A key Apple executive responsible for product design of the iPhone and Apple Watch is said to be leaving soon. This marks the latest big departure from Apple over the past 18 months as the company undergoes a restructure of its hardware engineering group (via Bloomberg).
According to the report, Vice President of Product Design Tang Tan will depart Apple in February next year. To cope with the departure, Apple will reshuffle its hardware engineering division to split Tan’s responsibilities among a few other employees who will report to the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus. Tan also reports to Ternus, working directly under his lead and reporting to him.
Multiple employees will reportedly take over Tan’s responsibilities once his exit is finalized. Kate Bergeron, who leads Mac hardware engineering work, will take over product design leadership for the Apple Watch. In addition, Richard Dinh, another hardware engineering lead, will assume more responsibilities as part of his iPhone product design role and will start reporting directly to Ternus.
Tan also manages accessory design and the acoustics team responsible for developing AirPods. These divisions will be transitioned to Matthew Costello, who formerly served as the chief operating officer of Beats. Costello already oversaw Beats and HomePod, and will now oversee AirPods development.
Tan’s departure will take a notable toll on Apple’s internal structure, with several insiders describing the move as a “blow” to the company’s hardware engineering group, with Tan’s team responsible for many features on Apple products as well as how to engineer them. Within Apple, Tan was known to make “critical decisions” that ultimately paid off with the resounding success of products like the AirPods and Apple Watch.
The news comes after a series of high-ranking departures within Apple, one of which was just a few days ago with the retirement of the veteran Steve Hotelling who led work on many technologies like Touch ID, Face ID, and more. Earlier in the year, Apple lost several leaders within its services division, including its VP of cloud engineering Michael Abbott.
