Dan Riccio
Dan Riccio was Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. Riccio lead the Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV, HomePod, AirPods, and Apple Watch engineering teams, which have produced numerous products. He was succeeded by John Ternus on January 25, 2021. He is now in an unnamed role focusing on a new project at Apple. Biography. Riccio holds a Doctor of Humanities honoris causa from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Before Apple, Riccio worked at Compaq as  senior manager of mechanical engineering, responsible for the mechanical design of consumer PC products. He joined Apple in 1998 as vice president of product design and in 2010 was named vice president of iPad hardware engineering. Since joining Apple, Riccio has been a key contributor to most of the company's hardware, including all iPad products. Riccio officially announced the cancellation of AirPower in 2019. On January 26, 2021, Apple announced that Riccio would transition to a new role focusing on a new project and reporting to CEO Tim Cook. In response to the complaints of the 2018 iPad Pro  bending, Riccio emailed a customer that the iPad Pro's “unibody design meets or exceeds all of Apple's high quality standards of design and precision manufacturing." In addition he also wrote that "We've carefully engineered it and every part of the manufacturing process is precisely measured and controlled" and "Our current specification for iPad Pro flatness is up to 400 microns which is even tighter than previous generations," wrote Riccio. "This 400 micron variance is less than half a millimeter (or the width of fewer than four sheets of paper at most) and this level of flatness wo n't change during normal use over the lifetime of the product." On January 25, 2021, he was succeeded by John Ternus as SVP of hardware engineering, and has transitioned to an unnamed role at Apple working on a new project, rumored to be an augmented reality and virtual reality headset.