What the heck is going on at Apple? (cnn.com)

> Alan Dye, vice president of human interface design, who is joining Meta as its chief design officer.

I wonder if he is responsible for all those niceties MacOS got for the last 10 or so years. Like the scroll bars in Serious Sam Mental difficulty, or the flat earth flavour icons, you know.

Apple acquires OpenAI, Sam becomes CEO of combined company; iPhone revenue used to build out data centers; Jony rehired as design chief for AI device.

Insofar as this article is about the 4 execs leaving Apple, this is a total non-story and the "What the heck is going on at Apple" is just click bait:

- Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, and general counsel Kate Adams, are set to retire. While these may be high level execs, they don't really have much to do with the overall direction and success of the company. And given the change in the political environment you've seen tons of changes in roles like these at many companies in the past 11 months.

- Alan Dye, vice president of human interface design, is leaving to join Meta as its chief design officer. Sounds like he won't really be missed: https://9to5mac.com/2025/12/04/gruber-apple-employees-giddy-.... Assuming he was responsible for Liquid Glass, I say good riddance.

- John Giannandrea, senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, is also retiring. He had basically already been demoted, taken off leading Siri due to Siri's competitive failures.

So yeah, it's pretty obvious that Apple is behind the AI wave, but honestly, they may end up having the last laugh given how much backlash there is from consumers about trying to shoehorn AI into all these places where it's just an annoyance.

A tweet I saw earlier:

    Mark Gurman @markgurman

    BREAKING: Apple’s chip chief Johny Srouji informed CEO Tim Cook he is seriously considering leaving the company and would likely continue his career elsewhere rather than retire. Apple is urgently pushing to keep him. He remains at least for now.

Tweet source: https://x.com/markgurman/status/1997352821453447399

Article source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-06/apple-roc...

IMO: Cook is going to announce his retirement by the end of Q1, they've already selected a CEO (probably Ternus), the incoming CEO wants leadership change, and some of these departures are because its better that this purge happens before the CEO change than after. I think this explains Giannandrea, Williams, and Jackson.

Dye may have also been involved in that, given how unpopular he was internally at Apple. But more likely just personal / Meta offered him a billion dollars. Maestri leaving was also probably totally uninvolved.

Srouji is the weirdest case, and I'm hesitant to believe its even true just given its a rumor at this point. Its possible he was angry about being passed over for CEO, but realistically, it was always going to be Ternus, Williams, or Federighi. If Ternus is the next CEO, its likely we'll see Apple combine the Hardware Technologies and Hardware Engineering divisions, then have Srouji lead both of them. I really do not see him leaving the company.

The other less probable theory is that they actually picked Fadell, and this deeply pissed off many people in Apple's senior leadership. So, what we're seeing is more chaos than it first seems.

Generally, as long as Srouji doesn't leave, these changes feel positive for Apple, and especially if there's a CEO change in early 2026: This is what "the fifth generation of Apple Inc" looks like. I don't understand the mindset of people who complain about Apple's products and behavior over the past decade, then don't receive this news as directionally positive.

Anecdotal but I was talking to a recruiter about a role in Apple last week, and then was told they are doing a total hiring freeze until at least the new year.

There was also a bit of a shakeup in one of their teams for video content production a few months back which surprised me. Not anyone that would get a tech journal article written about them, but someone who was very experienced, knowledgeable, and loved his role.

Nothing newsworthy just sounds more rocky than usual for Apple

Related:

Apple Rocked by Executive Departures, with Chip Chief at Risk of Leaving Next

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46175205

John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46114122

Apple Design Official Alan Dye Poached by Meta in Major Coup

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142843

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139145

Poor analysis. Apple is doing quite well as a Big Tech company that simply doesn't need to "pivot to AI" like everyone else. Their missteps in "Apple Intelligence" have in fact demonstrated that they don't actually need to have much of a "strategy" here at all. In fact, if they simply link out to other people's chatbots and make it totally opt-in, that would be ideal.

The much bigger problem is that they've lost the wow factor in their software design, and in some regards the hardware as well even though the internals and build quality has never been better. Apple needs a design shakeup far more than it needs anything to do with AI, a poison pill which will bring the entire industry down in 2026.

Maybe Tim Apple has cancer and his search for a successor is causing a bit of a leadership shuffle.

> Amar Subramanya, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI, will be Apple’s new vice president of AI.

That doesn't bode well. The last thing I want from macOS is Windows-like overbearing insistence on AI everything.

>as critics say Apple, once a tech leader, is behind in the next big wave: artificial intelligence.

Most critics I see deal with the fact that they’re fad chasing and delivering without their flagship polish (for both new products and updates). This narrative is likely to push apple deeper into the well if it becomes the mainstream spin.

Apple: (From Investors' twisted view) Not lagging behind, but prudently?? Spent less on AI which is wise

OpenAI: Code Red

3 retirements and a VP taking an obvious promotion at Meta: not really the "sky is falling" event they try to paint. Tim Cook stepping down would (if it even happens) be a big deal, but he's not the heart of the company. He's been an extremely compentent accountant; enjoy your retirement party and gold watch. And to suggest they are falling behind because they're not investing hundreds of billions in an AI "strategy" that shows no pay-off - while the other tech companies start to scale back their capital investments? I've never been a huge Apple fan as a company but their current situation makes me more bullish than ever.

Isn't it obvious- we're hitting the limit of metrics of modern success/ end of this style of innovation- and are too uninventive to find new ones

I don’t care that they’re behind on AI, I care that they’ve decided to throw UX out the window so all my devices are just a little bit worse to use than they were 12 months ago.

When I lived in a different country, I could read as much cnn as I wanted. Now that I live in the USA, I need a subscription. So I am less informed on us politics now that I live in the USA. Ironic.

This is nothing, or at minimum a good thing.

The people responsible for terrible UI and AI have gone.

Apple's ecosystem and business model are still rock solid. A few senior execs leaving is just a normal shake-up, not a crisis.

Hardware's top-notch, and hopefully this opens the door for better UI and AI without messing with what already works.

I don't think this entire piece taught me anything new other than a speculation that "speculation is mounting that Tim Cook may be preparing to step aside as CEO" --

  "speculation". "may be". "preparing".

The lagging behind the AI wave is known, and matter of fact, the "Liquid Glass" saga is not even mentioned while they focus on the Apple Vision glasses.

This is a great model for the poor low quality of journalism that became industry standard nowadays.

Yes, apple direction is questionable, and while it is mainly questionable because the of AI wave, well, the entire AI wave is questionable nowadays.

one more thing, the URL path has "/apple-tim-cook-leadership-changes" in it, suggests the title "what the heck" is most likely a newer version than the original one which they decided not to publish as is since it is not based enough.

Bottom line:

The template is:

  * [company] 
  + [AI] 
  + [speculation] 
  + [analyst quote about urgency]. 

It produces volume, not insight.

There were a lot of non-optimal decisions, and statements were out of reality. The macPro is not the best. The M3 slower. A.I. acronym opportunity could have been leveraged differently. A mac is supposed to be comfortable, macOS 26 "Da hoe" initially lacked various elements that were expected. The current state of logs/logging in macOS is a paradise for an adversary but time-hogging for legitimate user. Shareholders use macs, and they trust teams that studied Nokia. New emojis have a relatively inelastic relationship with sales.

Windows 11 25H2 introduces several exciting new AI features. Its also being reported as a massive memory hog and its causing a lot of consternation online.

There's no reason to be a first mover on AI. There's still no moat, and it is unlikely one will be found. A computer firm we have never heard of could spin up tomorrow and be the true leader of the much prophesied AI Revolution. Apple can let other people burn their brands to the ground chasing the dream.

Colloquially, 2025 is the year of the linux desktop, thanks in part to Microsofts AI approach (And valve opening up games). In 10 years the ramifications of that might even be felt in enterprise. We could have enterprise users looking for Linux/MacOS clients to run Microsoft Office 365. Really one should be asking why Microsoft thinks it can ruin the client experience. "What the heck is going on at Microsoft". We know whats going on, no one in the upper echelons of Microsoft can be seen to ignore the next big thing. They are compelled to grasp at anything labelled AI and ship it.

I dont like Apple, at all really. But not going all in on AI is to be lauded. In fact they could have done even less. Consumers want them to release the next iBrick with another 200 dollars attached to the pricetag. Thats it. They can meet consumer expectations by doing nothing other than Business as Usual.

Why does Apple need a different AI strategy? They make good laptops and people like them (I say this as someone that runs Linux on a framework laptop). Anyone using AI is using their MacBook laptops to use AI already. They're perfectly capable of running LLMs locally if anyone actually wants to do that. I'm not sure shoving a bunch of weird AI crap into the UI is actually what end users want.

Do they make Silicon Valley employee collector cards yet?