Monday, March 28, 2011

Apple's new Mac guy - Craig Federighi

Craig Federighi is the new Mac guy for Apple, taking over for departing Mac veteran Bertrand Serlet. He left Apple in Feb 1999 for business software company Ariba. Craig Federighi, the Apple boomerang, is now back after 10 years to help Apple build the Mac OS

We all know that, the Mac OS has played a crucial role in Apple's hardware strategy over the past decade. Unlike the case with Microsoft's Windows, you can only buy the Mac OS for Apple-made hardware, and the company has built a business out of trying to produce new iterations of it at a faster pace than competitors. The next step in the operating system's evolution, as unveiled by Apple back in October, is to bring some of the features and familiarities of the company's mobile iOS platform back to the Mac OS. How that integration happens, and where it's going, largely rests on who's in charge of the OS.

The new mac guy can most easily be described as a geek god. He's a man who after buying an $8 million house in Los Altos, Calif., could still be found staying up late on community message boards, helping people get his company's product to work. Nearly two decades ago he was also a self-described fan of martial arts star Jackie Chan and of bad haircuts.

Federighi's first stint at Apple began in 1996 after Apple acquired Next, the company founded by Steve Jobs after Jobs had left Apple a decade earlier. At Next, Federighi had been the Enterprise Objects Framework project manager.

In 1999, Federighi left his role as the director of engineering at Apple to join Ariba, a business software company that had just gone public. Federighi began there as the vice president of Internet services before later being promoted to executive vice president and chief technology officer. His final role before departing back to Apple was as Ariba's user interface technology evangelist.

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