Apple never had product managers while Steve Jobs was alive.
The closest they had was Steve Jobs and Product MARKETING Managers, which are quite different than Product Managers.
The closest they had was Steve Jobs and Product MARKETING Managers, which are quite different than Product Managers.
We had project managers who nominally controlled product design decisions. We had test managers in a separate testing directorate (I was one of those).
My experience was that the three managers worked together to define the product, with the product manager trying to represent the market, the project manager representing engineering, and test manager asking pointed questions.