BobMansfield
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NYT: Apple car 'reboot' involves dozens of layoffs
The latest rumor surrounding Apple's fabled Project Titan car comes from the New York Times, which reports "dozens" of layoffs as parts of the initiative have been shut down. This follows an earlier Bloomberg report that under new leadership by Bob Mansfield, the focus has changed from building an entire car, to focusing on developing self-driving car tech. According to the NYT, the layoffs were described internally as being part of a reboot, while Apple figures out what it can bring to a self-driving car that will stick out (probably not an AUX cable).
Apple picks a well-known executive to lead its electric car team
There's been a lot of talk about Apple's not-so-secret Project Titan electric car project, but... who runs it? We now have an idea. Wall Street Journal sources understand that Apple has picked Bob Mansfield, one of the company's better-known executives, to helm its EV efforts. He'd effectively left the company in 2013 and only made a partial return after Apple scrambled to keep him (the Apple Watch is partly his baby), but he's reportedly back in the swing of things now that Titan is ramping up -- all senior managers in the car initiative have to report to him.
Apple execs given new responsibilities, Bob Mansfield to focus on chips
When Apple executive Bob Mansfield left the company's executive team unexpectedly at the end of July, we wondered what his next move would be. 9to5Mac is reporting that Mansfield left his leadership capacity to refocus his efforts on chipset design for future products. Mansfield's new position is in a "special projects" capacity under the supervision of CEO Tim Cook. His old job as senior vice president of Technologies will be split into two positions, Hardware and Operations, with Dan Riccio and Jeff Williams heading those jobs, respectively. This shuffling of responsibility will allow Mansfield to focus on chip development without the distractions of management duties. Rumors started last November that was Apple looking to develop their own non-Intel chips under his leadership. Now that Mansfield is no longer being distracted by his management responsibilities, perhaps those rumors will finally come to fruition.
Daily Update for July 29, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Bob Mansfield leaves Apple's executive team, will assist Tim Cook
The biography for Bob Mansfield, Apple's senior vice president of technologies, unexpectedly disappeared from Apple's executive web page over the weekend. The removal of Mansfield's biography was first reported by MacRumors, and AllThingsD followed with an official statement from Apple that confirmed Mansfield is no longer part of Apple's executive leadership. Apple refused to comment on the reasons for Mansfield's departure. "Bob is no longer going to be on Apple's executive team, but will remain at Apple working on special projects reporting to [CEO] Tim [Cook]," Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling told AllThingsD. Mansfield announced his resignation from Apple in June 2012 and returned to the company a few months later as its SVP of Technologies. According to AllThingsD, Mansfield was paid handsomely for his return with a package worth more than $2 million a month. Details on Mansfield's reasons for leaving are not known, but his departure from this executive position less than a year later is surprising.
Senior VP Bob Mansfield removed from Apple's leadership page (updated)
It could mean nothing, but it could mean everything. As of this morning, Bob Mansfield was still a senior vice president at one of the world's most iconic technology firms. As of now, his leadership bio is nowhere to be found on Apple's official web presence. If you'll recall, Mansfield has had an interesting couple of years at Apple. In June of 2012, he abruptly announced that he was retiring. A couple of weeks later, he publicly addressed mounting criticism regarding Apple's computers and their relationship with EPEAT, seemingly putting the kibosh on said retirement. A few weeks following that, Mansfield actually got a promotion, with his responsibilities growing once again during the executive shakeup of October 2012. It's unclear if someone accidentally deleted the profile of one of Apple's most important figureheads (read: unlikely), or if Mr. Mansfield truly has stepped aside, but we'll be reaching out to Apple in hopes of clarifying things. Update: Reuters' Poornima Gupta is reporting that Mansfield is "no longer with Apple's executive team, but will remain at Apple working on special projects reporting to Tim Cook."
Apple's execs are not the best-paid
A report earlier this week from Businessweek claimed Apple has four of the five highest-paid employees among Standard & Poor's 500 companies. The figures cited in this report included both base salary and vested stock packages, which has some people, like Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Apple 2.0, crying foul. DeWitt open his acrid retort to the Businessweek article by asking whether "Bloomberg's brainiacs know the difference between an RSU and a pay check?" DeWitt points out that the compensation packages for Apple's top brass may have increased, but their pay has remained steady. These compensation packages include restricted stock units (RSU) that are not immediately available for the Apple executives and should not be counted as part of their pay. These RSUs are part of a retention package that becomes available after an employee works a set number of years. If the employee leaves before the RSUs have vested, then he or she loses that money. It's a common method used by companies to entice their employees to stay put for a while.
Apple employs four of America's top five paid executives
During a 1998 profile in Fortune, Steve Jobs stressed how true innovation requires hiring the right people. Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led and how much you get it. Of course, attracting, hiring and keeping the right people in the ultra-competitive world of Silicon Valley is no easy task. To that end, having a bank account that lingers in the US$137 billion range certainly helps. That said, it may not be all that surprising that four of the top five highest paid executives in the US are Apple employees. BloombergBusinessweek reports that Apple executives Bob Mansfield, Bruce Sewell, Jeffrey Williams, and Peter Oppenheimer received more compensation than nearly every other executive in America. Note, though, that the bulk of this compensation isn't in the form of cash, but rather in stock. Leading the salary charge at Apple is Mansfield, who currently serves as the company's senior VP of Technologies. Mansfield in 2012 received $85.5 million worth of stock options on top of a base salary of $805,400. Sewell, Apple's VP of Legal and Government Affairs, received a compensation package of $69 million in 2012, slightly ahead of Williams who received a compensation package of $68.7 million. Williams is currently Apple's senior VP of Operations, having taken on many of the responsibilities that Tim Cook previously took care of as Apple's former COO. And picking up the rear is Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer who received a compensation package of $68.6 million last year. The only executive in the US that made more than the aforementioned Apple executives was Oracle's Larry Ellison who earned $96.2 million last year.
Reality Absorption Field: Apple's wireless way
While it was announced amidst the October departure of Scott Forstall, the news that Bob Mansfield would un-retire to oversee all of the company's semiconductor and wireless work didn't get as much attention. Obviously, we are moving toward an increasingly wireless future. The technologies Apple chooses to adopt and how it adopts them will play big roles in terms of its platforms' capabilities and compatibility. Short-Range In 2012, we saw Apple gain a lot of attention for a new Lightning cable connector to replace its venerable 30-pin iPod interface. But while iPhone watchers were contemplating adapters and docks, phones from competitors such as HTC and Nokia adopted wireless charging and NFC. Apple passed on NFC in the iPhone 5 -- somewhat justifiably, from a pure payments perspective. Nonetheless, NFC has other applications as Samsung has been showing off in its commercials. While a bit late to the Bluetooth party, Apple has become an enthusiastic backer, supporting the technology well throughout the product line and being one of the first companies to implement Bluetooth Smart, the low-power version of the technology that is now finding its way into such objects as activity monitors, watches, and even light bulbs. While Apple will likely eventually adopt NFC, there is work going on in the Bluetooth camp on standards that could compete with NFC. Apple, of course, would prefer to deal with one radio instead of two. Medium-Range With the introduction of its first AirPort cards for the iBook way back in 1999, Apple led the industry in supporting Wi-Fi. Apple's efforts helped push the technology ahead of what was then a promising competing standard called HomeRF, backed by Intel. Nowadays, Wi-Fi is available throughout Apple's product line as it is for many other tech companies, and Apple has built AirPlay on top of it. It seems likely that Apple will support the next generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11ac. It remains to be seen, though, if Apple will support Wi-Fi Display and Wi-Fi Direct as it has adopted its own alternatives in AirPlay and AirDrop (although these are not necessarily mutually exclusive). AirDrop in particular seems like a promising way to easily move files between a Mac and iDevice without having to go through iTunes; hopefully this will be addressed now that the OS X and iOS teams are united under one manager. There are also other "whole-home" wireless technologies that Apple has heretofore passed on such as Zigbee or Z-Wave. These low-power radio technologies are at the heart of many security and home automation installations. But Apple will likely continue to refrain. Wi-Fi gateways can bridge control between iPhones and these products, and Bluetooth is becoming more competitive in terms of battery life. Long-Range In 2012, the third-generation iPad marked Apple's late jump onto the LTE bandwagon and the strong indication that the 4G technology would be the wireless foundation of the iPhone, which it was. LTE also made its way into the iPad mini, serving as a differentiator from inexpensive 7" tablets such as the Amazon Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet HD that lacked any cellular radio. Apple is already supporting LTE on many different bands across the three models of iPhones and iPads. More may be coming in the next generation of cellular-equipped products now that T-Mobile USA seems set to carry the company's products in 2013. However, it likely also has its eye on technologies, such as DIDO from Rearden Labs, that claim to leapfrog well-accepted standards like LTE. As wireless technologies continue to work their way into more objects and become cheaper and faster, Mac and iOS apps will be able to monitor, communicate with, and control a broader array of devices than ever before. Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research, a research and advisory firm focusing on consumer technology adoption. He shares commentary at Techspressive and on Twitter at @rossrubin. Views expressed in Reality Absorption Field are his own.
Eddy Cue sells $8.76M in AAPL stock
Bob Mansfield recently sold 35,000 shares of Apple stock and now it is Eddy Cue's turn to cash in some of his holdings. According to a filling with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Cue sold off 15,000 shares of Apple stock for approximately US$584 per share. He walked away with $8.76 million from the sale, says a report in CNET. These shares are just a small portion of the Apple stock that Cue owns. The senior vice president of Internet Software and Services and several other Apple executives were each given a bonus of 100,000 restricted stock units in November 2011. This bonus was meant to keep the executives with the company for the next several years. The first block of these restricted stocks will vest in September 2014. [Via CNET]
Daily Update for November 30, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Bob Mansfield sells over $20 Million in AAPL stock
Apple Senior Vice President of Technologies Bob Mansfield sold 35,000 shares of Apple stock at a price of $582, netting him a cool $20 million. This financial transaction was detailed in a SEC filing spotted by MacRumors. Earlier this year, Mansfield sold another chunk of Apple stock for $12.5 million. Shortly after Mansfield sold his stock in February, the executive announced that he was retiring from his role as head of hardware and would serve the company in an advisory role. After a brief hiatus, Mansfield recently returned to lead a new Technologies group that was formed after the ouster of iOS chief Scott Forstall. This latest transaction does not mean Mansfield is ready to exit the company again. Executives regularly cash in stock they receive as compensation for their work at Apple. Mansfield also has incentive to stay at Apple as he is slated to receive another 150,000 shares that will be disbursed in two equal allotments with the first arriving in June 2013 and the second in March 2016. He also has 100,000 shares of restricted stock that'll vest in 2014. [Via MacRumors]
Mansfield may lead Apple away from Intel chips in Macs
Bloomberg is reporting that Apple's Technologies group, headed by senior vice president Bob Mansfield, is exploring advanced versions of the chipsets used in the iPhone and iPad lines for use in the company's future desktops and MacBooks. The outlet cites three people familiar with Apple's research initiative as confirming the plans. According to Bloomberg, the switch isn't likely to happen for at least a few years, but its sources insist that Intel getting the boot is "inevitable" as Apple eventually wants to put its desktops, MacBooks and mobile devices on equal footing in terms of capabilities and compatibility. This shouldn't come as a surprise to most Mac fans who've witnessed the steady increase in iOS features making their way into OS X in recent years. Abandoning Intel for its own internally developed silicon makes sense in terms of Apple's financial and patent interests. However, such a drastic move would have far-reaching implications for developers and legacy software, so it's not likely something the company is taking lightly.
Daily Update for November 1, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple's Bob Mansfield: influenced to stay by Scott Forstall's departure?
In the latest episode of the soap opera known as "Apple: As The Revolving Door Turns", we saw Senior Vice President of Technologies Bob Mansfield being persuaded somehow to stay on with the company for at least another two years while former iOS software VP Scott Forstall was quietly ushered out the door. Now AllThingsD is positing that apparently Mansfield stayed on because he knew that Forstall would be leaving. AllThingsD's John Paczkowski notes that a source close to Apple told the site that "the timing of Bob's return is not coincidental." Mansfield apparently disliked Forstall's confrontational style and avoided him at all costs. A Bloomberg post from last year quoted former Apple software engineer Mike Lee as referring to Forstall as "Apple's chief a-hole" as a compliment. That same post pointed out that other executives, including Mansfield and Industrial Design Senior VP Jony Ive, would not attend meetings with Forstall unless Tim Cook was present. Forstall was, according to the year-old Bloomberg post, "a striver who was better at managing up than down -- that is, making sure his accomplishments were noticed first, and blaming others for mistakes." The iOS 6 Maps debacle appears to have been one mistake too many for Apple CEO Tim Cook to ignore, and served as an easy way to show Forstall the door. In retrospect, the year-old Bloomberg post appears to have been a roadmap for the reorganization that occurred this week.
Daily Update for August 31, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Bob Mansfield once again listed as SVP on Apple's site (Updated)
The friendly and familiar face of Apple's Bob Mansfield remained in Apple's gallery of executive portraits in the Apple web site's PR pages, sans title, despite his retirement from the company. Now he's officially de-retired and back in the executive suite. Mansfield was the senior vice president of hardware engineering for many years at Apple, responsible for the technical design of such classic computers as the iMac and the MacBook Air. He announced his retirement from the company in June of this year, and many were surprised earlier this week when it was announced that Mansfield was going to stay on with the company working on "future projects." Mansfield's beauty shot in the executive photo gallery doesn't specify what his new position is; he's simply listed as a senior vice president. Dan Riccio has been named to replace Mansfield in the hardware engineering SVP spot. Update: Post edited to clarify that Mansfield's photo had not been removed; only his title.
Daily Update for August 28, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Craig Federighi, Dan Riccio promoted to Senior Vice Presidents at Apple
On Monday, Apple announced that it was promoting vice president of Mac Software engineering Craig Federighi and vice president of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio to senior vice president positions. The two men will report directly to Tim Cook. Federighi, shown on the left in the above image, is a public face for Apple and recently appeared in the last WWDC where he introduced Mountain Lion. He worked with Steve Jobs at NeXT and then moved to Apple. He left Apple in 1999 to work for software and information technology services company Airba. He stayed there ten years before returning to Apple in 2009. Riccio, shown in middle in the above image, joined Apple in 1998 after a stint at Compaq where he worked on the mechanical design of Compaq's consumer PC products. He started off as vice president of Product Design and has played an important role in the development of the iPad. The announcement also confirmed that Bob Mansfield (above right), who announced his retirement from his position as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering in June, will stay on at Apple and work on future projects under the guidance of Tim Cook. There was no title given to Mansfield's new position, so it's not clear what role he will play in the company. Regardless, it's good news that the man who guided the teams which delivered the MacBook Air and the iMac will remain at Apple for a while longer.
Apple promotes pair of execs to Senior VP level, Bob Mansfield to hang around after all
It's a day of upheaval in the boardroom at Apple -- in the good sense. Remember how Hardware Engineering Senior VP Bob Mansfield said he would retire in June? He's had a change of heart and will keep working on future products. Meanwhile, two of the vice presidents who've been mainstays of Apple's recent plans, Mac Software Engineering VP Craig Federighi and Hardware Engineering VP Dan Riccio, have been promoted to Senior VP. All three will report directly to CEO Tim Cook, and both Federighi as well as Riccio will get their first turns at Apple's executive management team. While the shift isn't going to signal a dramatic change in strategy, it's notable that Riccio's role is expanding: he's moving from his earlier iPad focus to overseeing all the hardware Apple makes. We can only guess at what the ultimate goals might be for the new assignments, although we can imagine Apple jumping through hoops to keep a hardware executive as skilled as Mansfield on its side.
