In October of last year Apple announced some major shakeups to management designed to increase collaboration across its different divisions. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that some walls are starting to come down, with one of the biggest walls being in the design division.

For years Apple’s software design team for iOS have been out of the loop when it comes to the new mobile devices their software will be running on. Essentially, Apple’s industrial design team, led by Jonathan Ive, would only take a small group of software developers to help with prototypes.

Now however, the dynamic is changing. Although the stealth software developers still exist, Apple’s iOS software team, which has been led by executive Greg Christie, is briefed about industrial prototypes earlier.

Apple's Design Teams Beginning To Work More Closely

Sir Jonathan Ive

Interestingly enough, according to developers who have spoken to Apple employees, Ive has been pushing a more “flat design” that is starker and simpler. Overall, they expect any changes to be pretty conservative.

As for Mac OS X, with both Apple’s Mac and iOS software teams under senior vice president Craig Federighi, change is slowly happening. Despite Federighi indicating to some employees that he plans to keep the Mac and iOS engineering teams separate for now, there is currently a lot of overlap, so this may change in the future.

Tim Cook is definitely bringing about change in Apple, and it will be interesting to see where this takes the company.