Apple updates leadership page with new hires, shift in Siri lead to Craig Federighi

AppleInsider

An update to Apple's executive summary page has added a few new faces and some new particulars about responsibilities -- most notably the shift in responsibility for Apple's Siri to Craig Federighi, and away from services chief Eddy Cue.

Added to the page are Deirdre O'Brien as the Vice President of People. O'Brien was promoted to the position in July, and manages Apple's human relations department and Apple University. She reports directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams.

O'Brien earned a bachelor's degree in Operations Management from Michigan State University and an MBA from San Jose State University. She has been at Apple for nearly 30 years.

Isabel Ge Mahe was promoted to Apple's Vice President and Managing Director of Greater China in July. She joined Apple in 2008 as vice president of Wireless Technologies, and played a vital part in the development of China-specific features for iOS, according to Apple.

Mahe was born in Shenyang, Liaoning, and is fluent in Mandarin. She earned both Bachelor and Master of Electrical Engineering degrees from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she also serves as an industry advisor to the school's EE/CS department.

Siri officially changes hands

As part of the executive profile page changes, Siri has also migrated from one executive to another. In little more than one word being shifted from one job description to another, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi is now in charge of the project.

It is not clear when precisely Federighi took command of -- or directed to assume responsibility for -- the technology. Prior to the shift, Senior Vice President, Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue ran the project.

Federighi has been running the Siri demonstrations at WWDC for the last two years.

tundraboy

Moving Siri to Federighi from Cue is good.  Siri is involved in a very critical technological race and should rightly be under the purview of a tech dev guy.  Let Cue focus on dealmaking.

rogifan_new

tundraboy said:

Moving Siri to Federighi from Cue is good.  Siri is involved in a very critical technological race and should rightly be under the purview of a tech dev guy.  Let Cue focus on dealmaking.

They still need to give iCloud to someone else.

spamsandwich

Cue is dead weight and mark my words, Jeff Williams will take the reigns from Cook once Tim leaves.

randominternetperson

Is it ironic or predictable that the only black person on the senior leadership team is the VP for Inclusion and Diversity? Of course the alternative (a white man in that position) would have even worse optics. They should at least move her picture to the middle of the group, so it doesn't look like she was tacked on (even though it's alphabetical).

rayz2016

randominternetperson said:

Is it ironic or predictable that the only black person on the senior leadership team is the VP for Inclusion and Diversity? Of course the alternative (a white man in that position) would have even worse optics. They should at least move her picture to the middle of the group, so it doesn't look like she was tacked on (even though it's alphabetical).

If they put her of sequence then the optics would look worse. 

randominternetperson

tundraboy said:

Moving Siri to Federighi from Cue is good.  Siri is involved in a very critical technological race and should rightly be under the purview of a tech dev guy.  Let Cue focus on dealmaking.

Perhaps this signals a shift from Siri being 100% dependent on Apple's data center infrastructure (Cue's area).  We can only hope.  If you think of Siri as part of the OS then of course it should be responsive even when offline.

spamsandwich

randominternetperson said:

Is it ironic or predictable that the only black person on the senior leadership team is the VP for Inclusion and Diversity? Of course the alternative (a white man in that position) would have even worse optics. They should at least move her picture to the middle of the group, so it doesn't look like she was tacked on (even though it's alphabetical).

"Diversity" is progressive Newspeak. Hiring based on performance and individual talent is tantamount to thoughtcrime.

randominternetperson

Rayz2016 said:

randominternetperson said:

Is it ironic or predictable that the only black person on the senior leadership team is the VP for Inclusion and Diversity? Of course the alternative (a white man in that position) would have even worse optics. They should at least move her picture to the middle of the group, so it doesn't look like she was tacked on (even though it's alphabetical).

If they put her of sequence then the optics would look worse. 

Of course.  But if she conveniently changed her name from Smith to Goldsmith, problem solved!  (just kidding of course; not really a problem at all).

edited September 2017

sessamoid

randominternetperson said:

Is it ironic or predictable that the only black person on the senior leadership team is the VP for Inclusion and Diversity? Of course the alternative (a white man in that position) would have even worse optics. They should at least move her picture to the middle of the group, so it doesn't look like she was tacked on (even though it's alphabetical).

Lisa Jackson is also African-American. 

simply258

sessamoid said:

Lisa Jackson is also African-American. 

What what?

doozydozen

Here's hoping Apple continues to strip responsibilities off Eddy, until he's left with only a stapler and works in the basement on weekends. 

harry wild

Apple executive responsible for Siri is on the hot seat!  Siri if anything is now stupider then ever!  I try it again for a day and it now apologizes after you call it stupid!  It a riot to use for laughs!

6502

Seems like only 2 of the 8 actually do something important.

macxpress

So someone please tell me again...what exactly does Eddy Cue do? Its always HIS responsibilities that get passed off to someone else and everything else he does seems like its not performing very well. Why does Apple keep him around? 

6502

macxpress said:

So someone please tell me again...what exactly does Eddy Cue do? Its always HIS responsibilities that get passed off to someone else and everything else he does seems like its not performing very well. Why does Apple keep him around? 

He's in charge of Apple's Pink Shirt Department (PSD). A very important role.

zoetmb

SpamSandwich said:

randominternetperson said:

Is it ironic or predictable that the only black person on the senior leadership team is the VP for Inclusion and Diversity? Of course the alternative (a white man in that position) would have even worse optics. They should at least move her picture to the middle of the group, so it doesn't look like she was tacked on (even though it's alphabetical).

"Diversity" is progressive Newspeak. Hiring based on performance and individual talent is tantamount to thoughtcrime.

Ridiculous.  You can't understand how to develop, market and sell to the world (or even to the U.S.) without having a diverse management team and staff.  Trying to achieve diversity and hiring based on performance and talent are not mutually exclusive.   When almost everyone is a middle- or upper-class white guy, a company makes the same mistakes that GM made back in the 1970's when its golf course Cadillac driving white executives didn't believe that the masses really wanted more reliable, fuel-efficient, compact cars, which enabled the Europeans and Japanese to make tremendous inroads in the U.S. market.  

Even when it comes to things like user interface, there are cultural, age and gender differences that impact the way that people think and use products.   Without diversity, that doesn't get recognized and built into the products.   Diversity makes for good business and that's aside from the issues of fairness.   

Or do you think that upper middle-class white guys can understand the needs of everyone in every market?

ireland

Look how much better the App Store got when Cue lost control over it. Hope same happens to Siri. Dictation for me is barely better than when Siri launched.

macplusplus

zoetmb said:

SpamSandwich said:

randominternetperson said:

Is it ironic or predictable that the only black person on the senior leadership team is the VP for Inclusion and Diversity? Of course the alternative (a white man in that position) would have even worse optics. They should at least move her picture to the middle of the group, so it doesn't look like she was tacked on (even though it's alphabetical).

"Diversity" is progressive Newspeak. Hiring based on performance and individual talent is tantamount to thoughtcrime.

Ridiculous.  You can't understand how to develop, market and sell to the world (or even to the U.S.) without having a diverse management team and staff.  Trying to achieve diversity and hiring based on performance and talent are not mutually exclusive.   When almost everyone is a middle- or upper-class white guy, a company makes the same mistakes that GM made back in the 1970's when its golf course Cadillac driving white executives didn't believe that the masses really wanted more reliable, fuel-efficient, compact cars, which enabled the Europeans and Japanese to make tremendous inroads in the U.S. market.  

Even when it comes to things like user interface, there are cultural, age and gender differences that impact the way that people think and use products.   Without diversity, that doesn't get recognized and built into the products.   Diversity makes for good business and that's aside from the issues of fairness.   

Or do you think that upper middle-class white guys can understand the needs of everyone in every market?

That "differential" approach is called fragmentation in Apple's parleance... "To every race its screen size", there is no such thing. Apple is totalitarian in technology markets, not "diversitarian"... That is what Samsung does, diversifying its products based on the race of its clients.

"Bon pour l'Orient" was the motto of 19th Century colonialism. Take care to not "regress" when trying to "progress".

edited September 2017

macgui

Rayz2016 said:
If they put her [out] of sequence then the optics would look worse bad. 

Fixed that for you. The only way it would 'look worse' is if someone was too stupid to understand alphabetizing in the first place. That kind of stupid may be unfixable. Placating it is a stupidity of its own. No need to compound one level of stupidity with another.

macgui

I don't know enough about Eddy Cue to know what he does or where is strengths lie. It seems to me too, that his name comes up more often when it regarding transfers of duties.

I like that The Hair now has jurisdiction over Siri. I try to use Siri a lot. When it works, it's very convenient. My enunciation/elocution are good yet a lot of times Siri doesn't hear me correctly. And the functionality is too limited given the time spent in development.

There also needs to be some device native component for Siri. Poor throughput or lack of internet leave it floundering or dead in the water. Here's hoping for some movement in Siri development.