Jon Rubinstein

For the actor, see John Rubinstein.

Jonathan J Rubinstein (born 1956) is an American computer scientist and electrical engineer who was instrumental in the creation of the iPod, the portable music and video device first sold by Apple Computer Inc. in 2001. He was also responsible for the development of Apple’s iMac line. He has been elected to serve as a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Rubinstein left his position as senior vice president of Apple's iPod division on April 14, 2006. He became executive chairman of the board at Palm, Inc. after private-equity firm Elevation Partners completed a significant investment in the handheld manufacturer in October 2007.

At Palm, where Rubinstein leads the company's research, development and engineering, his first tasks included winnowing the company's product lines and restructuring R-and-D teams.

Early years and education

Rubinstein was born and raised in New York City. He is a graduate of the Horace Mann School, Class of 1974. He went to college and graduate school at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he received a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1978 and a master’s in the same field a year later. He later earned a M.S. in computer science from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Rubinstein’s first jobs in the computer industry were in Ithaca, where he worked at a local computer retailer and also served as a design consultant to an area computer company.

Early career

After graduate school, Rubinstein took a job with Hewlett-Packard in Colorado. He spent about two years in the company’s manufacturing engineering division, developing quality-control techniques and refining manufacturing processes. Later, Rubinstein worked on HP workstations.

Rubinstein left HP in 1986 to join a startup, Ardent Computer Corp., in Silicon Valley. While at Ardent, later renamed Stardent, he played an integral role in launching a pair of machines, the Titan Graphics Supercomputer and the Stardent 3000 Graphics Supercomputer.

Jobs and NeXT

In 1990, iconic Apple co-founder Steve Jobs approached Rubinstein to run hardware engineering at his latest venture, NeXT Inc. Rubinstein headed work on NeXT’s PowerPC workstation – a graphics powerhouse that was never released because the company abandoned the unforgiving margins of the hardware business in favor of a software-only approach.

After helping to dismantle NeXT’s manufacturing operations, Rubinstein went on to start another company, Power House Systems Inc. That company, later renamed Firepower Systems Inc., was backed by Canon Inc. and used technology developed at NeXT. It developed and built high-end systems using the PowerPC chip. Motorola bought the business in 1996.

Apple years

After the sale, Rubinstein planned on an extended break and travel. But Jobs, at this point an informal consultant to Apple, asked Rubinstein whether he wanted to work for the Cupertino, Calif., computer maker.

Many didn't consider Apple a plum assignment at the time. The company's reputation as an innovator was waning, as were profits - Rubinstein's arrival in February 1997 came on the heels of a year in which Apple lost $816 million. But Rubinstein wanted to give it a shot because, he told the New York Times, "Apple was the last innovative high-volume computer maker in the world."

Rubinstein joined Apple as senior vice president of hardware engineering and a member of its executive staff. He was responsible for hardware development, industrial design and low-level software development, and contributed heavily to Apple's technology roadmap and product strategy.

When Rubinstein arrived, his work was cut out for him. The company sold no fewer than 15 product lines, yet its low-end consumer products were widely derided as technological also-rans. Engineering and product development were similarly troubled. Multiple engineering teams worked on the same product independently of each other, and the various lines were built with non-interchangeable parts. Rubinstein fixed both problems.

He also embarked on an extensive cost-cutting plan that axed both research projects and engineers. Expenses were cut in half. After vetting the projects in the pipeline, the one that appeared ready to deliver was the G3, a fast PowerPC-based desktop machine. When it was released at the end of 1997, Apple had what it hadn't in several years: a cutting-edge desktop machine that was on a technological par with Intel-based competitors.

In 1998, Apple's lack of an entry-level consumer desktop was soon to be history. While the G3 was being readied, the company was hatching the idea for the colorful, egg-shaped iMac. Rubinstein assembled a team and then spurred his much-leaner engineering corps to have the product ready to roll in 11 months - a timeline they considered impossible. When it came out, the iMac relied heavily on the USB peripheral standard - not an obvious choice, given that the technology was widely available for several years and little used. The iMac also shipped without a floppy disk drive. Rubinstein was responsible for both decisions.

Future rollouts under Rubinstein's watch included the G4 and G5 series of Macintoshes. The machines, while considered technical standouts, were still hampered by a public perception that they were "slower" than similar, Intel-based PCs because their CPUs had lower clock speeds. Rubinstein helped diminish that misconception in a speech following the 2001 rollout of the G4 - and popularized a term, the 'megahertz myth,' to describe how an Apple running at 733 megahertz could be faster than an Intel processor running at 1.7 gigahertz.

As the Macintosh started becoming successful again, the company began to pursue a strategy that would put the computer at the center of consumers' electronic entertainment. Turning the Mac into a digital hub which would connect with a range of devices formed the basis of Apple's strategy moving forward in the marketplace.

As part of this strategy, Apple developed software to edit videos (iMovie), organize photos (iPhoto) and store and play music (iTunes).

Developing the iPod

Unfortunately for Apple, far fewer consumers purchased Macintoshes than personal computers that used the Windows operating system. So instead of focusing strictly on the hub itself, Apple began discussing creating a device that could tie into one. A host of products were considered, including video and still cameras and Palm-like handhelds. Apple went with music players, though, partly because existing products were weak. When introducing the iPod in 2001, Steve Jobs said, "Music's a part of everyone's life ... and because it's a part of everyone's life, it's a very large target market all around the world. It knows no boundaries."

Jobs charged Rubinstein with coming up with a portable music player on a rushed, 8-month timetable. It was Rubinstein who recognized the utility of the iPod’s key technology, the tiny, 1.8-inch hard disk drive on which music is stored; he came across it while on a routine visit to Toshiba Corp. Engineers there had developed the drive, but were not sure how it could be used. And it was Rubinstein who assembled and managed a team of hardware and software engineers to ready the product.

The team’s engineers needed to overcome a number of hurdles, including figuring out how to play music off a spinning hard drive for more than 10 hours without wiping out a battery charge. Rubinstein’s production contacts proved invaluable, too; the iPod’s sleek, minimalist design, with each high-gloss metal back able to be personalized, was a mass-manufacturing triumph.

The success of the first-generation iPod was almost overnight. The business became so important to Apple that the iPod was ultimately spun off into its own division, which Rubinstein took over.

Other iPod models were released on a regular basis, increasing the device’s capacity, decreasing its size, and adding features including color screens, photo display and video playback. By early 2008, more than 119 million iPods had been sold, making it not only the most successful portable media player on the market today but one of the most popular consumer electronics products ever.

While Rubinstein’s fingerprints are on the iPod’s development, he was also instrumental in creating a robust secondary market for accessories such as speakers, chargers, docking ports, backup batteries and other add-ons. That gear, produced by a network of independent companies, generates more than $1 billion in annual sales.

In the 2007 fiscal year, the iPod generated $8.3 billion in revenue, or about a third of Apple's sales.

Affiliations

• Member, National Academy of Engineering
• Senior Member, IEEE
• Director, Immersion Corp.
• Member, Cornell Alumni Council
• Member, Cornell Silicon Valley Advisors
• Fellow, World Technology Network
• Member, Consumer Electronics Association Board of Industry Leaders

External links

• Cornell Engineering Magazine, “Behind the Music,” Fall 2005
• Business Week, “A Computer Maker’s Power Move,” March 7, 1994
• IEEE Spectrum, Feb. 2000
• Apple Computer Inc., “megahertz myth” video
• Apple, press release, Oct. 14, 2005
• USA Today, “Apple turns a profit – And a corner,” Oct. 17, 1996
• New York Times, “Apple and PC's, Both Given Up for Dead, Are Rising Anew,” April 26, 1999
• NYT, “The iPod Ecosystem; Add-Ons Have Become a Billion-Dollar Bonanza,” Feb. 3, 2006
• Wall Street Journal, “Designing Duo Helps Shape Apple’s Fortunes” July 18, 2001
• Fortune, “Apple's 21st-Century Walkman CEO Steve Jobs thinks he has something pretty nifty. And if he's right, he might even spook Sony and Matsushita,” Nov. 12, 2001
• Wired News, "Straight Dope on the iPod's Birth" Oct 17, 2006