In June 2024, Apple demoed a reinvention of Siri powered by its new "Apple Intelligence" suite. The vision? A next-gen voice assistant that could interpret natural speech, understand on-screen context, trigger in-app actions, and remember your preferences. It was Apple’s declaration that it was finally ready to compete in the AI arena.
But behind the polished keynote, the truth was something else entirely: none of those features were actually working.
The only thing that functioned in the live demo was the animated Siri visual around the edge of the screen. Everything else? Faked. The demo was smoke and mirrors — an aspirational prototype paraded as a functional reality. And now, almost a year later, many of those features still haven’t shipped.
This isn’t just about Apple. It’s a case study for product teams, marketing teams, sales orgs, founders, and business leaders — especially at pre-IPO companies and publicly traded ones — navigating the pressure to "AI-wash" roadmaps, impress stakeholders, and hit targets faster than their execution can support.
At Attainment, we work with companies building and launching the next wave of category-defining products. We support product, marketing, sales, and go-to-market teams — along with founders and executive leadership — trying to balance ambition with operational truth. Apple’s misstep is a cautionary tale:
If you oversell your product before it's ready, you're not just risking reputation — you're betting your brand equity on hope.
Apple isn’t a startup. It has the luxury of time, capital, and talent. Yet it still fell into a trap that product and GTM teams — from scale-ups to enterprise — are even more vulnerable to:
Feeling late to the AI race
Promising more than can be delivered
Building launch momentum on unshipped features
Letting internal misalignment slow progress
This isn’t the first time Apple has overpromised (remember AirPower?). But this time is different. Siri isn’t a peripheral feature. It’s infrastructure. It’s supposed to be the control layer of the Apple ecosystem.
When your foundation cracks, everything above it shakes.
Apple promoted Apple Intelligence across every major product line — iPhone, MacBook, iPad — to generate excitement and drive hardware sales.
And in the short term, it worked. Stock price jumped. AI became the hook for “next-gen” Apple products.
But then… nothing happened.
Fall 2024 came and went. Users got a new Siri animation — and the same old voice assistant underneath. The headline features didn’t ship. And now, Apple’s facing a class-action lawsuit for false advertising.
Marketing must reflect product reality — not internal slide decks.
When marketing stretches too far beyond what’s live, trust becomes the cost. GTM teams don’t just lose campaign performance — they burn audience goodwill.
"Brand loyalty can buy you grace, but it doesn’t guarantee forgiveness forever."
What’s fascinating is how Apple’s customers largely looked past it. That’s the strength of the brand. But how many more times can they get away with it?
Especially when the promise of Apple Intelligence was used to sell new iPhones, even though the previous iPhone 15 was technically capable of running those same features.
Eventually, customers start asking a harder question: Does this actually work?
Apple’s Siri saga is a classic example of what happens when product vision isn’t backed by team structure and leadership accountability:
Legacy leaders kept their roles despite years of underperformance
AI leaders were brought in, but no structural overhaul followed
Internal teams became siloed and frustrated
Even world-class engineers can’t ship bold features if the culture punishes risk and protects status quo.
The product always reflects the structure behind it. If that structure is slow, political, or risk-averse — the roadmap becomes one too.
Apple didn’t fail because it lacked ambition. It failed because it didn’t operationalize AI like a native capability.
While others embraced external LLMs, Apple clung to internal-only development. Engineers who wanted to experiment with cutting-edge tools were limited by bureaucracy. Progress slowed.
AI execution today requires startup-level speed inside enterprise-scale orgs.
That means:
Prototyping fast
Testing with external models (at least early)
Prioritizing use cases, not just architecture
Creating systems flexible enough to evolve with the space
Apple is now pivoting — new leadership, open-source LLMs — but the delay speaks volumes.
In AI, late is worse than wrong. At least wrong can be fixed. Late just means irrelevant.
In AI, alignment isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between shipping a demo and shipping something real.
Apple earned customer trust by shipping what it showed. That’s how it built decades of credibility. But when Apple Intelligence launched, what it showed and what it shipped were two different things.
In B2B, this kind of mismatch would tank deals. In consumer, it quietly chips away at loyalty.
Trust is the compounding asset that powers every GTM function. Lose it, and every campaign, launch, and sales motion works harder for less.
Whether you're on the product team, leading marketing, owning sales pipeline, or building go-to-market — here’s what this teaches us:
1. Don’t market what isn’t ready.
If it’s not live, it’s not real — and you shouldn’t be selling it.
2. Misalignment shows up in your product.
If your product, marketing, and engineering teams aren’t in sync, your customer will feel it.
3. AI can’t be bolted on.
It has to be operationalized end-to-end. That means your team structure, workflows, and experimentation model need to evolve too.
4. Trust is your unfair advantage.
If your users stop believing you, it doesn’t matter what you launch next.
5. Culture ships.
Fast, aligned, risk-tolerant cultures deliver products that earn attention. Bureaucratic ones fake demos and hope they catch up later.
This wasn’t just a glitch in Apple’s rollout. It was a warning.
The teams that will win with AI aren’t the ones with the biggest demos — they’re the ones with the clearest alignment across product, marketing, sales, and leadership.
At Attainment, we help teams make sure that what they’re planning, building, and promising all match. Because when that happens, you don’t need to fake it.
You launch. And it works.
Need help aligning your product and GTM strategy for AI? Attainment works with product, marketing, sales, and leadership teams to help you get it right the first time.