Apple exec Dan Riccio nearing retirement after 25 years

The Apple Vision Pro project is said to have been completed under Riccio's leadership. In 2021, it was reported that he gave up his position as SVP of Hardware Engineering in 2021 in order to work on that "special project".

Now that it has been released, Riccio is said to be planning his retirement, capping off just over 25 years at Apple.

Riccio, who began at Apple as vice president of hardware design working on the Mac, spent much of his later career involved with the iPad. Prior to working at Apple, he was senior manager of mechanical engineering for Compaq.

Touch ID and later Face ID are mostly credited to Riccio, which are now key technologies for the security of Apple products. He can also take credit for leading the move away from Apple's dependency on Intel chips to bringing chip design in-house.

In 2010, he was named vice president of iPad hardware engineering, and in 2012 became SVP of hardware engineering. He was succeeded in that role by John Ternus in the summer of 2021 to focus on the Apple Vision Pro.

With the car-techology project shut down apart from CarPlay development, there is likely to be a shift in the engineering hierarchy of the company when Riccio does retire. In his newsletter on Sunday morning Bloomberg's Mark Gurman believes that Vice President Mike Rockwell, who is currently running the day-to-day within the Apple Vision Pro group, could start reporting to CEO Tim Cook directly, or to Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams.