Big Changes in Cupertino: Apple Reshuffles Its Top Ranks
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Apple is shaking up some of its most senior executive ranks as its former Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams prepares to ride into the sunset. Apple announced Williams’ retirement in June, but the only executive change mentioned at that time was that of Williams’ replacement. Now, it looks like the COO’s impending departure is having a much greater ripple effect.
We’ve known since June that Sabih Khan, Apple’s former Senior Vice President of Operations, was being designated as Williams’ successor. The original press release also noted that, while Williams was handing the operations reins over to Khan right away, he’d continue serving until later in the year as a senior vice president overseeing Apple’s design team and the Apple Watch and health initiatives.
However, as Williams’ departure looms closer, Apple is now preparing to shuffle these responsibilities elsewhere, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who suggests that the longtime COO’s retirement may be inspiring others to follow suit.
Design Moves to the Top
As Apple announced in June, its design team, led by VPs Molly Anderson and Alan Dye, will now report directly to CEO Tim Cook. This will mark the first time the division hasn’t been led by a senior vice president since Steve Jobs’ return in 1997 — design chief Jony Ive led it until his departure in 2019; since then, it’s been under Williams’ leadership.
The fate of Apple’s wearable, health, and fitness teams has been less clear until now. Unlike design, Williams has had oversight of all these projects since the original Apple Watch, with Apple VP Kevin Lynch heading up the hardware and software engineering of the wearable before being reassigned to other major projects in 2021, and Dr. Sumbul Desai and Jay Blahnik as the two VPs leading the health and fitness teams, respectively.
Health and Fitness Find a New Home
Now, Apple is effectively breaking up the band to reassign these in a way that seems more logical: Apple Watch hardware engineering will go to John Ternus, Senior VP of Hardware Engineering; watchOS will fall under Craig Federighi, Senior VP of Software Engineering; and health and fitness will shift to Eddy Cue, Apple’s longtime Senior VP of Services.
As Gurman notes, the shift to put health and fitness services under Cue is undoubtedly related to Apple’s planned launch of a “Health+” service that’s been in development for some time. The change will also consolidate the teams under a single VP. Dr. Sumbul Desai will report directly to Cue, and Blahnik, who will continue to head up fitness, will report to Desai. While this will undoubtedly help streamline oversight, The New York Times also reported earlier this year that Blahnik faced internal scrutiny following allegations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct.
Meanwhile, Gurman says these changes may just be the tip of the iceberg. Johny Srouji, the senior VP who led the march into the Apple silicon era, is “evaluating his future at the tech giant,” while Lisa Jackson, VP of environment, policy, and social initiatives, is said to be considering retirement.
Uncertain Future for Apple’s AI Leadership
John Giannandrea, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy may also be on the way out, although it’s not clear whose decision that will be. In a high-profile executive move, Giannandrea left his role as Google’s AI chief to join Apple in 2018 and was promoted to his current position a few months later.
For a while, the AI boss was a rising star at Apple, kicking off some big changes aimed at improving Siri and even taking over the ill-fated Apple Car project. However, that all came to a crashing halt when his team failed to deliver the Siri improvements Apple had promised for iOS 18, resulting in a rather public black eye for the company, and shaking Tim Cook’s confidence in the executive’s abilities.
Siri was reassigned to Craig Federighi earlier this year in hopes of getting it back on track, and a more secretive robotics project shifted to John Ternus. That’s seemingly left Giannandrea with little to do beyond research, but sources suggest that may be what he’s actually best at — many at Google reportedly viewed him as more of a theoretician during his tenure there — but it’s remained a question for some time now as to how long the Machine Learning and AI Strategy division will continue to exist now that much of the real work has shifted to other teams — leaving many to wonder what Apple’s next move in AI leadership will be.
