Apple CEO John Ternus is working on a plan to make Apple move faster and run with fewer layers of management. Early ideas include launching products throughout the year instead of clustering them in spring and fall.
The details come from a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman, which cites people familiar with Ternus’s internal discussions.
Ternus took over after Tim Cook stepped down following a 15-year run as CEO. His hardware engineering background shows in the plan, which puts more weight on engineers and less on the layers between them and senior executives.
Ternus Wants Apple to Stop Tying Launches to Spring and Fall
For much of the past decade, Apple’s product and engineering teams have built their schedules around big fall launches and the occasional spring event. Ternus wants products to arrive more often throughout the year. He has told colleagues Apple needs to move faster and experiment more to stay competitive in the AI era, which fits the AI roadmap he outlined before taking over.
Apple has a crowded 2027 lined up, including camera-equipped AirPods, its first smart glasses and a redesigned iPhone for the device’s 20th anniversary. Employees say changing long-established development habits would be difficult and could take years.
Managers in product groups are already feeling the pressure. One person familiar with the situation described the mood as hectic, with teams pushed to deliver more products on shorter timelines.
Apple Has Cut Engineering Program Managers, Including About Six Directors
Ternus has pushed for a leaner Apple for years. While running hardware engineering, he told employees at an all-hands meeting that Apple should hire fewer people and ask more of its existing engineers. He backed the point with a slide charting annual headcount growth. The approach resembles the faster-paced cultures at Meta and Google.
Ternus has also explored how AI could speed up product development and take over work that employees handle today.
The first visible result is in hardware engineering, and it comes as Apple makes cost cuts across several other teams. Over the last two weeks, the hardware engineering division began dismissing engineering program managers, a role that has coordinated timelines and work across teams for decades. The cuts include roughly half a dozen directors, one of Apple’s most senior employee levels. Affected employees have a few weeks to find other roles inside Apple, and those who do not will be laid off later this year.
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