Henri Lamiraux, Apple’s top VP of engineering for the iOS platform has left the company after 23 years. Lamiraux started as a Mac software engineer in the early 90’s, and joined Scott Forstall’s iPhone OS team in 2005.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Henri’s reason for leaving is simply ‘retirement.’ But his talents will surely be missed, as he was in charge of a number of important aspects in iOS such as developing the stock applications…
“He says that he retired from Apple a “couple of weeks” ago, following the release of iOS 7.0.3. Lamiraux decided a “little while ago” that iOS 7 would be his last release.
Sources within Apple’s iOS division say Lamiraux is respected and he was in charge of developing the applications that come with iOS. The executive also led feature-implementation across the operating system, and he managed both bug-fixing processes and feature distribution to consumers. He also managed the frameworks within the operating system that power features and allow developers to build applications.”
Lamiraux’s departure comes just a year after Apple’s major executive shakeup which saw the ousting of Scott Forstall, and various role reassignments. It’s seen as a significant loss, at a critical time, with the recent iOS 7 redesign.
Despite this, however, 9to5Mac says that the iOS team is still ‘moving strong’ and has already begun work on iOS 8. The update, which is expected to debut in H2 of next year, is said to include new Maps and iOS in the Car features.