Moorhead had a different, more radical take, driven in part by a short description in Cook's statement of Bob Mansfield's new role.

Mansfield, who has worked at Apple since 1999 and has been responsible for Mac hardware for much of that time, announced his retirement in June but was apparently convinced to return by Cook. He will now head a new group, dubbed "Technologies," that Apple said would "combine all of Apple's wireless teams ... in one organization" and perhaps more importantly, would be responsible for "the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future."

"I can see Apple designing a super ARM chip to move up the stack [to the Mac], to remove Intel," said Moorhead. The benefit: In combination with a single development environment for mobile devices and traditional Macs, Apple may be able to leverage the hundreds of thousands of mobile apps on the Mac platform.

But as industry analysts took the executive suite changes in stride, Wall Street did not: In the first day of trading since the Monday announcement, Apple shares were down more than $10, or about 1.6%, and fell under $600 for the first time since July 30.

Almost as an afterthought, Apple also said that Browett, who had , was leaving. Not a surprise, said the experts: Last summer, Browett instituted a staffing-level change in the company's stores that not only was quickly reversed, but triggered a public apology from Apple.