Pressure builds on Apple and Tim Cook after executive shakeup
Many important names in Cupertino are changing careers for the holidays.
There has been extraordinary turnover in the last seven days. AppleHe’s at the top, from the AI president to his best lawyer.
CEO Tim Cook now has two fewer direct employees than before Thanksgiving.
The executive who designed the Apple Vision Pro’s software is also back and heading to: Meta Doing the same thing for the AI glasses in Menlo Park.
As if last week’s departures were not enough, there was a possibility of another departure at the weekend. Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji told Cook he wanted to leave soon. Bloomberg.
But all the drama appears to be behind us, with Srouji telling employees in a memo seen by CNBC on Monday morning that he has no plans to leave Apple anytime soon.
Srouji, the kicking chip design guru Intel it produced in-house chips for the Mac that performed much better while it was offline, leading to a healthy increase in sales. Srouji is essentially the Jony Ive of chip design, a unique talent who is hard to imagine leaving. Apple.
An Apple spokesperson had no comment about Srouji or the recently departed executives.
There are many ways to read any changes at the top of a company known for producing innovative and industry-leading products while also having a stable leadership team.
While the technology world has changed in just three short years, Apple has stayed the course; The entire industry has made a big pivot to AI.
So it was no surprise that AI chief John Giannandrea was fired last week. It was up to him to deliver an innovative AI experience on iPhone. Instead, Apple was forced to admit that it would not be able to release the supercharged version of Siri that it had been advertising for months.
Perhaps the new strategy is to partner with an established AI leader Google or Anthropic will make up for all of this, but the pressure is too great for Apple to pick it up immediately after this year’s debacle.
Getting the AI launch right is also important for other products.
If Apple isn’t going to charge for its AI system, using it as a selling point for new hardware would be the best option to show that it can make some money.
We are already starting to get clues that 2026 will be a very important year.
There are some new, rumored AI product categories coming, like AI glasses like what Meta sells and a tablet to control all your smart home appliances.
Apple will also turn 50 on April 1 next year and is expected to launch the first foldable iPhone. There are also more challenges ahead with an upcoming antitrust lawsuit and whether Apple can maintain its truce with President Donald Trump.
Taken together, you can see that radical changes are needed, especially in artificial intelligence.
It looks like next year will show whether Apple got it right.
