Apple issued a press release regarding the transition of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) role held by Jeff Williams (since 2015) to Sabih Khan (SVP of Operations since 2019). Williams will be stepping down as COO later this month and announced he will be retiring from the company later in 2025. Williams has been with Apple since 1998 (previously working at IBM from 1985). The COO position is one of the more important roles (since it is the day-to-day operations of all of that supply chain logistics along with the company operations). Williams has also been overseeing the design team since Jonathan Ives replacement (Evan Hankey) left the company in 2022. The design team will report directly to Cook once William retires later in the year.
Williams (62 years old) was often seen as the successor to CEO Tim Cook (Cook himself was previously COO under Steve Jobs and also an IBM alumnus from 1982-1994 when he also joined Apple in 1998; he was at Compaq Computer for only a few months prior), having the same style and demeanor. Williams was also a key figure in Apple’s health related initiatives; he was frequently part of Apple’s keynotes when the Apple Watch was launched (health was a huge corner stone of the product). As for his successor, Khan (59 years old) has been with Apple since 1995 and has been reporting directly to Williams since 2019 (after becoming SVP of Operations). Besides that, he has been one of those incognito figures (never really giving public speeches/appearing in these keynotes’ basically hiis SVP portrait is the only image that pops up of him in searches).
Cook (64 years old) back in 2021, mentioned he intended to remain as CEO for at least the “next decade” so any internal succession plan was already known as far as that timeline was concerned. Which brings me to the timing of all this (in terms todays announcement that he is stepping down as COO in the next few weeks). I don’t see any problems with him deciding to retire at the end of year (and giving this much advance notice); someone like him no longer needs to work and at 62, can spend time with family while doing non-work stuff that he enjoys (I do realize some folks are in the “live to work” category, but there is a point when the torch needs to passed on to younger people).
However, knowing Cook’s 2021 comments, Williams could have decided to also “early” retire a few years ago/make that announcement say back in 2022 in order to prepare those working directly under him, that they would be in-line for promotion by the time he was ready to leave. Thus I cannot but help think that something is amiss internally at the company for Williams to provide notice now of his plans to retire at the end of the year. But that is just pure speculation on my part.
What I do know is I’m not exactly enamored with Apple’s AI initiatives. The whole issue with Apple Intelligence is it seems it was forced (not something the company was fully behind given all of its macro issues) because Wall Street mandated it. And I have no idea if that ongoing roil is having an effect internally within the ranks. I haven’t really posted about my thoughts regarding some of the things that were noted at WWDC 2025 (but I guess I should mention some of that now).
First of all, I found it underwhelming. I’m also not a fan of the forced yearly OS upgrades. They even rebranded the entire numbering scheme to reflect the year (since various platform operating systems have differing version numbers). I didn’t care for that when Microsoft did it for Windows. But here we are 25 years later… So instead of macOS 16, it will be macOS 26, iOS/iPadOS 19 will be iOS/iPadOS 26, watchOS 12 will be watchOS 26, and tvOS 19 will be tvOS 26.
Then we have the Liquid Glass interface with macOS 26 (Tahoe) where it is Yosemite all over again with these readability (potential usability) issues. WIndows Vista tried this type of UI (they called it Aero) when it was released back in 2006. Didn’t care for it back then. I haven’t installed the Tahoe developer beta yet to see for myself (maybe this weekend). But yeah, I’m not going to get into that again (just search this blog for Yosemite, usability, readability; those longwinded writings pretty much cover it).
But digressing back to the original subject regarding Williams retiring, I personally think it is good for him (enjoy life away from this infinite growth cycle and keeping your soul intact while you can). And seriously, I feel that other long time senior management/executives that aren’t really contributing to something that betters the company and the rest of the world, should really hang it up and pass that torch on to the younger generation. If you treated and mentored them well, they will carry on the core legacy. If however you are there for that continued compensation and not really passing on those intangibles that Jobs desired to be passed on, then you are going to have these idiots running things in the future anyway (IMHO).
