We wrote recently about the minor reorganization of Apple under incoming CEO John Ternus. The big one is Johny Srouji being named Chief Hardware Officer. It’s an expanded role for the “father of Apple Silicon” that places him in charge not just of not just Apple’s chip efforts but all Apple hardware.
A new report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg details some of the shuffling around Srouji is doing for all the groups and teams that report to him.
It’s all really behind-the-scenes stuff that is of little direct conern even to most Apple enthusiasts. For example, the executive in charge of product design is changing from Kate Bergeron to two of her subordinates: Shelly Goldberg and Dave Pakula. Richard Dinh will continue to lead iPhone design. None of that should be especially meaningful to anyone who doesn’t work on those teams at Apple.
Srouji is also establishing a “Ecosystems Platforms and Partnerships” team as well. The whole point of all this reorganization is to move the people who make Apple’s in-house silicon (which now includes networking chips and modems) closer to the people designing the look and function of Apple’s devices. The goal is to move more quickly on future devices.
And that’s the key. Apple has been criticized lately, and perhaps rightly so, of being late to the party on important product and technology changes. Vision Pro came out just as the whole world was growing tired of VR. The company’s health efforts are stuck in a five-years-ago mindset in an age of AI-powered health and wellness coaches. Competitors are racing ahead on AI pins and smart glasses–Google and Samsung just showed off theirs at Google I/O.
Let’s not forget that Apple squandered its early lead on AI assistants with Siri, and fell years behind its competitors on generative AI…so much so that it’s relying on Google’s core technology to power it’s upcoming new Siri that will deliver features promised back in 2024 (among others).
It’s not that Apple is making bad products–hardware or software. It’s just making great yesterday products while the world is looking toward tomorrow. If you agree, you’ll be glad to see that apparently the new executive leadership agrees that there’s a lot more that can be done to get future devices to market faster.
The best time for a reorganization centered around getting future products to market would have been five years ago, but the second best time is today. Apple has a lot of exciting stuff in the works, if rumors are to be believed: smart home cameras, a home companion smart display, a tabletop robot, smart glasses, and smart pendant, AirPods with cameras to power new Siri experiences, touchscreen MacBooks, and more. These products stand a much greater chance of succeeding if they don’t languish in product development for another three or four years.
