Profile of Kevin Lynch, the VP in charge of wearable software at Apple
Meet Kevin Lynch, once a Flash point, now winding up Apple Watch — The exec, who clashed with Apple while at Adobe, now runs the team working on wearable software at Apple — a vital role as the company expands into a new business.
Context & Ripple Effects
The profile lands mid-launch-week: iOS 8 shipped the day before with HealthKit among its new frameworks, and the first HealthKit-enabled apps were hitting the App Store — the data plumbing the watch's software will sit on top of. CNET's angle is the man rather than the product: Kevin Lynch, the former Adobe executive whose Flash-era clashes with Apple made him an unlikely hire, now runs wearable software inside Cupertino.
That arc has been building in the trade press all year — 9to5Mac's February look at the fashion-and-fitness experts behind Apple's wearable push framed the watch as a talent story before it was a product story. The syndication trail (Business Insider, iPhone in Canada) shows the exec-profile genre traveling widely during launch week, when every Apple Watch detail was being mined.
First-order effects
- Lynch's confirmed remit — leading the Apple Watch software team as VP of wearable software — puts a former platform rival in charge of the interface layer for Apple's first new product category under this leadership generation, weeks before the device reaches customers.
Second-order effects
- With HealthKit apps just beginning to roll out on iOS 8, Lynch's team owns the wrist-side endpoint of that health-data framework, making app developers' HealthKit integrations effectively dependent on decisions made by an executive hired from the company Apple once fought over Flash.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's new categories are run by software executives recruited from former adversaries — a hiring model where platform-war veterans build the next platform, and individual leaders become identified with whole product lines rather than features.
The trend: Apple is staffing its wearable business as a software-led health platform, drawing leadership from the very companies it once battled over developer platforms.