With Meade leaving Apple, his longtime deputy \u2014 Fletcher Rothkopf \u2014 who already leads the design team for the Vision Pro<\/a> and the much-rumored smart glasses, is taking his place. That\u2019s a serious step for someone who\u2019s never run the show solo and a sign of how much pressure Apple is under.<\/p>\n OpenAI now has Apple\u2019s old hardware bench<\/p>\n If this were the first Apple exec to leave the company for OpenAI, it wouldn\u2019t be that big a deal. Apple has seen its watch designers drift towards Jony Ive\u2019s orbit for a while, as well as some execs join the likes of Meta.<\/p>\n But losing a VP from its engineering department to a rival company is new. At OpenAI, Meade will rejoin Apple\u2019s former hardware and design lead Jony Ive<\/a>, Tang Tan<\/a>, and Evans Hankey<\/a>. This is the same team OpenAI bought for $6.5 billion last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sam Altman has previously hinted that OpenAI\u2019s first device would be something less intrusive than an iPhone. But rumors have it that the project has struggled to get past the concept stage.<\/p>\n This is exactly where Meade comes in. His entire career has revolved around shipping products, not just sketching them.<\/p>\n The Ternus reorganization may have pushed Meade out<\/p>\n The timing isn\u2019t as random as you may think. Meade\u2019s exit follows the hardware reorganization Apple did, with John Ternus<\/a> stepping up as the CEO. This was followed by Apple\u2019s chip chief, Johny Srouji, being put in charge of Apple\u2019s hardware engineering team<\/a>.<\/p>\n It pushed several VPs, including Meade, answerable to a new layer under Ternus. That\u2019s a demotion in spirit for some, even if no one called it that. For an executive who spent years effectively owning a product, that\u2019s exactly the type of change that makes often someone look for a new job.<\/p>\n What Meade could take with him when he leaves<\/p>\n More than the drama at Apple, here\u2019s the thing that should sting more: the Vision Pro didn\u2019t sell in volume. Unsurprisingly, Apple has reportedly toned down its headset efforts, with a redesign not expected before 2028 or 2029.<\/p>\n Instead, Apple could be focusing on a pair of lighter, display-free smart glasses intended to compete against Ray-Ban Meta<\/a>. That program was Meade\u2019s, and so were the long-range AR glasses planned for later this decade. Meade\u2019s departure is more than a job change \u2014 he could be taking a map of where Apple\u2019s wearables could go next.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t all bad news on Apple\u2019s side. The company is still reportedly working on camera-equipped AirPods and a tabletop robot. A wearable pendant is also somewhere in the pipeline. Despite modest sales figures, Rothkopf has a team that\u2019s already shipped a headset. But OpenAI has just hired the person who knows what it takes to get the next one out the door.<\/p>\n Apple will now most likely need to prove with its much-rumored smart glasses that losing Meade didn\u2019t cost it anything.<\/p>\n \u00a0 <\/p>\n
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