This year has been a tough one for Apple. The company continues to have setbacks from the abysmal sales of the Apple Vision Pro to the numerous challenges it's had with AI.
April has been arguably the most challenging month for the iPhone maker after President Donald Trump revealed a list of countries that were going to be hit with tariffs. This caused Apple's stock to take an immediate hit, leading to a loss of more than $700 million in market value, according to Investopedia.
There appears to be a bit of reprieve for Apple as smartphones, laptops, and computers have been excluded from Trump's tariffs as of Friday.
A new report from the New York Times published on Friday detailed even more of the drama happening behind the doors at Apple.
Apple's AI problems
The report details Apple's initial problems with AI that started in 2023. John Giannandrea, Apple's head of AI, attempted to get more GPUs to begin this move into AI.
Apple reportedly had 50,000 GPUs at its data centers, and most were more than five years old. To move into developing AI, the company would need more GPUs and the newest versions.
Apple CEO Tim Cook approved the doubling of the chip budget for AI, however, Apple’s finance chief, Luca Maestri, slashed that budget to less than half, according to the report. This caused issues for the team working on AI, as it had limited access to computing power. The chips reportedly purchased were not from Nvidia, the leader in AI chips, but instead were made by Google.
A spokeswoman from Apple did tell The New York Times that the budget request for GPUs by Giannandrea was fulfilled over time.
Apple's AI efforts were shown last year when the company revealed Apple Intelligence along with the iPhone 16. The new tech was to add AI features to the iPhone, but the rollout for those features has been a bit on the slow side.
What appeared to be the ultimate conclusion of these efforts was an overhauled Siri that could act as a true AI assistant. Apple initially planned to release this smarter Siri sometime in the spring, however, that plan was scrapped completely last month.
This led to a change in leadership within Apple. Mike Rockwell, the creator of the Vision Pro for the company, ended up replacing Giannandrea, who was in charge of the team handling the Siri upgrade. According to the report, the new Siri will make its debut later this year in the fall. This will likely be when the company reveals the iPhone 17 and its other new products.
Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9. This is the event where the company will reveal the next MacOS, WatchOS, and iOS 19. This will also be the event where it will show off more of the capabilities of its Apple Intelligence.
