Brian Lynch, the hardware engineer overseeing home devices at Apple, has left Apple for Oura, maker of fitness-tracking rings. No reason has been given for Lynch’s departure, but Apple’s long-awaited, still-non-existent-but-definitely-not-vaporware Siri revamp is the elephant in the room.
Two days ago, I compared the new Siri to “a white whale dragging a huge group of Apple’s product engineers to the depths along with their ship, loaded with what were supposed to be exciting new Apple gadgets.” Leaks strongly hint that several smart home devices in Apple’s product pipeline have been delayed as a result of Apple’s inability to ship a satisfactory new version of Siri, despite the fact that Apple started marketing one in 2024 that never materialized.
Today, Oura’s CEO, Tom Hale, informed Bloomberg that Lynch has been poached, and will serve as the company’s senior vice president for hardware engineering. As Bloomberg also points out, Oura’s head of design is an Apple alum, as is the person with the job title “chief medical officer.”
Apple hinted at changes coming to its line of smart home gadgets last month when it ended support for the original version of the Apple Home platform, which didn’t render old devices useless, but it pressured users to update or risk losing compatibility with connected devices and appliances. “It makes sense that Apple should finally remove the chaff from its old Home architecture for the sake of the new,” wrote my Gizmodo colleague Kyle Barr.
But the new has not arrived yet. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s new-Siri-dependent line of smart home devices with screens will not roll out until September at the earliest, which is also the earliest we should expect to see the new “personalized” Siri.
In December of last year, as Apple dealt with a wave of departing vice presidents, rumors swirled that CEO Tim Cook was on the verge of leaving in 2026. Yesterday on Good Morning America, when asked if he was leaving, he said “No, I didn’t say that. I haven’t said that. I love what I do deeply.” Cook also claimed he “can’t imagine life without Apple.”
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