Did you hear about all those Apple execs who keep leaving? Good riddance
It’s been a big week for Apple’s executive moves. Let’s see if the Macalope can recap for you if you were unconscious for seven days (sounds good, can the Macalope get some?).
Following the unsurprising announcement of former Apple exec John Giannandrea’s de facto departure from the company, we learned that Apple’s head of user interface design, Alan Dye, would also be leaving for greener pastures at Meta (green is money).
Announcement of news on Mastodon, BloombergMark Gurman of said:
Alan Dye, Apple’s top design executive, is leaving the iPhone maker to become design director at Meta, a blockbuster coup for the social media giant and a big loss for Apple.
Marc Gurman
It’s a framing so suited to Dye that one could be excused for thinking it was written by Alan Dye’s mother. This was not the case. Or probably not, anyway.
Wouldn’t it be crazy if Mark Gurman’s source all this time was Alan Dye’s mother? This would be an unexpected turn of events.
In reality, few people in the Apple community — aside from Dye’s mother — think much about his work, which includes Liquid Glass and a number of horrible icons for macOS Tahoe. People who don’t really see this as a “big loss” for Apple include, but are not limited to, Louie Mantia, John Gruber, Jason Snell, Nick Heer, Macworld contributor Alex Blake, and this hairy watcher.
Apple usually has good people waiting in the wings and, in this case at least, we have good reason to believe that the replacement won’t just be good but a real upgrade.
…everyone I’ve spoken to is happy – if not downright stunned – to learn that Lemay is replacing Dye. Lemay is highly appreciated personally and deeply respected in terms of his talent. A source familiar with the choices said: “I don’t think there was a better choice than Lemay. »
John Gruber
Later in the week, Apple also announced several other leadership changes, including the retirement of general counsel Kate Adams and vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives Lisa Jackson. Adams will be replaced by former Meta general counsel Jennifer Newstead, and Jackson will be replaced by a line on the organizational chart that is more often used on whiteboards in football locker rooms to represent an end point.
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Foundry
While many people were leaving Apple, at least one was trying to come back. This news, that a man would like to have power and command that he has never exercised before, is huge, if true. Who, exactly, says this, you may wonder.
…Tony Fadell, a former Apple hardware executive who co-invented the iPod, recently told his associates…
Aaron Tilley and Wayne Ma, The Information
Someone told The Information that Tony Fadell said he would graciously accept the job as CEO of Apple. All right.
Just, for a second, think about the following: Wouldn’t it be absolutely crazy if The Information’s source here was Tony Fadell’s mother? Wilder still, Fadell and Dye were at Apple at the same time, so it’s theoretically possible that the source was Dye’s mother again, but let’s not go crazy here and follow the single mom theory. The two-mom hypothesis seems more reasonable.
Unfortunately for Fadell, no matter who the sources are and how many times he writes “Mr. Apple CEO Tony Fadell” on the cover of his Trapper Keeper, he won’t get the job. Even The Information says he was “a polarizing figure” while working at Apple, and his time at Nest doesn’t appear to have improved his reputation much, as he also rubbed his co-founder and employees the wrong way.
Well, at least we can calm down now that all the news from Apple executives is…
“Apple shaken by executive departures, chip chief at risk of leaving next”
Oh, come on. How can the latest news interrupt Macalope’s mid-sentence in his own column? This makes no sense!
Yes, this weekend, Mark Gurman took a box of cookies to an Apple executive’s mother’s house, where he was overheard saying, “Ooh, yeah, I hear that nice guy Johny Srouji is thinking about leaving, he’s the one who made the chips and everything.”
The Macalope doesn’t really know whose mother it is, but he thinks of the Upper Midwest accent. She serves Gurman a casserole in a baking dish and pours him RC Cola from a 2 liter bottle.
Unlike Dye’s departure, Srouji’s departure would be really bad for Apple. Fortunately, this breaking news was cut short again Monday morning when Gurman reported that Srouji sent a memo to his staff saying he didn’t know what they might have heard from Apple executives’ various gossipy relatives, but that he wasn’t “planning on leaving anytime soon.”
We hope that all remaining Apple executives will take time off in the coming weeks to be with their families and not have the bandwidth to think about leaving.
