This Reads Like a Sinking Ship (Apple)

I know I can often be all doom-and-gloom when it comes to Apple, but wow, does this ever read like a sinking ship.

Earlier this week, it emerged that Meta had hired multiple Apple employees, including longtime Apple designer Alan Dye, while conducting its own recruiting blitz for AI and smartglasses development. Meanwhile, Apple announced the retirement of Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kate Adams, Lisa Jackson, Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, and AI chief John Giannandrea. Earlier this year, Apple lost Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who is retiring, and Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri. There have also been rumors about Apple CEO Tim Cook retiring, with rumors suggesting he is preparing to leave his role as soon as next year.

An earlier paragraph in that MacRumors article indicates that Apple is "bleeding" employees to OpenAI. Without some hard data though, given the size of Apple and the popularity of OpenAI, I'm not inclined to read into that anything more than reasonable churn for a company of Apple's size. But who knows.

While I've long advocated (and still do) that the best move for Apple would be to replace Tim Cook with an engineer, there's something about seeing all of these people scurrying away that instills a sense of unease. Granted, it sounds like Dye's departure is a good thing for Apple (you have fun with that, Meta), Williams and Maestri have been around forever; their departure is significant.

Apple needs a renaissance defined by a return to ground-breaking engineering and a design lead who is not "aluminum" Jonny Ive. I don't know anything about John Ternus, but he seems promising on the surface.

Maybe Apple's "Balmer Era" is finally drawing to a close!

Report: Apple Bleeding Talent to OpenAI

Dozens of Apple engineers and designers with expertise in audio, watch design, robotics, and other core product areas have left the company for OpenAI in recent months, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the Wall Street Journal, a review of data from LinkedIn suggests a signifiant scale and concentration of talent now moving specifically to OpenAI as it builds a dedicated hardware division.

MacRumorsHartley Charlton

Annnd ... it gets worse:

Srouji apparently recently told CEO Tim Cook that he is "seriously considering leaving" in the near future. He intends to join another company if he departs. Srouji leads Apple's chip design and pioneered the transition to Apple silicon.

Apple Chip Chief Johny Srouji Could Be Next to Go as Exodus Continues

Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji could be the next leading executive to leave the company amid an alarming exodus of leading employees, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. Srouji apparently recently told CEO Tim Cook that he is “seriously considering leaving” in the near future. He intends to join another company if he departs. Srouji leads Apple’s chip design and pioneered the transition to Apple silicon.

MacRumorsHartley Charlton