News Analysis: Apple Computer will look to a rising new generation of managers to ensure that the recent departure of two of the company's three most prominent managers won't spell the end to Apple's vibrant growth.The departure this year of two of the three most prominent executives at Apple Computer raises the question about whether the next generation of senior managers will have the talent and experience to keep the company on its current track of vibrant growth.
Avadis "Avie" Tevanian, who shepherded the development of Mac OS X, and Jon Rubenstein, who oversaw much of the Macintosh hardware in recent years, have passed their responsibilities to others.
At some companies, such a loss of leadership could leave the company with a power vacuum or a lack of direction. However, Apple seems to be conscious that no single person—except, perhaps, CEO Steve Jobs himself—is irreplaceable, and that new talent can always be groomed for the future.
The issue of potential management succession issue took on greater urgency with the disclosure in August 2004 that Jobs had been diagnosed with a rare, but highly curable form of pancreatic cancer.
While by all appearances Jobs has responded well to treatment and his health is stable, the recent departures raise the question of who will lead the company in the future.
"It's my sense that Steve [Jobs] has quietly been dealing with the leadership issue at Apple," said John Markoff, who has written extensively about Apple for The New York Times.
"I believe that he has brought in a layer of thirty-somethings that will be Apple's next leadership generation. He inspires intense loyalty, and I think despite the fact that he insists the company speak with one voice that he is busy planning," Markoff said.
Both Tevanian and Rubenstein owe more to Jobs than to Apple for their advancement.
Both were hired by Jobs for his company NeXT Computer, which he founded after leaving Apple in 1985.
When Apple bought NeXT in 1996, the three took top positions at Jobs' old company, signaling to some that the deal had more been NeXT buying Apple than the other way around.
Tevanian was recruited for NeXT by Jobs based on Tevanian's work at Carnegie Mellon on the Unix-like Mach operating system kernel.
At NeXT, Tevanian led development of the NeXTSTEP operating system, based on the Mach kernel.
One the major attractions of the new operating system was its object-oriented programming model, which was nearly unprecedented at the time, and its advanced PostScript-based display technology.
When Apple and NeXT became one in late 1996, Tevanian was placed at the head of the Mac OS software division, in charge of developing next generation Macintosh operating systems.
This became known as Mac OS X 10.0. There were transition pains for users, who had to run existing software in an emulation mode known as Classic and found problems with the new user interface and lackluster performance.
Developers likewise had to adjust to an entirely new programming environment; Mac OS X-native applications took years, at times, to come to market.
Both combined to slow adoption of the new OS and the purchase of new Macs, especially in environments where backward compatibility was mission-critical, such as pre-press production houses.
However, the transition went smoothly enough for Jobs to declare, within only a few years, that the old Mac OS was dead, and that Apple now lived for the operating system Tevanian helped create and oversee.
"When Avie first arrived at Apple from NeXT," said Wil Shipley, the CEO of software company Delicious Monster, "he took over software and, seriously, kicked butt."
"I used to tell everyone who thought Apple was doomed back then, 'No, it's going to rock, because Avie Knows How To Ship.' This was my mantra. The boy knew how to test it, clip it and ship it," said Shipley.
Next Page: Putting both feet out the door.
Shipley added that "Avie corralled Apple's engineers and got them to stop dissing OS X like it was another Copeland or Pink or Taligent or whatever—he got them in line or cut 'em loose."
In July 2003, Tevanian shifted his position to become Apple's chief technology officer, allowing longtime second-in-command Bertrand Serlet to assume his old title of senior vice president of software engineering.
"This will be a seamless handoff," said Jobs at the time.
John Gruber wrote about the succession for his Web site, Daring Fireball: "I asked a few engineer friends at Apple whether my perception was correct—that Tevanian has had one foot out the door ever since he stepped down from day-to-day management of Apple software engineering in 2003, and that the news that he's leaving the company completely isn't really a big deal at all.
"They all agreed, more or less, that Tevanian has had both feet out the door, but just hadn't yet turned in his keys. No one I spoke to at Apple has any idea what he's been up to the last three years."
In an e-mail to eWEEK.com, Gruber wrote that "Tevanian was and will always remain personally associated with Mach."
His departure, Gruber added, doesn't have "anything at all to do with Apple's future plans regarding Mach. I honestly don't think they have any plans to outright replace Mach, but even if they do, I don't think that's related to Tevanian's departure from the company."
Serlet, who had also been at NeXT with Tevanian and Jobs, had been Apple's vice president of platform technology. In that position, he managed most of the Mac OS software engineering group.
Since his move to heading the software engineering group, Serlet has overseen the development and production of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", which has received positive reviews.
Serlet's appointment "made me very happy," said Shipley, "because Bertrand is another hands-on engineer and old NeXTie, and he's a helluva great coder as well as being great at listening to the developer community.
"Bertrand's also a very friendly person and very unaffected guy," said Shipley.
"I would bet you can't find anyone at Apple who would speak ill of him; I certainly wouldn't trust anyone who didn't like him."
In terms of how his departure will affect "the parts of Apple that I know about, it's pretty minimal—Bertrand's been running the software show for several years now, and I've been really pleased with the technologies we've seen in that time: Spotlight, CoreData, bindings, journalled filesystems... all great stuff," said Shipley.
In early 2006, Tevanian announced that he would retire from Apple on March 31, after seven years at the company.
Rubenstein was one of the many NeXT employees, along with Tevanian, who followed Jobs in his return to Apple.
Rubenstein had been the head of hardware at Next, where he spearheaded development of then-groundbreaking hardware as the magnesium-cased, Motorola-based NeXTcube and the NeXTstation, which Delicious Monster's Shipley called "one of the most perfect computers ever built."
The NeXT computers stood out not just for their high-style industrial design, but for inclusion of features such as Ethernet ports, extra RAM, a high-resolution (for the time) display and the NeXTSTEP operating system.
Some have said that the NeXTcube was the prime influence in Apple's Power Macintosh G4 Cube computer, which debuted in July 2000.
Though NeXT sold few of these sold in comparison to commodity PCs, NeXTcubes played a significant role in computing history.
Tim Berners-Lee used one to create the first Web browser in 1991, and John Carmack coded Wolfenstein 3D and Doom on NeXT hardware.
Next Page: Climbing the ladder.
At Apple, Rubenstein helped Jobs simplify and clarify the Macintosh product lineup, which had grown increasingly complex and diffuse under CEO Gil Amelio.
During his tenure, Rubenstein also oversaw the hardware design of the iMac, modern PowerBooks, the Xserve, the Mac mini and more powerful Power Macs.
In May of 2004, Apple went through an internal reorganization.
This move created two new components of the company; the existing hardware division, which had been under Rubenstein's eye, split into iPod and Macintosh divisions.
At the time, Jobs said that the iPod division was created to retain the company's focus, and that the reorganization was in the mold of Apple's creation of its successful retail and Applications divisions.
Rubenstein was assigned to the iPod division, leaving the Macintosh division, which oversaw hardware engineering, sales, support and operations, to Tim Cook, who was previously Apple's head of sales and operations.
Prior to joining Apple, Cook worked for Compaq as vice president of corporate materials, which entailed managing the procurement and handling of the company's product inventory.
Cook was named Apple's chief operating officer in October 2005, though he did not relinquish his role at the Macintosh division.
Some have speculated that Cook is being groomed as an eventual CEO candidate; he has filled in for Jobs in the past.
Also in October 2005, Apple announced Rubenstein's forthcoming retirement from senior vice president of the company's iPod division.
Taking his position was Tony Fadell, who joined Apple in 2001 as "the first member of [Apple's] iPod hardware engineering team," according to Fadell's official company biography.
Rubenstein's resignation went into effect officially April 14.
Rubenstein currently has a one-year consulting agreement with Apple. According to the contract's terms, Rubenstein will make himself available for a limited amount of time per week in exchange for a flat (and undisclosed) fee.
Before Fadell came to Apple, he was the co-founder, chief technology officer and director of engineering of the Mobile Computing Group at Phillips Electronics.
He also started his own company, Fuse, which developed a small music player that contained a hard disk.
In 2000, he showed this device to Apple, which hired him in early 2001 as a contractor to work on the company's iPod project.
Within a few months, Fadell was brought in full-time to oversee the iPod and iSight products. And three years later, in 2004, Fadell was named as vice president of the iPod Engineering Group, under Rubenstein.
This wasn't Fadell's first tenure at Apple, exactly. In 1992 he had joined General Magic, a company co-founded by Apple luminaries such as Andy Herzfeld and spun off from Apple in 1990 to explore PDA-like devices.
Though Tevanian's and Rubenstein's departures are watersheds in Apple's history, these moves most likely do not represent a break with history.
"In both cases—Tevanian and Rubinstein," said Gruber, "I think you've got guys who worked their butts off for years, managed a series of very successful large projects for NeXT and then Apple, earned small fortunes in Apple stock, and have now decided to enjoy their success."
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