Pressure builds on Apple and CEO Tim Cook amid extraordinary executive turnover

As Apple grapples with a wave of high-profile executive departures — including its AI chief John Giannandrea and design leader Alan Dye — CEO Tim Cook faces mounting pressure to steer the company through a pivotal 2026. These shake-ups, coming just before the holiday season, coincide with Apple’s scramble to redeem its AI strategy after a disappointing few years, with eyes on a revamped Apple Intelligence experience powered by a potential partnership with Alphabet subsidiary Google to provide the off-device brainpower for Apple’s long-neglected and much-maligned Siri personal digital assistant.
Steve Kovach for CNBC:
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In the last seven days, there has been extraordinary turnover among Apple’s top ranks, from its head of artificial intelligence to its top lawyer.
CEO Tim Cook now has two fewer direct reports than he did before Thanksgiving.
The executive who designed the software for the Apple Vision Pro also bounced and is heading to Meta to do the same thing for AI glasses in Menlo Park…
It was no surprise AI chief John Giannandrea was out last week. It was on him to deliver an innovative AI experience on the iPhone. Instead, Apple had to admit it couldn’t launch the supercharged version of Siri it had been advertising for months.
Perhaps the new strategy of partnering with an established AI leader such as Google or Anthropic will make up for all of it, but the pressure is enormous for Apple to get it right after the flop this year.
Taken together, perhaps the shake-ups were necessary, especially regarding AI.
It looks like next year will show if Apple got it right.

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MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, the days of a COO masquerading as an Apple CEO are finally drawing nigh. Apple deserves a visionary leader who can once again drive relentless, world-changing product innovation.

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