Greg Joswiak replaces Phil Schiller as head of Apple marketing

This is the first I’ve ever heard of “Apple Fellows”. According to Wikipedia [0],<p>&gt; To recognize the best of its employees, Apple created the Apple Fellows program which awards individuals who make extraordinary technical or leadership contributions to personal computing while at the company. The Apple Fellowship has so far been awarded to individuals including Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Rod Holt, Alan Kay, Guy Kawasaki, Al Alcorn, Don Norman, Rich Page, and Steve Wozniak.<p>I wonder what qualifies “extraordinary”. For example, Chris Lattner, creator of Swift and LLVM, seems to have fit that adjective as well as anyone and yet his name is absent from this list.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Apple_Inc.#Corporate_affairs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Apple_Inc.#Corporate_affairs</a>

I’ve always loved seeing Phil Schiller’s presentations on stage in keynotes for several years, though in the last few years he stepped back and Apple started putting many more people (than before) on stage to present in the keynotes.<p>A few of his words or lines on stage have been fodder for people to argue on (“courage” when removing the headphone jack from iPhones) or make fun of (“can’t innovate my ass” when introducing the trash can Mac Pro that later went without any updates or news for years). But he was a natural and a master at presentations, IMO.<p>If one didn’t know about him and watched his presentation, they’d find it hard to believe that a “marketing” person could talk so well about tech.<p>Craig Federighi is another great presenter who brings in humor along with some puns involving tech terms (not all his jokes may land well, but you gotta give him credit for many that do).<p>In this mix, I don’t see Greg Joswiak in the same league. He may be a good senior VP of marketing, but a great story teller and presenter he’s not. Sorry, Greg, if you’re reading this. Those others have set standards that are difficult to beat.<p>I wish Phil well, and hope that he’s able to contribute to Apple for many more years to come.

I had to talk with my wife about her next home office. We sat down, and talked about a screen, a keyboard, a desk, everything. We looked at a new Macbook Air, maybe a Mac Mini, and ended up at a 21-inch iMac for her, because it has everything but the desk and chair. That discussion, with Shiller now leaving the position, was absolutely engineered by Shiller and his team to happen exactly the way it happened. His influence on computing is deep.

No need for corporate PR. Via verge: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;8&#x2F;4&#x2F;21354367&#x2F;apple-phil-schiller-fellow-greg-joswiak-head-marketing-store-events" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;8&#x2F;4&#x2F;21354367&#x2F;apple-phil-schill...</a><p>&gt;Apple’s longtime marketing chief, Phil Schiller, is stepping into a slightly smaller role after decades with the company. Schiller is dropping his role as senior vice president of worldwide marketing, but he’ll remain in charge of the App Store and Apple Events. Greg Joswiak, previously the head of product marketing, will take over Schiller’s former position as Apple’s overall marketing leader.

I saw some snap reactions that boiled down to “he doesn’t want to deal with the potential antitrust firestorm”, but also, the guy is 60, and has worked at what I can imagine must be a frenetic pace for like 30 years, and maybe he just wants to slow down a bit.

Phil Schiller, and the whole marketing group, are an underestimated part of Apple&#x27;s success over the past 20 years. It&#x27;s why there&#x27;s no company like Apple in the tech industry.

Many many moons ago, before the iPhone existed, I found myself reading an email from Steve Jobs while coding in the garage at 3:30AM.<p>The email exchange had to do with difficulties we were having working with Apple hardware in the context of hardware we were developing. I reached out to Steve at 3:00 AM and got a response thirty minutes later. After replying with a detailed explanation of the issues we encountered I got a one sentence reply back from Steve: &quot;I understand&quot;.<p>The next morning, actually, later that same morning, I got a call from someone from Apple. He said &quot;Steve asked me to take care of this&quot;. That person was Greg Joswiak. We were invited to come up to headquarters to discuss the issues and work out a path forward. I met him and many other members of the engineering team while there.<p>Small world.

Very glad Phil remains in control of AppStore mainly because he has <i>respect</i> for independent software developers. Eddy Cue, Hairforce One and Apple Employee #8 see them like unsigned musicians and should not be involved with developers in anyway.<p>What&#x27;s more is that it&#x27;s clear their new boss (Tim Apple), like millions of others, is only now beginning to realize that the &quot;gangster tactics&quot; (of using math to restrict app functionality) is not totally about about preventing malware, ensuring privacy and protecting the brand reputation with users. He seems almost blind-sided by the world governments moving to act on a level that even Billy and Balmy didn&#x27;t have to face after many years of actually killing the life&#x27;s work (and thus the life) of hundreds of earlier software professionals (RIP Jay Miner).

I legitimately cannot tell from the way this is worded if this is a promotion or if he&#x27;s stepping aside. I guess that&#x27;s intentional and means it&#x27;s the latter, right?

When Phil took over the App Store from Eddy Cue, he made substantial improvements in how developers were treated in amazingly short span of time. Developers should be very sad when he finally retires.

I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s the age (like Phil mentioned he wants to spend time with Family, Friends, Personal projects) or it&#x27;s the recent criticism that areas like App Store and others got.<p>Whatever I always enjoyed Phil Schiller on stage. While Jony Ive&#x27;s voiceover looked like a real marketing material, Phil&#x27;s presentations were always energetic and real. Especially his way of introducing new hardwares and processors. I&#x27;ll miss his presentations. Hope he gets good time to do what he wants!

I predict this is the end of Apple. The marketing is what made the Trillion dollar company, not the product.<p>Why would you change what works?<p>Utterly shocking, I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if the stock price plummets tomorrow.

Bye phil. Hope we can upgrade.