Craig Federighi - the rising star of Apple

At the Conference, the Apple developer "dark horse" of the company's management more than all the "light" on the air, and received positive reviews. The journalist from The Wall Street Journal, Jessica Lessin (Jessica Lessin) explainsWhy Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software, is becoming the new frontman following the departure of Steve Jobs life.

"On Monday at the annual conference of developers are not very well-known member of the company's management to Craig Federighi was given the greatest amount of time in the main report - and he received positive reviews.

But fame leads to responsibility: now the senior vice president of software will maintain the loyalty of developers and insiders continue to impress Apple fresh developments in the field of software and design.

The lanky 44-year-old engineer long associated with Apple. He worked in the Next, another computer company, founded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Apple to he joined in 1997 when the latter acquired Next.

Despite the fact that Federighi earned the respect of his colleagues for his attention and friendliness, he remained behind the scenes for years. Most of his career he has dedicated the work on enterprise software, which Apple has never made an accent. Now, impressing developers, customers and investors (many of whom have never heard of it until now) He laid on his shoulders a heavy load to justify the expectations in the light of the bright spotlight of attention aimed at him.

Federighi took on a new role in October after entering the post fired Scott Forstall, senior vice president of mobile software - developers admired him, but with the company's management in Forstall there were conflicts. Since Federighi took over as senior vice president of iOS software, and OS X.
On Monday, he went up to the main stage to showcase upcoming trends Apple - Mac and Windows operating systems. "Chips" mobile operating system has become a new interface, developed under the leadership of the company's design guru Jonathan Ive Apple. But Ive still not appeared on stage, sitting his white t-shirt among the audience, and he appeared only on the screen during video preview to the presentation of the new OSes.

But the very ambitious spending a half-hour presentation is Federighi.

Apple spokeswoman declined to provide the opportunity to interview Federighi.

Climbing the career ladder Federighi started at the same time with Forstall - but then their paths diverged. In the far-1990s they were smyshlonymi, budding professionals in the Next, where Forstall worked on software technologies for consumers and Federighi developed database. While Federighi has gained a reputation as a guru databases, Forstall has moved to the side of consumers and Jobs.

When they joined Apple, Forstall took on more responsibility for the design of Apple's software, including the Mac interface. Federighi started to look for new options. He went to the Ariba company developing enterprise software and the sale of software companies to help them manage their expenses. Eventually, he became its Chief Technology Officer. He was returned back to Apple in 2009 to head up a team to develop the software for Mac and take on more responsibility over time. His relationship with Forstall were warmer than other leaders Apple - so says the man, who worked with the two of them. Several other people who were familiar with the two heroes of our story, reported that Federighi is similar to the head of the company Tim Cook - both of them prefer to make decisions by consensus. In contrast, it is more like Forstall Jobs, who is known to have liked to argue. Federighi also known for its responsiveness - he tries to immediately respond to e-mail. He often refuses invitations to the meeting, referring to the need to work.

But on Monday, standing on the stage, it was a little like a crazed engineer.

Dressed in jeans and a blue button-down shirt, he walked across the stage Moscone Center in San Francisco, gradually revealing all new items - by supporting multiple screens on the Mac to the browser updates Safari. Federighi ease communicate with the public and stop when sounded applause to say that he, too, like one or another new feature. He also emphasized the fact that the new design of iOS dropped many "chips" of the old, including criticized by many background app «Game Center», which resembles a felt covered table for poker. "We completely got rid of the green felt and wood" - he said, describing the new iOS look. Before that, he argued logically transition from the subject of the specifications of the new software for Mac OS X to the subject of cats: "We do not want our software release was postponed for the first time in history due to the fact that the titles dried up cats. "

The developers admitted that they were impressed with the show.

Nick Fletcher (Nik Fletcher), the company Realmac Software product manager, producing soft, was at the conference and in the number of viewers He said that Federighi looked at the speech on Monday "the representative, bright, and eagerly talked about their demonstrated products. We can say that he chose the style and personality of the new Apple ».