Is Craig Federighi The New Face Of Apple?

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Craig-Federighi-Tim-Cook

Steve Jobs used to take care of Apple’s biggest product unveilings prior to his passing in 2011, and since then, they’ve been shared around among the top company executives. Scott Forstall handled everything iOS, but his departure from Cupertino last year left the door open for someone else.

At WWDC on Monday, Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, took to the stage to present iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and he’s now being hailed the perfect frontman for Apple, with developers, fans, and even investors impressed by his pitch.

Federighi has been a part of Apple since it acquired Steve Jobs’s NeXT back in 1997, but having spent much of his time working on enterprise software, he’s been mostly a background figure.

That changed last October when Forstall was ousted by Applereportedly due to his refusal to apologize for the whole Maps debacle — and Federighi became responsible for iOS and OS X. Now he’s the man everyone wants to hear from when Apple’s conferences come around.

And he does a great job of presenting new products.

“Mr. Federighi appeared at ease responding to the audience and paused to say he, too, liked certain features when they cheered,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “Developers said they were impressed with the performance.”

Federighi, dressed in jeans and a shirt like the rest of Apple’s executive team, cracked jokes as he showed off new iOS features, and frequently took humorous shots at Apple and indeed Forstall for the widely criticized skeuomorphic designs in previous iOS releases.

“We completely ran out of green felt and wood,” he said, while describing iOS 7’s drastically different look. He also joked about how OS X’s new Calendar app is able to stay on the screen without any virtual stitching.

Federighi was “personable, effusive and passionate about all the stuff he was announcing,” at Monday’s keynote, said Nik Fletcher, a product manager with Realmac Software. “You could say he set the tone and personality for the new Apple that appeared yesterday.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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