CUPERTINO, June 8 -- The room had no name on the calendar invite that would have signaled its importance. Somewhere near Apple's software engineering wing in early 2025, a group of senior executives gathered to confront what insiders were already calling a crisis: Apple Intelligence had underdelivered, Siri's promised overhaul was slipping, and the rest of the technology industry was accelerating away.

Tim Cook was not in the room. That detail matters more than it might seem.

It was Jeff Williams, then Apple's chief operating officer and now retired, who called the meeting to order. Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief, led most of the substantive discussion. Also present were former interface design head Alan Dye, Vision Products Gr...