Newstead Replaces Adams and Jackson
Apple today announced that Jennifer Newstead will become Apple’s general counsel on March 1, 2026, following a transition of duties from Kate Adams, who has served as Apple’s general counsel since 2017.
She was previously chief legal officer at Meta and helped write the Patriot Act.
Lisa Jackson, vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, will retire in late January 2026. The Government Affairs organization will transition to Adams, who will oversee the team until her retirement late next year, after which it will be led by Newstead.
It sounds like her position is being eliminated.
Newstead will not head up environmental and social initiatives—those will instead transfer to newly installed chief operating officer Sabih Khan, who also picked up some new responsibilities in Giannandrea’s departure. Safe to say he’s going to be very busy; it does suggest that Apple considers its environmental affairs part of its operations pipeline.
See also: signüll.
Maybe Alan Dye was traded to Meta for a general counsel and a player to be named later?
So it’s not just that Alan Dye jumped ship from Apple for the chief designer officer role at another company. It’s not just that he left for a rival company. It’s that he left Apple for Meta, of all companies. Given what Cook has said about Meta publicly, one can only imagine what he thinks about them privately. Apple executives tend to stay at Apple. The stability of its executive team is unparalleled. But Dye is a senior leader who not only left for a rival, but the one rival that Cook and the rest of Apple’s senior leadership team consider the most antithetical to Apple’s ideals.
[…]
How could someone who would even consider leaving Apple for Meta rise to a level of such prominence at Apple, including as one of the few public faces of the company?
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It’s also that it’s now clear that Dye’s moral compass was not aligned with Apple’s either. Tim Cook and the rest — or at least most? — of Apple’s senior leadership apparently couldn’t see that, either.
You could also look at this and the hiring of Newstead as more evidence that Apple’s privacy talk is more about marketing than deeply held ideals. (In fairness, I don’t know what Newstead’s contributions to the Patriot Act actually were—it’s possible she was trying to make it better for privacy.)
Previously:
- “End-to-End Encrypted”
- Alan Dye Leaving Apple for Meta
- John Giannandrea Leaving Apple
- Apple Succession Planning
- Messages.app Violates Tracking Number Privacy
- Apple Announces American Manufacturing Program
- Jeff Williams Retiring as Apple’s COO
- Why Apple Still Hasn’t Cracked AI
- Kevan Parekh Replaces Luca Maestri
- Extending Section 702 of FISA
Update (2025-12-10): John Gruber:
This news yesterday is just typical planned retirements. The timing is slightly unfortunate though. In the eyes of observers unfamiliar with the company, they might be misconstrued as signs of executive upheaval, occurring on the heels of the minor and major dramas of Giannandrea’s and Dye’s departures. The Jackson / Adams / Newstead transitions announced yesterday are nothing of the sort.
[…]
Lastly, I wouldn’t read anything into Newstead coming to Apple by way of Meta.
I agree that the What the heck is going on at Apple? rhetoric is overblown, but the structural changes could be significant. At the least, Newstead brings significant antitrust and regulatory experience from her time at Meta.
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It points to Apple strongly deemphasising environmental policies in light of the Trump’s administration orientations. It’s very sad to see Apple slowly but surely abandons all their (real or supposed) values in order to protect their business.
Agree with @Moose. For a group of supposed misfits and pirates, there sure seems to be a lot of bootlicking and falling in line.
I suspect this is purely to curry favour with the current administration, after which Apple will revert to type, but I'm not sure anymore which is a worry.
I mean, let's face it, Apple's social responsibilities have been compliance exercises that generate feel-good PR much more effectively than they meet actual social obligations for quite a while now—certainly true for accessibility, anyway, shipping new OS features that are completely inaccessible. So I dunno, maybe making it official at the executive level is the responsible duty to shareholders, as well as being a refreshingly honest statement to its customers.
Gruber is such a shill that he just has to state that Tim Cook saying "bad" things about a competitor MUST mean he says worse things about them in private. We've seen Cook's true colours. The whole "get out of the stock if you don't like our progressive programmes" was the act. Buddy-buddy with Trump is the real man. Like all of these techbros, he's just revelling in not having to put on a progressive disguise any more.
The lizardmen are not even bothering to wear their human suits any more.
Obviously Gruber is projecting his own distaste for Facebook/Meta into Cook and Apple “values”. He’s made that abundantly clear in his podcast, which is fine, but he always seems to “understand” Apple’s attitude toward China, Russia and India. You know, have an ad supported business in the US, that’s a crime against humanity!; but systematically bend over to totalitarian regimes? That’s “just how things have to be to play at Apple’s scale”.
Apparently playing devil's advocate here but I don't see what's wrong with this. Apple is under legal attack from all sides, so who better to handle that than a lawyer from Meta and apparently Patriot Act fame. If this person can successfully defend those two things, they can do anything.
Also, just because Apple isn't featuring "Mother Nature" at WWDC and having a position that exists just to look like they care, doesn't mean they can't consider environmental impact as an important part of standard operations. "Mother Nature" and this apparently made up position weren't exactly convincing me, either.
Corporate bootlicking seems like the kind of phrase that might be used in an echo chamber.
I wouldn't say I'm a fan of corporate lawyers or environmental damage due to industrialization, but I'm also trying to be realistic. Apple needs a good lawyer right now, clearly. And I don't think anyone was fooled by the Mother Nature bit nor their other overt greenwashing. They can just do the right thing environmentally without constantly patting themselves on the back about it.
This isn't a cromulent argument. The reality is that even corporate bullshittery is helpful because it sets the tone for what is expected and accepted. If Apple sends Lisa Jackson on stage (who, I guess, is whom you weirdly refer to as "Mother Nature"), that sets a baseline for what we can hold them accountable for.
@Plume By "Mother Nature" bart is clearly referring to the 5-minute sketch Apple did in 2023 when announcing the iPhone 15, where Mother Nature attended on a board meeting where Apple defended their progress.
@Nial "after which Apple will revert to type, "
Sadly I thick what were seeing now is Apple at the peak of being true to type.
Last focus on maximizing profits, to be spent on stock buybacks, and keeping the administration happy, as long as it's not in the EU which is seen as a soft pushover state.
As long as Cook is replaced by another bean counter (he will be replaced by another bean counter) nothing will change.
There is no Apple spirit, never was. There was the vainglorious Jobs, and we've seen twice what happens without him.
