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After the delay, Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief, told employees that the company would reshuffle its executives, removing responsibility for developing the new Siri from John Giannandrea, the company’s head of A.I., and giving it to Mike Rockwell, the head of its Vision Pro headset.
推迟之后，苹果软件负责人克雷格·费德里吉向员工表示，公司将重新调整高管分工，不再由AI负责人约翰·詹南德雷亚负责开发新版Siri，而是将其交给Vision Pro头显负责人迈克·罗克韦尔。
“Apple needs to understand what happened because this is bigger than just rearranging the deck chairs,” said Michael Gartenberg, a technology analyst who previously worked as a product marketer at Apple.
“苹果需要了解发生了什么，因为这不仅仅是重新摆好椅子的小问题，”曾在苹果担任产品营销人员的科技分析师迈克尔·加滕伯格说，
“If ever there’s been an example of over-promising and under-delivering, it’s Apple Intelligence.”
“如果说有哪个例子完美诠释了承诺过高而兑现不足，那非苹果AI系统莫属。”
It was the first time in years that Apple hadn’t shipped a product it had unveiled.
这是多年来苹果首次发布了产品却没能上市。
The A.I. stumble was set in motion in early 2023.
在AI系统上摔的这一跤从2023年就开始了。
Mr. Giannandrea, who was overseeing the effort, sought approval from the company’s chief executive, Tim Cook, to buy more A.I. chips, known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, five people with knowledge of the request said.
五名知情人士透露，当时负责这项工作的詹南德雷亚向公司CEO蒂姆·库克申请批准购买更多AI芯片（即图形处理器或GPU）。
The chips, which can perform hundreds of computations at the same time, are critical to building the neural networks of A.I. systems, like chatbots, that can answer questions or write software code.
这些芯片能同时执行数百次运算，对于构建AI系统的神经网络至关重要，比如能够回答问题或编写软件代码的聊天机器人。
At the time, Apple’s data centers had about 50,000 GPUs that were more than five years old — far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of chips being bought at the time by A.I. leaders like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta, these people said.
知情人士表示，当时，苹果的数据中心有约5万个使用超过五年的GPU，远少于微软、亚马逊、谷歌、Meta等AI领跑者在当时购买的数十万块芯片。
Mr. Cook approved a plan to double the team’s chip budget, but Apple’s finance chief, Luca Maestri, reduced the increase to less than half that, the people said.
知情人士表示，库克批准了将团队芯片预算翻倍的方案，但苹果首席财务官卢卡·马斯特里将增幅削减至不足原计划的一半。
They said Mr. Maestri had encouraged the team to make the chips they had more efficient.
他们说，马斯特里鼓励团队提高现有芯片的效率。
The lack of GPUs meant the team developing A.I. systems had to negotiate for data center computing power from its providers like Google and Amazon, two of the people said.
其中两人透露，缺乏GPU意味着开发AI系统的团队必须向谷歌和亚马逊等供应商协商，从而获取数据中心的算力。
The leading chips made by Nvidia were in such demand that Apple used alternative chips made by Google for some of its A.I. development.
英伟达生产的一流芯片需求旺盛，以至于苹果在开发AI的某些阶段使用了谷歌生产的替代芯片。
At the same time, leaders at two of Apple’s software teams were battling over who would spearhead the rollout of Siri’s new abilities, three people who worked on the effort said.
三位参与该项目的知情人士透露，与此同时，苹果的两个软件团队的负责人正在争夺推出Siri新功能的主导权。
Robby Walker, who oversaw Siri, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, a senior executive with the software team, struggled over who would have responsibility for some aspects of the project.
负责Siri项目的罗比·沃克与软件团队的高管塞巴斯蒂安·马里诺-梅斯就项目中某些方面的职责归属管而争执不下。
Both ended up with pieces of the project.
双方最终各自获得了项目的一部分领导权。
The infighting followed a broader exodus of talent from Apple.
内斗之前，苹果已经历了一波大规模人才流失。
In 2019, Jony Ive, the company’s chief designer, left to start his own design firm and poached more than a dozen integral Apple designers and engineers.
2019年，苹果公司首席设计官乔尼·艾维离职并创办了自己的设计公司，同时挖走了苹果的十多名核心设计师与工程师。
And Dan Riccio, the company’s longtime head of product design who worked on the Apple Watch, retired last year.
而长期担任产品设计负责人、参与苹果手表项目的丹·里奇奥已于去年退休。
In their place, Apple has been left with old and new leaders with less product development experience.
他们离开后，苹果只剩下在产品开发方面经验较少的新旧领导层。
“It’s clearly a breakdown of leadership and communication and internal processes,” said Benedict Evans, an independent analyst who previously worked as a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz.
“这显然是领导、沟通、内部流程的崩溃，”独立分析师本尼迪克特·埃文斯表示，他曾是安德森·霍洛维茨基金的风险投资人。
