Jon Rubinstein

Jonathan J. "Jon" Rubinstein (born October 1956) is an American electrical engineer who played an instrumental role in the development of the iMac and iPod, the portable music and video device first sold by Apple Computer Inc. in 2001.

He is a graduate of the Horace Mann School, class of 1975.

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.

While at Cornell, Rubinstein was a member of the student-run radio station on campus, WVBR.

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.

After graduating 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.

In 1990, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs approached Rubinstein to run hardware engineering at his latest venture, NeXT.

Rubinstein headed work on NeXT’s RISC workstation – a graphics powerhouse that was never released because in 1993, the company abandoned its floundering 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.

That company, later renamed Firepower Systems, 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.

After Apple's purchase of NeXT, Rubinstein had planned on an extended vacation to travel.

But Jobs, now an unpaid consultant for Apple, invited Rubinstein to work with him for Apple.

At the time, Apple was losing industry support.

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 US$816 million).

Rubinstein joined Apple anyway because, as 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.

Rubinstein took on an immense workload upon his arrival.

The company sold over 15 product lines, nearly all of which were derided as inferior to other computers available at the time.

Internally, Apple also suffered from mismanagement of its hardware teams.

Multiple teams often worked on the same product independently of each other, and very little attention was directed towards making all of the product lines fully compatible with each other.

In 2005, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for the design of innovative personal computers and consumer electronics that have defined and led new industries.

He is also a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Rubinstein was born and raised in New York City.

His mother was an academic who received a PhD from Rutgers University.

He 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.

He became CEO of Palm in 2009, replacing former CEO Ed Colligan.

Following Hewlett-Packard Co.'s purchase of Palm on July 1, 2010, Rubinstein became an executive at HP.

Rubinstein has served on the board of directors of online retailer Amazon.com since December 2010.

On January 27, 2012, Rubinstein announced he had officially left HP.

From May 2013 to May 2016, he was also on the board of semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm.

From March 2016 to March 2017, he was co-CEO of investment firm Bridgewater Associates.