TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Businessweek provided more detail on Bob Mansfield’s aborted retirement:

Earlier this summer, Cook actually did lose a key member of his team—and then nearly witnessed an insurrection in one of Apple’s most prominent divisions. On June 28, Apple announced the retirement of Senior Vice President Bob Mansfield, who for over a decade oversaw the remarkable expansion of the Macintosh line before taking on the iPhone and iPad as well. According to three people familiar with the sequence of events, several senior engineers on Mansfield’s team vociferously complained to Cook about reporting to his replacement, Dan Riccio, who they felt was unprepared for the magnitude of the role. In response, Cook approached Mansfield and offered him an exorbitant package of cash and stock worth around $2 million a month to stay on at Apple as an adviser and help manage the hardware engineering team.

This kind of in-fighting may be worrying, but it’s going to happen at any company. What’s more worrying to me is that we’re hearing more and more of these kinds of details leaked to the press at all.