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            Apple Executive Departures Could Signal Welcome Changes

   Adam Engst

   I rarely write about Apple's infrequent executive shuffles. People come
   and go, but most of the time, it doesn't significantly affect everyday
   Apple users. However, this week's changes could have a greater impact.
   First,[1]Apple announcedthe retirement of John Giannandrea, the
   company's senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy.
   Later, Alan Dye, the head of Apple's user interface design team, left
   Apple to join Meta. To cap it off,[2]Apple saidthat Lisa Jackson, vice
   president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, will retire
   in January 2026, and Kate Adams, Apple's general counsel, will retire
   late next year.

   Others have done a good job with the inside-baseball coverage of the
   first two of these moves'see[3]Dan Moren's thoughts on Giannandrea's
   retirementand[4]John Gruber's excellent analysis of Dye's departure,
   respectively. I'm less interested in the specifics and more excited
   about the potential for change in their respective areas. Giannandrea's
   group failed to deliver the so-called 'more personalized Siri' that
   Apple promised as part of Apple Intelligence, while Dye's group was
   responsible for the much-maligned Liquid Glass. ([5]Dan Moren also
   covered the Jackson/Adams retirements; neither is likely to have much
   impact on users.)

   On the AI front, Apple continues to fall further behind as OpenAI,
   Google, and Anthropic race to release increasingly advanced models and
   systems. Apple needs to launch a significantly enhanced version of Siri
   just to qualify for being mentioned in the same breath as the others.
   After its most recent update, Google's Gemini now has 650 million
   monthly active users, but even that pales in comparison to ChatGPT's
   800 millionweeklyactive users. Both of those numbers have doubled since
   early 2025. People are becoming accustomed to what's possible with the
   latest AI systems, and if Apple can't deliver comparable features, its
   products risk being relegated to merely providing the infrastructure
   through which users access other companies' AI services.

   With Liquid Glass, while I recognize the value of a consistent design
   language across all of Apple's platforms, I can't help but think of
   Eudora's 'Waste cycles drawing trendy 3D junk' setting. Liquid Glass
   can look elegant, particularly on the iPhone, but iOS wasn't
   unattractive before. More importantly, I haven't yet felt that Liquid
   Glass's vaunted transparency does anything to make me more productive.
   Despite Dye's departure (which appears to have been a[6]surprise to
   upper management), Apple is unlikely to reverse course on Liquid Glass.
   We can hope that Dye's successor focuses more on enhancing
   functionality to better align with the[7]Steve Jobs quotethat Apple
   badly misused when introducing Liquid Glass: 'Design is not just what
   it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.'

   With luck, we'll start to see movement in the right direction for both
   Siri and Liquid Glass refinements early next year, and perhaps more
   substantive improvements in the OS 27 cycle.

References

   1. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/12/john-giannandrea-to-retire-from-apple/
   2. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/12/apple-announces-executive-transitions/
   3. https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/12/apples-new-ai-chief-has-his-work-cut-out-for-him/
   4. https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
   5. https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/12/apple-announces-departure-of-both-general-counsel-and-environmental-chief/
   6. https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/dye_cook_blind_spot
   7. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2007/01/23/how-it-works

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