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3/20/13

On Kevin Lynch not Fixing iCloud

Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch, is headed to Apple. Adobe released a statement to All Things D this afternoon announcing the move. Lynch has a history with Apple, including penning this blog post (@parislemon dug that up) in February of 2010.
Of course, technology moves on and Adobe has now stopped supporting mobile Flash. Clearly, the most logical move was for Lynch, who crafted Adobe’s response to Apple's Flashless iPhone, to join Apple.
Lynch’s corporate bio mentions a possible reason for Apple's interest: Lynch’s position at Adobe focused on “the company's technology innovation across three vectors: multiscreen, cloud and social computing.” Apple  isn’t concerned about the first ‘vector’, but The Verge posits that parts two and three must look enticing to the company that gave us the likes of Ping and Mobile Me.
Unconfirmed Speculation: This could mean changes in Apple’s future, or it could be almost meaningless. Lynch will hold the title of VP of Technology and report to Senior VP of Technologies Bob Mansfield (those two title won’t confuse anyone). If Lynch were being brought aboard to help fix iCloud, it would make more sense for him to be reporting to Eddy Cue, the Senior VP of Internet Software and Services, who is responsible for services like iCloud, Siri and the iTunes Store.
Bringing Lynch in as a VP under Bob Mansfield, who is responsible for Apple’s wireless and semiconductor teams, means that Lynch will have little, if anything to do with Apple’s cloud services. It would be difficult to guess what a cloud services executive will be doing in a hardware division.
Apple has often missed the mark when it comes to cloud services. From Mobile Me outages to iCloud failures to censoring spam-filters. One would think Apple would jump at the chance to have someone experienced in building and managing those types of services join their team, but it looks like Apple would rather use him elsewhere.
Lynch has held an important position at a successful technology company and has just taken a senior position at another successful technology company. He will have an impact at Apple, but it is doubtful that that impact will be on Apple's cloud services.

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