Brian Lynch, a hardware engineer who oversaw home devices at Apple, has left Apple for Oura, a 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 that was dragging a huge group of Apple product engineers to the depths with their ship, loaded with exciting new Apple gadgets.” The leaks strongly indicate 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 launched a marketing plan in 2024 that never materialized.
Today, Ora CEO Tom Hale informed Bloomberg that Lynch has been poached, and he will serve as the company’s senior vice president for hardware engineering. As Bloomberg also points out, Ora’s design chief is an Apple alumnus, as is the person holding the “chief medical officer” title.
Apple hinted at changes to its line of smart home gadgets last month end of support As for the original version of the Apple Home platform, that didn’t render older devices useless, but it did pressure users to update or risk losing compatibility with connected devices and appliances. “It makes sense that Apple should finally shed the husks from its old Home architecture for the new one,” wrote my Gizmodo colleague Kyle Barr.
But the new one has not arrived yet. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s new Siri-dependent line of smart home devices with screens won’t debut until September at the earliest, which is the earliest we should expect to see the new “personalized” Siri.
In December last year, as Apple was facing a wave of vice presidents leaving, rumors began circulating 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 haven’t said that. I haven’t said that. I love what I do.” Cook also claimed that he “can’t imagine life without Apple.”
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