Apple's vice president of cloud engineering departs in April

Amid a recent wave of departures, Apple's top executive for the company's iCloud technology has also announced his departure.

Michael Abbott reports directly to Services chief Eddy Cue, the second top person under Cue's management to leave following Peter Stern. He will leave Apple in April.

Abbott joined Apple in 2018 after acting as an investor at venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins and an executive at Twitter, Microsoft, and Palm. As Apple's vice president of cloud engineering, he is responsible for various iCloud services and infrastructure, CloudKit, and oversees privacy and security engineering for Apple's services.

The cloud services group has significantly invested in the infrastructure supporting its services. But, Apple has scaled back that effort lately to use servers hosted by Google and Amazon Web Services.

Abbott's group oversees a custom layer on top of that infrastructure to optimize it for Apple's offerings. He has hired several cloud industry leaders, but the integration of the new staff hasn't gone as easily as some had hoped, aaccording to Bloomberg.

Apple has had other key executives leave the company in late 2022 and early 2023. For example, chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath left in August for law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles.

And in October, Apple's industrial design chief Evans Hankey announced her departure. The company had difficulties in finding a replacement, then decided to eliminate her role with COO Jeff Williams overseeing her team.

Peter Stern, an executive at Apple who helped establish the Apple TV+ operations, left the company in January after six years. Apple is currently dividing his past responsibilities into three divisions and restructuring the Services business to emphasize streaming and advertising more.

4 Comments

9secondkox2 8 Years · 3148 comments

About 1 year ago

This opens up an opportunity it’s for Apple to curate a new and bold cloud vision.

bobolicious 10 Years · 1177 comments

9secondkox2 said:

This opens up an opportunity it’s for Apple to curate a new and bold cloud vision.

... could what is coming (data, AI, AR ?) actually be the reason for so many departures ...?
gizmodo.com/google-android-launches-privacy-sandbox-chrome-cookies-1850112117
gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-privacy-4th-lawsuit-1850048418
What are the Applecore values these days...?

auxio 19 Years · 2766 comments

bobolicious said:

9secondkox2 said:

This opens up an opportunity it’s for Apple to curate a new and bold cloud vision.

... could what is coming (data, AI, AR ?) actually be the reason for so many departures ...?
gizmodo.com/google-android-launches-privacy-sandbox-chrome-cookies-1850112117
gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-privacy-4th-lawsuit-1850048418
What are the Applecore values these days...?

So your argument is that someone with this background:
Abbott joined Apple in 2018 after acting as an investor at venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins and an executive at Twitter, Microsoft, and Palm.
is leaving Apple because they have strong privacy concerns? Right.

My thinking is that he doesn't seem like he has a strong technical background, and so being in the role of VP for a very specific technology (cloud services) wasn't a good fit. Seems like he'd be more suited for a business management/exec role. But I realize that doesn't make for a good narrative.

FileMakerFeller 6 Years · 1561 comments

bobolicious said:

9secondkox2 said:

This opens up an opportunity it’s for Apple to curate a new and bold cloud vision.

... could what is coming (data, AI, AR ?) actually be the reason for so many departures ...?
gizmodo.com/google-android-launches-privacy-sandbox-chrome-cookies-1850112117
gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-privacy-4th-lawsuit-1850048418
What are the Applecore values these days...?

A company as large as Apple, even with a staff turnover rate that is rumoured to be lower than the industry average, is going to have people leaving management positions every day. Senior management positions will be less frequent than that, but I would expect at least one per year. I don't think there's any point to speculating on the reasons for departure; just wait and see what the person's new position is at what company - if it's another of the Big Tech players, it's doubtful that ethics played a part.