The time: January 2007; The place: Steve Jobs announces the first-gen iPhone. The event – around the 5.15 point in this clip you’ll see the Apple boss add a name to his favourites list, and then delete another.
“Tony’s changing his number, so I won’t need that”, said Jobs as he deleted him. Tony of course is iPod father, Tony Fadell, whose departure was revealed last week. I’ve said it before – he’s honest is Jobs, but never transparent. Daring Fireball found this first.
Yet more hassles for Apple’s currently leaderless iPod team, following the departure of Tony Fadell, the complexities of Apple’s hiring of a replacement in the form of Mark Papermaster, now two Chinese residents have filed lawsuits against three companies including Apple, asserting that the iPod infringes on their patent.
The Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court opened a public court session for the case on November 11.
Apple’s iPod plans took a hit last night when a New York judge banned newly-recruited team leader, Mark Papermaster, from taking employment with the Cupertino company.
Apple this week announced it had hired Papermaster away from IBM, where he led that company’s server operations. Papermaster is to replace Tony Fadell (who resigned Apple this week) as head of Apple’s iPod group. (Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering).
Tony Fadell, the senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple is leaving the company for personal reasons.
Fadell – credited as the “father” of the iPod and part of the team involved in iPhone development – joined Apple equipped with a vision for the iPod. He has been part of the iPod group since 2001.
“Tony’s idea was to take an MP3 player, build a Napster music sale service to complement it, and build a company around it,” a report explains. “Tony had the business idea.”
Fadell approached several companies with his idea – including Real Networks – and was rejected by them all, with the exception of Apple (and we can see why other firms bit the dust in digital music).
Fadell is to be replaced by former IBM executive Mark Papermaster, recently recruited by Apple from IBM, where he led PowerPC chip development and IBM’s Edge Server team.
Apple’s senior vice president of its iPod division, Tony Fadell, made a rare public appearance this week, opening an engineering and technology centre at a US school.
While there, he made a few statements intended to motivate students to get into engineering, and revealing a few morsels and tidbits for anyone involved in digital music who watches the iPod a little.
Fadell stressed that engineers are in demand across the US, revealing that half of his team at Apple had to be brought in from other countries. Fadell also gave iPods to the school administrators and the top 20 school students.