Apple won’t name a new head of hardware design

Going forward, the company’s group of about 20 industrial designers will instead report to Apple’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, and many of the team’s veteran designers will get bigger roles, Bloomberg reports. The change will notably broaden Williams’ scope of action; it already manages “global operations, AppleCare supply chain and customer support, as well as software engineering for surveillance and health efforts,” Bloomberg says. However, the publication notes that Apple may yet appoint a new head of hardware design at some point in the future. Alan Dye will continue to lead software design.

The change could mark a major change for Apple’s legendary hardware design group by placing it directly under the supervision of Williams, the company’s chief operating officer. To be fair, the team has finally already been part of its perimeter for quite some time given that Hankey has been reporting to Williams since Ive left.

And Apple has led design by committee since Ive’s departure, given that the company has split design leadership between Hankey’s and Dye’s roles. We’ll have to wait and see if this organizational change might affect how Apple’s future hardware will look.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company will release its first quarter 2023 results later Thursday.