Jeff Williams Retiring as Apple’s COO
Apple (MacRumors, 2, Hacker News):
Jeff Williams will transition his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, as part of a long-planned succession. Williams will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook and overseeing Apple’s world-class design team and Apple Watch alongside the company’s Health initiatives. Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires late in the year.
I like how the press release says this succession is long planned, and yet they aren’t ready to say who is taking over Apple Watch and Health initiatives.
Also, Cook (himself set to retire in the foreseeable future) has so many direct reports now lol.
What’s intriguing about the announcement is the design part — a functional area where, especially on the software side, Apple’s current stature is subject to much debate. While Williams is staying on until “late in the year” to continue his other responsibilities — Watch, Health, and serving as the senior executive Apple’s design teams report to — Khan isn’t taking over those roles when Williams leaves. And so by the end of the year, Apple’s design teams will go from reporting to Williams to reporting directly to Tim Cook.
I’ve long found it curious, if not downright dubious, that Apple’s design leaders have reported to Williams ever since it was announced in 2019 (the very same day that Khan was promoted to SVP of operations) that Jony Ive would be stepping down as chief design officer and leaving Apple to found the (as-yet-unnamed) design firm LoveFrom. Williams had no background in design at all.
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I’m of the mind that, in hindsight, it was a mistake for Jony Ive to bring HI (software human interface design) under the same roof as ID (hardware industrial design). That arrangement made sense for Ive’s unique role in the company, and the unique period in the wake of Steve Jobs’s too-young demise. But it might have ultimately made Ive more difficult to replace than Steve Jobs.
I don’t think it ever made sense because it doesn’t seem like Ive really understood software design. And Alan Dye’s background is in advertising and web/print design.
We’ve come to accept the myth that there’s such a thing as “design” in the abstract, as if some one person were qualified to design anything and everything. That’s ridiculous and nothing but a product of Jony Ive’s hubris.
Apple didn’t announce what will happen to the Watch and Health teams but here’s the likely outcome: Apple never said this but Watch HW was already given to Ternus years ago. You can bet watchOS and health software will go to Federighi. Fitness+ will obviously go to Services.
Williams joined Apple in 1998 (from IBM), the year after Steve Jobs returned. The same year Cook joined (from Compaq, though he had also been at IBM for a dozen years before that).
Khan joined Apple in 1995, which was obviously before Jobs returned.
The only members of the leadership team that have been at Apple longer are: [Cue, O’Brien, and Joswiak]
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It’s certainly possible that Apple is going to try to spend these next five months finding that design executive. It’s also possible that they promote Dye to such a role – he did have one of the most prominent slots at the WWDC keynote this year thanks to “Liquid Glass” – though as Gruber notes, in hindsight, it may have been a mistake to have one person overseeing hardware and software design – something that only happened because Ive stepped in on the software side after Scott Forstall was forced out in 2012.
Previously:
- Assorted Notes on Liquid Glass
- John Geleynse Retires From Apple
- Jony Ive Is Leaving Apple
- Apple Design in the Cook Era
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Siegler's rundown really drives home how Apple's leadership is now an ossified gerontocracy.
