every request yourself.
Our take
Read the hedges carefully. “Could” and “as early as” are doing a lot of work in the Siri line, and an agent that acts on your behalf has a much higher bar for reliability and trust than an assistant that answers questions. Apple has also only just shipped Siri AI after a long delay.
The more concrete signal is the schedule change. Giving engineers more time to explore at the front of the cycle is the kind of quiet process tweak that shows up a year later as bigger, bolder features. If Ternus’s push is real, WWDC 2027 is where we’ll find out whether it worked.
Sources: MacRumors (Nov. 8), MacRumors (Nov. 8), 9to5Mac (Nov. 8), all citing Mark Gurman’s Bloomberg Power On newsletter.
Reporting reference: MacRumors ↗