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- Apple design chief Jony Ive is leaving.
- Ive is the latest of several recent Apple veterans to announce their departure.
- Here’s who’s left and who could be next.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Apple lost its longtime design guru on Thursday with the news that Jony Ive is leaving the company to start his own firm.
Ive is responsible for the look and feel of Apple’s most iconic products, from the iPod to the iPhone, and he was the executive who embodied the vision of founder Steve Jobs more than anyone else at the company.
Ive’s exit follows the departure of several other high-level players at Apple, including the retail boss earlier this year. It’s not exactly an exodus, given the depth of Apple’s management team.
But the departures reflect a change in the company’s top ranks and come at a time when Apple is shifting its focus from being a hardware maker to an internet "services" company.
Take a look at all the recent departures at Apple:
Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s retail boss
REUTERS/Noah Berger
Angela Ahrends left Apple inFebruary after a five year run as the head of the company’s all-important retail store business.
The former CEO of fashion company Burberry, Ahrends was the face of Apple’s retail experience and Apple’s highest paid executive. With 70,000 retail store staffers under her command, Ahrendts oversaw a massive operation with stores throughout the world, and she led a store redesign that sought to transform the stores into "town squares."
Ahrendts joined Apple at a time when the company sought to infuse a sense of luxury into new products like the Apple Watch, and some speculated that her recent departure is a sign of changing strategy at Apple.
Tom Gruber, one of the original Siri cofounders
Ted/Screenshot
Tom Gruber was one of the three founders who created Siri as a San Jose, Calif startup that was developed with the help of the Stanford University-affiliated SRI Research lab.
Apple acquired Siri for a reported $200 million in 2010, and the namesake virtual assistant made its debut on the iPhone 4, the following year. Gruber stayed at Apple years longer than his cofounder and was the head of the Siri Advanced Development team at Apple. But while Apple was early to market with a virtual assistant, it soon was competing, and by some estimates, lagging competitors like Google and Amazon.
According to a report in The Information, Gruber left to retire and pursue personal interests in ocean conservation and photography.
Gerard Williams III, led chip design
Apple
Williams had a big hand in Apple’s products before he even worked at Apple, having previously worked at chip company ARM, whose processors powered the first iPhones. He joined Apple in 2010, and oversaw the firm’s move to making its own processors, as the senior director of platform architecture for the company’s CPUs.
While Williams’ departure in March 2019 was a big loss for Apple, the company has since hired Mike Filipo, another chip hot shot from ARM.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- Jony Ive is leaving Apple — here are his most iconic creations, which helped lead Apple from almost certain doom to total dominance
- The glamorous life of Jony Ive, the legendary Apple designer who’s now leaving to strike out on his own
- Samsung created $130 earbuds to take on Apple’s popular AirPods — here’s how they compare
Source: Business Insider – aoreskovic@businessinsider.com (Alexei Oreskovic)