So Gurman’s reporting will not be proven false if Srouji remains in place, and so please “Sell! Sell! Sell!” Don’t shout. At your stockbroker, but if it does happen, Sruzzi’s departure from Apple would be part of a trend: highly senior Apple employees leaving at a time when there are rumors in Silicon Valley about CEO Tim Cook leaving soon — which Gurman says probably won’t happen until the middle of next year.
What’s up with Apple’s vice presidents?
The past week has been brutal. John Giannandrea, senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, has announced his upcoming retirement amid signs that Apple is scaling back its failed ambitions in the AI field, for example, buying AI software from Google to inject new life into Siri. Then Alan Dye, vice president of human interface design, moved to a job at Meta.
Also last week, Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, announced her retirement. The departure of a non-vice president is also relevant here: general counsel Kate Adams left around the same time as Jackson, and both roles were folded into a new VP job titled “General Counsel and SVP of Government Affairs”, a job given to Jennifer Newsted who was taken over from Meta (some of Jackson’s duties will be “divided among other executives” according to Gurman).
Why are people reportedly running away from Apple?
Oh stop it. They are not running away. They are naturally retiring and changing jobs As far as anyone knows.
But if there’s a crisis brewing in Cupertino, and it’s not just the fact that last year Apple’s boldest new product in a decade flopped, and the latest iOS redesign is unpopular, and the company can’t figure out what to do with AI, then one obvious issue to point to might be this: Tim Cook has been unusually busy for the past few months trying to do things that aren’t naturally suited for him.
Last summer, Apple’s COO Jeff Williams left. Williams served as Cook’s right-hand man, and was considered more of a product design expert than Cook. It then emerged that Cook would simply take over Williams’ duties rather than replace him, which raised eyebrows among Silicon Valley watchers, who regard Cook as a logistics guy who traditionally turns the company into a money-making machine by leaving the creativity to other people.
Forecasts say the iPhone will see most of the innovation in the next few years. More major changes like the Vision Pro probably aren’t coming. That being the case, it may be notable that throughout Apple, as Gurman points out, “experienced executives are nearing retirement age.”
So in short, Apple’s culture may have become a bit stagnant due to its reliance on familiar products and indeed faces. Whether Apple intends to or not, the sudden influx of fresh blood could be a long-awaited cure for the $4.2 trillion company’s sagging fortunes.
<a href