So, classic “do more with less”. But with a side of “let’s enshitify our products”.

John Apple. Got it.

This always works out for the best. Making fewer people work harder always produces better results! Nothing could possibly go wrong with this winning strategy.

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer John Ternus, just weeks into the role, is moving to overhaul the iPhone maker in an effort to accelerate product development, broaden its range of devices and create a leaner organization with a greater focus on engineering.

The plans, which Ternus has discussed internally with colleagues, offer the first signs of how Apple’s former hardware engineering chief intends to reshape the company following Tim Cook’s 15-year tenure as CEO.

The early ideas under consideration include relying less on traditional spring and fall product release schedules and eliminating some middle-management positions to reduce the layers separating engineers from senior executives, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Ternus has indicated that Apple must introduce products more quickly and become more experimental to remain competitive in the artificial intelligence era, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

There are cost-cutting efforts in motion, according to the people. Ternus is also seeking new sources of revenue and ways to generate more money from existing products, especially as growth in the company’s services business slows.

A spokesperson for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.

Apple has an enormous product pipeline planned for next year, including camera-equipped AirPods, its first smart glasses and a redesigned iPhone commemorating the device’s 20th anniversary.

As part of this frenzy of new devices, Ternus is rethinking the timing of announcements. For much of the past decade, Apple’s product and engineering teams have focused on holding major launches in the fall and, occasionally, the spring.

Ternus wants the company to introduce products more frequently — throughout the year. Changing Apple’s long-established development practices would be difficult, however, and could take years, according to employees.

Ternus, 51, has advocated for a leaner organization for years. While leading hardware engineering, he told employees during an all-hands meeting that Apple should hire fewer people, ask more of its existing engineers and reduce organizational bloat. During a presentation, he showed a slide charting annual headcount growth and argued that the company should be accomplishing more with fewer employees.

That philosophy, which resembles the faster-paced cultures of Silicon Valley companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, is beginning to take hold inside Apple.

In the last two weeks, the company’s hardware engineering division began dismissing a number of engineering program managers, or EPMs. The role has been central to Apple’s product-development process for decades, with EPMs managing timelines and coordinating work across teams. The cuts affected several program managers, including roughly half a dozen directors, one of the company’s most senior employee levels.

Those employees were given just weeks to find other positions within Apple. Those who don’t secure new roles will be laid off later this year. Such cuts were once rare at Apple, but they have become increasingly common in recent months.

The company has carried out a series of small-scale layoffs across multiple teams while moving to dial back or cancel projects earlier in development, particularly when the work is considered less essential to the bottom line.

That effort has included significant cuts to Apple’s Siri digital assistant, Vision Pro headset and AI-related software engineering organizations, some of which were tied to employee performance. The company also recently made a small number of reductions to its Fitness+ group, which had been developing audio-only versions of its exercise classes.

Ternus has also explored how artificial intelligence could accelerate product development and perform work currently handled by employees.

During the summer, the company worked on a plan to lay off about 5,000 AppleCare customer-service workers, including many who work from home, based on the belief that improved AI-powered phone and web agents could take over portions of their responsibilities. Apple ultimately put those plans on hold and isn’t currently looking to take such a step.

Even so, many employees believe further layoffs are possible late this year or early next year. Across several divisions, early planning meetings for 2027 included the possibility of increases in budgets and headcount. In some cases, however, planned budget increases were later reduced and staffing levels were held flat year over year. Other teams have been instructed to cut their marketing spending.

An industrywide memory shortage has squeezed Apple further by raising the cost of key components. The company has increased prices to offset the higher expenses, but Apple wants to avoid giving customers sticker shock. That has led it to absorb some of the costs itself, at least for now.

Managers are already feeling pressure to move faster. “Everything is a lot more hands-on than it used to be,” said one person familiar with the situation. “It’s hectic right now.” That person and others said managers in product-development groups are being pushed to deliver more products, more frequently and on shorter timelines.

Ternus, services head Eddy Cue and Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh are also looking for new ways to bolster revenue as growth in Apple’s services business decelerates and its App Store economics come under pressure. They have discussed launching new services and extracting more revenue from existing products and offerings.

Services has long been one of Apple’s fastest-growing and most profitable businesses, helping offset fluctuations in hardware sales. But its momentum has begun to weaken. Services revenue declined sequentially in the June quarter for the first time since 2022, even as it remained higher than a year earlier and set a record for the period.

For Ternus and his leadership team, accelerating Apple’s product cadence could help address that pressure by creating more opportunities to sell devices, attract customers to new services and generate additional revenue from the company’s existing ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the cost cutting will continue. For the company’s upcoming swath of holiday parties, some teams have been told they won’t be allowed to bring plus-ones for the first time in years