Apple Newsroom, yesterday:

Apple today announced Jeff Williams will transition his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, as part of a long-planned succession. Williams will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook and overseeing Apple’s world-class design team and Apple Watch alongside the company’s Health initiatives. Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires late in the year.

Williams was for years considered Apple’s CEO-in-waiting. I suppose there’s only so much waiting a man can do.

Khan is a 30-year Apple veteran. Thirty years at Apple may seem like an eternity, but time travels more quickly there than anywhere I know. As COO, is he now Cook’s “CEO hot spare”?

While unexpected in timing, these transitions are long-planned, and were probably put in place shortly after Khan was promoted to SVP of Operations in 2019.

The actually surprising news is that the Design team, headed by Alan Dye and which reported to Williams, will now report directly to Cook—not to Khan or—more logically in my mind—to software chief Craig Federighi. Reporting to Cook is a hell of an elevation for Dye, a designer whose work is often regarded with disdain within the Apple developer community.

I presume this reporting structure is temporary, a stopgap until they find something—someone—better. Cook has enough problems on his plate. I can’t imagine him caring enough about design to push back on bad or poorly implemented ideas—not that Williams did.

(A little birdie informed me that after Jony Ive left, Dye refused to report to Federighi—who apparently has strong opinions on UI design—which is how Williams ended up with the group. I’m curious if reporting to Cook is an extension of that refusal.)

I do wonder if this makes it less likely Tim Cook will be stepping down as CEO in the near-term. Apple usually only does one or two of these big executive transitions a year—and Phil Schiller may be eyeing the exit. Other than Williams (and now Khan) there was no obvious candidate for CEO on Apple’s leadership team. John Ternus (SVP Hardware Engineering) has been floated, and now seems like the most likely long-term candidate.

Watch for him to take on greater responsibilities in the next year.