Apple's former hardware chief and current Apple Vision Pro lead is retiring

AppleInsider

Dan Riccio has been an important executive at Apple through the Steve Jobs and Tim Cook eras, and he's retiring after leading the Apple Vision Pro team.


Dan Riccio

John Ternus took over as the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering after Dan Riccio left the position. Riccio continued to report to Tim Cook as a vice president leading the Apple Vision Pro team, but he's now set to retire.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Dan Riccio is retiring imminently. The day-to-day operations on the Apple Vision Pro team will be taken over by Mike Rockwell, and oversight will fall under John Ternus.

Dan Riccio has been an incredible influence on Apple since he joined the company in 1998. He became the SVP of Hardware Engineering in 2012 and helped herald products like AirPods and the iPad Pro, but was also the mind behind projects like the ill-fated Apple Car.

While some might call Riccio's departure a bad sign for Apple Vision Pro's performance or its future, that's a highly unlikely conclusion. The reality is Apple's shown a pattern of cushioning executive retirements with smaller positions before they ultimately depart -- like with Jony Ive or Phil Schiller.

Dan Riccio has spent 26 years with Apple and had a very successful career. As always with these kinds of stories, retirement is inevitable for someone over 60, and it isn't usually related to some kind of failure but rather a history of success and wealth, especially at Apple.



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strangedays

Yeah after 26 years I don’t think anybody can read into the tea leaves here. Miracle that anyone sticks around that long. 

jintech

Oh no, Apple is DOOMED! ™

iqatedo

For whatever comes next Dan, our very best wishes.

omasou

If I owned even half as much stock as he probably owns, I'd have retired LONG ago.

jamescude

The positive spin at the end of this article is kind of embarrassing. AVP is obviously a huge flop to anyone not immersed in the Kool Aid. Though of course, Apple will be just fine with its many other successful products.

22july2013

People (like AI readers) always want a simple and single reason to answer the question "why?" (in this case, "Why is he retiring?") In reality, there are usually multiple reasons (for everything in life) and in most cases it's impossible, even for the people involved, to say which reason was the "main" reason.

sloaah

JamesCude said:

The positive spin at the end of this article is kind of embarrassing. AVP is obviously a huge flop to anyone not immersed in the Kool Aid. Though of course, Apple will be just fine with its many other successful products.

From a sales perspective it’s been pretty much bang on target with strong international demand, contrary to lots of initial negative reports. Latest IDC reports say that Q2 sales have risen by over 11% vs Q1, and should be on target for roughly 400-500k units this year. Prior to launch, supply reports said that production for year one was limited to roughly 400k units due to Sony’s production capacity limits for the displays. 

If anything it’s just a reminder of how crazily accurate Apple is at anticipating consumer response. No other manufacturer can achieve sales within a 10-20% margin of their original estimates when it’s a completely new device. 

Personally, my own view is Vision Pro sadly hasn’t received the developer attention that it needs, but I can’t see how anybody would call it a huge flop on the metrics which actually matter to Apple (sales). 

mattinoz

sloaah said:

JamesCude said:

The positive spin at the end of this article is kind of embarrassing. AVP is obviously a huge flop to anyone not immersed in the Kool Aid. Though of course, Apple will be just fine with its many other successful products.

From a sales perspective it’s been pretty much bang on target with strong international demand, contrary to lots of initial negative reports. Latest IDC reports say that Q2 sales have risen by over 11% vs Q1, and should be on target for roughly 400-500k units this year. Prior to launch, supply reports said that production for year one was limited to roughly 400k units due to Sony’s production capacity limits for the displays. 

If anything it’s just a reminder of how crazily accurate Apple is at anticipating consumer response. No other manufacturer can achieve sales within a 10-20% margin of their original estimates when it’s a completely new device. 

Personally, my own view is Vision Pro sadly hasn’t received the developer attention that it needs, but I can’t see how anybody would call it a huge flop on the metrics which actually matter to Apple (sales). 

I thought I would have seen a product in my pro-niche by now. Then again most of the pro-niche apps for the first Mac took a year to launch. 

If the visionPro team aren’t talking to some interesting Mac apps and asking them why they haven’t launched yet then they are missing an opportunity. I thought Xplane would be supported before now. That sort of training would seem like a big opportunity. 

9secondkox2

Great guy. Part of the Apple Dream Team. He wil be sorely missed. Hope he enjoys a well deserved retirement.