Apple loses home hardware manager to smart ring manufacturer
Apple has reportedly been working on new home products for several years, but they have allegedly been postponed. A senior director has now left the company.
Various smart rings from Oura.
(Image: Oura)
Apple's slow progress in developing new home hardware may have contributed to the departure of an important employee: Brian Lynch, previously Senior Director in the iPhone maker's home hardware engineering team, has left the company. According to a US media report, the specialist is now moving to smart ring provider Oura, where he will take on the new title of Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering.
Where are the Home Hub, “Table Robot” and more?
Previously, there were reports that Apple had internally postponed several new smart home products multiple times. These include, among others, a so-called Home Hub, which looks like a small iPad and is intended to serve as a new type of control center, a “table robot” that can orient itself towards people, as well as new speaker products in the HomePod and HomePod mini line. It is also conceivable that the latter will be combined with the Home Hub – in the form of a dock.
Apple has recently achieved little externally in the smart home sector. There were minimal adjustments to its Home app for the liquid glass look, but new devices have not been available for years. The HomePod mini has been on the market for a whopping six years without changes (apart from new color variants in 2021 and 2024). The HomePod 2 is now three years old. According to credible Bloomberg reports, Apple also planned to launch a security camera with privacy-friendly person detection and even a doorbell with Face ID. There has been no news of these for a long time either.
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Oura had already recruited Apple employees before
Lynch had been responsible for home devices as Senior Director since 2022 and is considered a top executive in this area. Oura had already managed to recruit other Apple employees before. These include health chief Ricky Bloomfield and Miklu Silvanto (ex-Apple design team, now Head of Design at Oura).
The personnel change reportedly caused internal turmoil, according to the Bloomberg report. Compared to Amazon and Google, Apple brings its products to market much later. Lynch was responsible for new hardware products in the home sector. Recently, Apple has repeatedly had problems equipping its Siri with modern AI technology. Plans to implement a context-sensitive extension of the voice assistant with iOS 26.4, announced about two years ago, apparently failed. The home hardware group is led by Matt Costello, who is also responsible for audio engineering and Beats products. He, in turn, reports to hardware chief John Ternus.
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