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?
[…]
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
- Jeff Williams Retiring as Apple’s COO
- Why Apple Still Hasn’t Cracked AI
- Kevan Parekh Replaces Luca Maestri
- Extending Section 702 of FISA
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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.
