What the heck is going on at Apple?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

    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.

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

If you'd told me in 1987 DEC was going to disappear up it's own fundament and be absorbed by Compaq, and then HP I would have laughed you off the floor.

Or Sun be Oracle. And then Oracle try to morph into hyperscaler, and sort-of.. well existing Oracle customers aside, .. fail?

Companies change. Nintendo was a 19th century playing card manufacturer.

Kodak was a very innovative Photography related enterprise.

Xerox invented the workstation. So tell me where Xerox is now? "Xerox Holdings"

Nobody asked for Ted Lasso, but a lot of us asked for Siri to do a little more than set a damn timer.

The Computer Company, not sure.

- 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.

1) LLM advances stop 2) The Chinese companies release open source/weight models which are as good or better than the West 3) Apple somehow turns it around with AI

Apple is done for.

AI is going to be central to the next generation of phones and the next form factor.

Their complete failure on AI has been ... shocking. Not sure if they don't have the data to train a leading edge model or if they have some kind of personele issue, it has just been shocking to see their lack of progress.

No doubt Apple has rested on their laurels for a long time. I just would not have expected this.

OpenAI: Code Red

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.

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

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]. 

I’m a long time Apple user and I’m concerned with the state of things.

Im considering returning this piece of junk.

It might pay off to be a contrarian on AI or, at least, to appear that way.

MS is currently facing significant user backlash against the AI components of Windows 11. Some of their own engineers have ripped management for forcing AI that's in a very poor state into every pore of the company's products while fixing that AI is verboten to all MS employees but the AI dept.[1]. Google is featuring frequently wrong AI summaries at the top of every search result. Elon Musk is using Grok to create his own version of reality in the form of Grokipedia, making billionaires everywhere look that much more like moustache-twirling villains.

Even if you think LLM's have some solid applications and potential for growth, the way it's being pushed on average users is truly cringe-worthy. To make matters worse, there is broad public perception that AI is putting people out of work, ripping off artists, etc.. It might actually benefit a company like Apple to not feature AI prominently in their products, even if they do spend the resources to catch up.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Apple fanboy trying to recast Apple being behind in AI into genius. I parted ways with Apple products over a decade ago due to bad experiences that I don't care to repeat. I'm just saying there could be an emerging niche for them to exploit. Being the one and only mainstream PC company that doesn't shove AI down people's throats could be a real competitive edge in 2026 and beyond.

[1]https://jonready.com/blog/posts/everyone-in-seattle-hates-ai...

The people responsible for terrible UI and AI have gone.