The anger over Apple Intelligence being late and the AI version of Siri being overly delayed has angered a lot of Apple fans including John Gruber who posted a report on March 12 titled "Something is Rotten in the State of Cupertino."

This afternoon, Bloomberg reports that "Apple Inc.’s top executive overseeing its Siri virtual assistant told staff that delays to key features have been ugly and embarrassing, and a decision to publicly promote the technology before it was ready made matters worse."

Robby Walker, who serves as a senior director at Apple, delivered the stark comments during an all-hands meeting for the Siri division, saying that the team was facing a bad period. Walker also said that it’s unclear when the enhancements will actually launch, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the gathering was private.

The frank discussion shows the extent of Apple’s crisis in the field of artificial intelligence, where it’s struggling to catch up with peers. Siri — less advanced than rival systems — has become a symbol of Apple’s AI challenges. And the company’s woes boiled over last week, when it acknowledged publicly that critical features would be delayed indefinitely.

During the all-hands gathering, Walker suggested that employees on his team may be feeling angry, disappointed, burned out and embarrassed after the features were postponed. The company had been racing to get the technology ready for this spring, but now the features aren’t expected until next year at the earliest, people familiar with the matter have said.

“To make matters worse,” Walker said, Apple’s marketing communications department wanted to promote the enhancements. Despite not being ready, the capabilities were included in a series of marketing campaigns and TV commercials starting last year.

Apple touted the features as a key selling point of the iPhone 16 line, which otherwise lacked major changes. And it’s part of a broader AI push called Apple Intelligence.

Walker also raised doubts about even meeting the current release expectations. Though Apple is aiming for iOS 19, it “doesn’t mean that we’re shipping then,” Walker said. The company has several more priorities in development, and trade-offs will need to be made, he said.

“We have other commitments across Apple to other projects,” Walker said, citing new software and hardware initiatives. “We want to keep our commitments to those, and we understand those are now potentially more timeline-urgent than the features that have been deferred.” He said decisions on timing will be made on a “case-by-case basis” as work progresses on products planned for next year.

“Customers are not expecting only these new features but they also want a more fully rounded-out Siri,” he said. “We’re going to ship these features and more as soon as they are ready.”

Walker said that there is “intense personal accountability” about this effort shared by his boss John Giannandrea, the head of AI at Apple, as well as software chief Craig Federighi and other executives.

As of Friday, Apple doesn’t plan to immediately fire any top executives over the AI crisis, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That decision could theoretically change at any time. In any case, the company is poised to make management adjustments.

But there’s still a long road ahead. The delayed Siri features are just the first step toward modernizing the software. Apple has been planning upgrades for 2027 that will make Siri more conversational, letting it better compete with other AI chatbots, Bloomberg has reported.

This will require a new infrastructure. “There’s much we will be keeping and there are meaningful things we will be changing,” Walker said.

The team has “learned a lot together,” he said. “We’ll make the adjustments that we need to have a better outcome going forward.” For more on this, read the full Bloomberg report.