Craig Federighi: Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, the face of iOS

Craig Federighi was born in California, and is currently Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering. At the Cupertino company, he is responsible for the development of Apple's operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The teams he supervises are responsible for delivering the software inside Apple's products, from the frameworks, through applications all the way to the user interface. 

Craig Federighi: Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, the man behind iOS as we know it today 

Federighi has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He's known as the figure responsible for the software at Apple since 2012 and reports directly to Tim Cook. 

Craig Federighi may be responsible for the software at Apple, but he's also a pretty prominent figure during Apple's annual WWDC conferences (developer conferences) when he often presents the new apps, features, and updates to come with new iOS, iPadOS, and macOS software. 

He first joined Apple in 1996, when the Cupertino company acquired NeXT, a company then led by none other than Steve Jobs, where Federighi was working as a lead of the development of Enterprise Objects Framework. He then left Apple four years later, in 1999, and joined another company called Ariba, where he served as Chief Technology Officer. 

He officially returned to Apple in 2009. His initial role at the company at that time was to lead macOS engineering - Apple had just finished MacOS X Snow Leopard, which was an operating system highly regarded as being fast and responsive. 

In August 2012, Federighi was promoted to Senior Vice President (the role reports directly to the company's CEO Tim Cook) and also took responsibility for iOS, the operating system that powers the iPhone. With all the new responsibilities, his stage time during Apple events grew, and he became a notable figure during keynotes. 

He's still currently working as SVP of Apple, and he oversees the development of iOS and macOS. He also appears regularly during Apple keynotes to present new software updates and features in an energetic, yet calm and knowledgeable way. Often time his presentations include jokes or fun ways to make transitions between different products to be presented (such as running in slow-mo during WWDC 2022 towards iPadOS). 

Craig Federighi during a cinematic and funny transition at WWDC 2022

Since his return to Apple in 2009 and his subsequent promotion in 2012, Federighi has been the person to showcase the latest updates to iOS. In 2017, he introduced the Face ID feature on the iPhone X (curiously enough, he failed to demo it because apparently, some people had triggered it before the event and the iPhone required a passcode when Federighi attempted to unlock it). 

In 2020, he was the lead presenter who showcased a majority of Apple's advancements, talking about the App Store, the new iOS 14, which introduced a lot of new features, including the redesigned home-screen widgets, the App Library, and App Clips. He also talked about iPadOS 14 and macOS 11 "Big Sur", and also defended the iOS 14.5 App Tracking Transparency feature against criticism (mainly from companies such as Facebook, in an interview with The Independent). 

In 2021, he lifted the veil on iOS 15, and then, in the following year, iOS 16. This year, he was the person to announce all the new features that are to come in iOS 17, such as personalized phone calls, live transcripts of voicemail messages, check-in for iMessage, missed FaceTime call messages, and many other features. 

Outside of work, Craig Federighi keeps things rather private. He's married and has four children.