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Did Tim Cook make Bob Mansfield an offer he couldn't refuse?

Mansfield, Apple's senior hardware chief and one of the company's most visible execs, unretires for another tour of duty.

Charles Cooper Former Executive Editor / News
Charles Cooper was an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet.
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Charles Cooper
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A couple of months ago, Apple , the company's senior hardware chief, was retiring. That was then.

Apple
A few minutes ago, Apple disclosed that no, Mansfield's sticking around to "work on future products." The news was made public in a release (below) announcing promotions for Craig Federighi, Apple's vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, Apple's vice president of Hardware Engineering, to senior vice presidents.

Mansfield, who replaced the outgoing Mark Papermaster in 2010, often represented Apple in its promotional videos. He is often seen describing the technical ins and outs of the company's latest products.

Why the Mansfield switcheroo? We've reached out to Apple for comment and will update this post when they respond.

CUPERTINO, California--August 27, 2012--Apple® today announced that Craig Federighi, Apple's vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, Apple's vice president of Hardware Engineering, have been promoted to senior vice presidents. Federighi and Riccio will report to Apple CEO Tim Cook and serve on Apple's executive management team.

Apple also announced that Bob Mansfield, who announced his retirement in June, will remain at Apple. Mansfield will work on future products, reporting to Tim Cook.

As senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, Federighi will continue to be responsible for the development of Mac OS® X and Apple's common operating system engineering teams. Federighi worked at NeXT, followed by Apple, and then spent a decade at Ariba where he held several roles including vice president of Internet Services and chief technology officer. He returned to Apple in 2009 to lead Mac OS X engineering. Federighi holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Riccio, as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will lead the Mac®, iPhone®, iPad® and iPod® engineering teams. He has been instrumental in all of Apple's iPad products since the first generation iPad. Riccio joined Apple in 1998 as vice president of Product Design and has been a key contributor to most of Apple's hardware over his career. Dan earned a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1986.