As Apple gears up to celebrate its 30-year anniversary, two of
the executives who worked on projects tied to the company’s recent success
are leaving.
Avadis “Avie” Tevanian, Apple’s chief software technology officer and the
programmer credited with creating the core of Mac OS X, is leaving the
company on March 31, Apple confirmed on Monday.
Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president of the iPod Division, announced last
October that he’d be leaving Apple on the same day.
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Avadis “Avie” Tevanian Source: www.ilmac.net |
Apple celebrates its 30th anniversary on April 1, marking the day that
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak filed partnership papers with a plan to build
and sell personal computers. Their original offering was a build-it-yourself
computer kit, followed by the Apple II microcomputer in 1977.
Tevanian joined Apple in 1997 as senior vice president of software
engineering. Prior to that he was vice president of engineering at
NeXT, a computer company that Apple CEO Steve Jobs founded between his two
stints at Apple.
Tevanian started his career at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was
the principal designer and engineer of the Mach Kernel, which then served as
the basis for the NEXTSTEP operating system, which ultimately led to the
development of Mac OS X.
His presumably final work for Apple may be unveiled in August when Apple
is slated to release the next version of its operating system, dubbed Mac OS
X 10.5 Leopard.
An Apple spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Tevanian’s tenure at Apple was not without controversy.
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Jon Rubinstein Source: Apple |
According to John
Gruber, who writes Mac blog Daring Fireball, “Tevanian’s legacy is marred by Mac OS X’s usability flaws,
most of which are attributable to Tevanian’s nearly unyielding obsession
with promoting old Next technology over old Apple technology. His technical
acumen may be undisputed, but neither is his tin ear for usability.”
Tevanian is also remembered by some Mac geeks as the author of the infamous
“Technical Note #2034,” which detailed Mac OS X programming guidelines. The
guidelines in this document were deemed absurd by some developers, and Apple
withdrew it.
Jon Rubinstein, who is planning to retire, will be succeeded by Tony
Fadell.
“I’ve worked with Jon for over 15 years, and we’re going to miss him. Jon
has done an excellent job as a member of Apple’s senior management team, as
well as building our world-class iPod engineering team and running our
hardware engineering team prior to that,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a
statement.
“Tony has been doing a superb job running a large part of the iPod
engineering team, and we’re expecting a very smooth transition.”
Apple hasn’t announced Tevanian’s replacement yet.
“This is a big loss for Apple because he was at the center of developing
OS X and managing the upgrades and, in some ways, he was the heart of
Apple’s software prowess,” said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst at Creative
Strategies.
“However, he has an incredible team behind him, and he always seemed to
be grooming them to design and manage Apple’s software futures. So while it
is a loss for Apple, the team is more then capable of delivering more
innovative software in the future.”
