Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

July 17 (Xinhua) in recent weeks, Apple's technology development team responsible for developing the Vision Pro headset has changed its name to the Visual products team. This reflects that the company has adjusted the product development process of Vision Pro head display, rather than putting different departments in charge of different parts of Vision Pro head display, as founder Steve Jobs did.

When Jobs returned to Apple in the late 1990s, he abandoned the company's product development strategy and adopted a "functional" management structure.

That's why Apple doesn't have an iPhone or iPad business unit, an AirPods team, or a dedicated Mac team. Instead, Apple is made up of software engineering, hardware development, machine learning, design and services. The work of all these departments is integrated into new features and products.

But Apple's recent launch of new products such as the virtual reality headline Vision Pro suggests that the company's strategy is changing.

Apple has a dedicated Vision Pro development department within it. The division, run by Mike Rockwell (Mike Rockwell), was founded around 2015 as the Technology Development team (TDG) and has been renamed the Visual products team (VPG) in recent weeks.

Apple's visual product team is not entirely dependent on major divisions such as Apple's software and hardware engineering. Various teams in the visual product team responsible for product strategy, computer vision, content, application development and project management report to Rockwell.

If the Vision Pro is developed in the standard Apple style, software engineering should be carried out by Craig Federici (Craig Federighi) and his software engineering team. The hardware will be developed with other Apple devices under the leadership of John Ternus, while the product content belongs to the services division led by Eddy Cue.

But that doesn't mean the Vision Pro team isn't working closely with other Apple departments. It works with the design and operations team led by Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer, as well as with Johny Sroui's chip division, which makes M2 and R1 processors. Federici Software, which created the software framework and other development modules for iOS and macOS, also took on some of the development tools shown in Vision Pro. In addition, Vision Pro Touxian also has the support and help of Apple's hardware department.

When the Vision Pro headshow was finally released, developers thought the technical development team behind it would eventually be split up and staff would be spread across the company, just like Apple's other core products. But the recent team renaming seems to mean that the current organizational structure will continue to exist.

This may be because teams running in start-up-like environments can develop first-generation products faster and with greater confidentiality, which Apple has always focused on. In addition, for complex new products such as mixed reality, it may be necessary to have a specialized department with a core technical team.

Moreover, Apple may wait for the Vision Pro head to become more mature before bundling it with the other most profitable products, which could take away the resources of iPhone, iPad and Mac.

It is worth noting that the new name of the Vision Pro head display development team and the plural form used in the head display products seem to confirm that Vision Pro is the first of Apple's many head display products. It has also been reported that the team is already developing a lower-cost Touxian and second-generation Pro model.

The renaming of the Vision Pro development team is not the first time Apple has changed the company's established organizational structure. A similar story has happened to Apple's previous new products.

For example, during most of the development of the Apple Watch, the product hardware and software engineering team was led by Williams, the chief operating officer, rather than by senior vice presidents of hardware and software. Today, the smartwatch software still reports to Williams, but the hardware project has been transferred to Tenus.

Apple's self-driving car team (SPG) is also an exception. It has its own software engineering, computer vision, machine learning, hardware engineering, industrial design, cloud services, project management and quality control teams. Given the complexity of making cars, that may never change.

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