Longtime Apple employee Dan Riccio will retire later this month after 26 years with the Cupertino firm, reports Bloomberg. Riccio most recently headed Vision Pro development in his position as an engineering Vice President reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Riccio joined Apple in June 1998 as a product design director, and in August 2012, was promoted to senior vice president of hardware engineering. He held the role for more than eight years before transitioning to an unspecified project in 2021. That project turned out to be the Vision Pro headset.
John Ternus, who succeeded Riccio as Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will also now take over as lead for Vision Pro development, overseeing the thousands of engineers in the Vision Products Group. Riccio underling Mike Rockwell will continue to oversee day-to-day work on the Vision Pro and similar projects.
Riccio not only oversaw development of the Vision Pro he also worked on Apple’s self-driving car, which the company unfortunately scrapped earlier this year. He also oversaw development of the AirPods, the iPad Pro, and the first larger-screened iPhone models.