Apple Executive Board Makes Room for Two More

Sources are reporting that Apple has called in "two new faces to its executive team." One of those faces is Scott Forstall, the guy who offered a tour of the iPhone SDK at Apple's March

6 event in Cupertino. The other figure is Bob Mansfield. They are now Senior Vice Presidents of iPhone software and Mac hardware engineering respectively.

Both answer to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, but Mac engineering leader Bon Mansfield will first report every move they make to Tim Cook, who now oversees the work of the Mac engineering teams, according to 9to5mac.

Forstall will be responsible for the development of iPhone software, "including the user interface, applications, frameworks and the operating system," Apple says; Bob Mansfield will be leading the guys responsible with building the MacBook Air and the iMac.

Some of you might remember Scott Forstall's superb tour of the iPhone SDK, but also Apple's partners stepping up on stage at Town Hall, to present the applications developed in just two weeks with the newly-released iPhone SDK.

Forstall has recently spoken at WWDC 2007 about 3rd Party Developer Applications for the iPhone, explaining how professionals could develop applications for the iPhone using AJAX. Apple's (now) Senior Vice President of iPhone software also spoke at WWDC 2006 as "VP of Platform Experience," version to-com of Mac OS X, namely 10.5 (Leopard). During his presentation, he covered features such as Time Machine, Core Animation and the improved Spotlight.

It is strongly believed that Apple's move shows exactly how important the iPhone is to them (not that it wasn't beginning to show). 9to5mac also points out that, upon their promotions, Mansfield and Forstall were each awarded a grant for 25,000 restricted Apple shares, estimated at over $4.17 million as of May 30 (not scheduled to vest until March 2010).