Tuesday, 8 July 2025
Apple Newsroom, this afternoon:
Apple at this time introduced Jeff Williams will transition his position as
chief working officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s
senior vice chairman of Operations as a part of a long-planned
succession. Williams will proceed reporting to Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner
and overseeing Apple’s world class design workforce and Apple Watch
alongside the corporate’s Heath initiatives. Apple’s design workforce
will then transition to reporting on to Prepare dinner after Williams
retires late within the yr.
Apple’s government ranks have been so remarkably secure for therefore lengthy that any change feels shocking. However Williams is 62 years previous and has been at Apple for 27 years. Tim Prepare dinner is 64, and Khan is 58. The entire thing appears amicable and orderly, and thus fully in keeping with the whole lot we learn about Williams’s and Prepare dinner’s seemingly comparable personalities. After an extended and profitable profession, Apple’s COO is retiring and his longtime lieutenant is being promoted to interchange him this month. Apple’s operations aren’t simply world-class, they’re virtually actually world-best. Even their management transitions are operationally easy. Khan was promoted in 2019 to the title of senior vice chairman of operations. Williams was promoted from that title (SVP of operations) to COO in 2015, 4 years after Prepare dinner took over as CEO from Steve Jobs.
However that’s the operations half.
What’s intriguing concerning the announcement is the design half — a purposeful space the place, particularly on the software program aspect, Apple’s present stature is topic to a lot debate. Whereas Williams is staying on till “late within the yr” to proceed his different tasks — Watch, Well being, and serving because the senior government Apple’s design groups report back to — Khan isn’t taking on these roles when Williams leaves. And so by the tip of the yr, Apple’s design groups will go from reporting to Williams to reporting on to Tim Prepare dinner.
I’ve lengthy discovered it curious, if not downright doubtful, that Apple’s design leaders have reported to Williams ever because it was introduced in 2019 (the exact same day that Khan was promoted to SVP of operations) that Jony Ive could be stepping down as chief design officer and leaving Apple to discovered the (as-yet-unnamed) design agency LoveFrom. Williams had no background in design in any respect. Apple’s design groups reporting to an operations government makes no extra sense than it might for Apple’s operations groups to report back to, say, Alan Dye. Nicely, possibly it made a bit of extra sense than that — having design report back to Williams form of felt like a approach to give Williams expertise throughout the breadth of the corporate within the case that he ever wanted to step in to interchange Prepare dinner as CEO, both quickly or completely, as Prepare dinner was requested to for Jobs.
However when that was introduced in 2019, I anticipated it to be non permanent, whereas Apple took its time to correctly determine a brand new senior design chief. Somebody with, you already know, design management expertise, and powerful opinions about and deep data of the craft of design. That was six years in the past, and Apple has seemingly made not one transfer towards naming a brand new chief design officer or (the extra seemingly title) SVP of design. It looks like time for that now.
I get the impression — from a number of sources — that overseeing, not main, is the truth is precisely the suitable phrase for Williams’s position relating to design since 2019. Williams oversaw design the identical means Tim Prepare dinner, finally, oversees the whole lot the corporate does. It was on no account a token position. Williams was there. He requested insightful questions on product designs and experiences. However he didn’t push again or supply opinions. There’s a lot to love about Liquid Glass, for instance, however there’s additionally quite a lot of shitty UI performance and simply plain dangerous design that makes you marvel how quite a few elements even escaped the drafting board, not to mention made their means into the WWDC keynote and numerous OS 26 betas. Wanting again on the final six years of Apple design — {hardware}, software program, packaging, structure — I detect not one fingerprint of favor or style that belongs to Jeff Williams. On condition that Williams is just not a designer, that’s not a shock. However it’s an issue for the corporate if its merchandise don’t finally have a particular voice.
I’m of the thoughts that, in hindsight, it was a mistake for Jony Ive to deliver HI (software program human interface design) underneath the identical roof as ID ({hardware} industrial design). That association made sense for Ive’s distinctive position within the firm, and the distinctive interval within the wake of Steve Jobs’s too-young demise. However it may need finally made Ive tougher to interchange than Steve Jobs. Williams’s mixture of authority, mild-mannered-ness, and equanimity may need made him uniquely suited to both discovering one other Ive-like design chief whom all sides may have agreed to (even when begrudgingly), or, to the duty of unwinding the intermingling of HI and ID that occurred throughout the Jony-as-CDO period. However neither of these issues occurred.
Submit-Williams, Apple’s operations will clearly stay underneath glorious, skilled management underneath Sabih Khan. However the firm shall be left with its design groups reporting on to Prepare dinner — who’s three years older than Williams. Six years after Jony Ive’s departure, at this time’s bulletins go away it much less clear than ever whose style, finally, is steering the work of the corporate into the long run. Maybe, I hope, Williams is staying till the tip of the yr to assist reply that query.
