Apple recently entered a new product category with the Apple Vision Pro headset. It’s a new thing for the company, and it appears it’s taking a different approach with this product. According to Mark Gurman (via the latest Power On newsletter), Apple has established a division within the company to handle Vision Pro and other parts of the ecosystem moving forward.
This division is named Vision Products Group, or VPG, which is a brand new nomenclature for the division. It has actually existed since 2015 as the Technology Development Group or TDG and has been renamed recently to reflect what the group will handle.
Vision Products Group is a self-reliant division within Apple
Gurman shared some interesting insights on the division, and how it’s unlike what we’ve seen from Apple. To begin with, Steve Jobs had done away with the usual product development structure, and this division deviates from how he ran Apple.
For example, Apple doesn’t have dedicated divisions to develop for its best iPhones, or the iPad, but instead has broader teams that handle different parts of development for all products. However, with the Vision Products Group, things are different.
Gurman wrote, “The group doesn’t depend on Apple’s main software and hardware engineering and other departments. It has its own versions of those teams, reporting to Rockwell, in addition to ones for strategy, computer vision, content, app development and project management.”
It’s still linked to the rest of Apple, though, and will work in tandem with other segments of the company. Gurman explained, “It works with the design and operations teams overseen by Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, and the Johny Srouji-led chip unit that makes M2 and R1 processors. It also relies on frameworks and other building blocks created for iOS and macOS by Federighi’s group, which is responsible for some of the headset’s developer tools as well. And it gets a helping hand from the main hardware organization.”
It was apparently expected to be dissolved and integrated into other divisions of the company upon launch of the Vision Pro, but Apple seems to have chosen to keep it. It will be intersting to see how different the development on Vision products ends up being, as a result.