Apple 'breaks' the management way of Steve Jobs era
Apple under Steve Jobs limited the company to separate product divisions, but Tim Cook is said to be changing this approach.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, the first thing he did was throw away the company's product development guidebook, which discussed how to divide departments to manage. He then switched to a "functional" management structure. As a result, Apple doesn't have a separate division for iPhones, iPads, or even computers, even though it has a wide range of MacBooks, Mac minis, and iMacs.
Instead, the company is organized by function, such as software, hardware, machine learning, design, and services. All teams will participate in contributing to the new product or feature.
However, according to Bloomberg technology expert Mark Gurman , this strategy is changing under Tim Cook. That was most evident after the company introduced the Vision Pro smart glasses .
Unlike the "golden egg" iPhone , Vision Pro is a separate department inside Apple. Formed in 2015, the group was originally called Technology Development Group (TDG) but recently changed to Vision Products Group (VPG) and is led by Mike Rockwell.
Tim Cook at the Vision Pro launch event in early June. Photo: Bloomberg
The difference of VPG is that it does not depend on Apple 's main hardware and software engineering . It has its own sub-teams that work in tandem with the strategy, computer vision, content, app development, and project management businesses that Apple operates.
According to Gurman, if Vision Pro develops the way Steve Jobs operated, the software engineering for the headset will be handled by Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software. The hardware will be developed in parallel with the iPhone and iPad under Technical Director John Ternus. The content arm will be part of Eddy Cue's services segment.
However, that does not mean that VPG is separate from the rest of Apple. The group's operations are still overseen by Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jeff Williams, while the chip business is led by Johnny Srouji. Federighi is also responsible for building some of Vision Pro's developer tools.
Bloomberg says there are three main reasons for Apple to open up a separate business. Firstly, VPG is quite similar to a startup, thereby helping to accelerate product development, especially with a new and first-generation device like the Vision Pro. Besides, operating in this way will limit new device information from being leaked out, which Apple always prioritizes. Second, building specialized teams with core experts may be necessary for a product as radically new and complex as smart glasses. Third, whether successful or not, VPG will not have much impact on other businesses that Apple operates. It also allows the company to create new generations of Vision Pro.
In the post-Steve Jobs era, Apple took a different approach from what its co-founder did. After Cook took the lead and developed the Apple Watch, the device's hardware and software engineering team was also placed under COO Williams instead of senior vice president of hardware and software.
The self-driving car project called Special Projects Group (SPG) is also an exception. The unit has its own staff in software engineering, computer vision, machine learning, hardware engineering, industrial design, cloud services, project management, and quality assurance.
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