Processor chips, the silicon brains inside the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV: What it takes to head the Design, QA and Supply Chain
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
At the center of all this is Srouji, 51, an Israeli who joined Apple after jobs at Intel and IBM. He’s compact, he’s intense, and he speaks Arabic, Hebrew, and French. His English is lightly accented and, when the subject has anything to do with Apple, nonspecific bordering on koanlike. “Hard is good. Easy is a waste of time,” he says when asked about increasingly thin iPhone designs. “The chip architects at Apple are artists, the engineers are wizards,” he answers another question. He’ll elaborate a bit when the topic is general. “When designers say, ‘This is hard,’ ” he says, “my rule of thumb is if it’s not gated by physics, that means it’s hard but doable.”
Srouji was born in Haifa, a port city in northern Israel. He was the third child of four. His family was Christian Arab, a minority within a minority in the Jewish state. “Haifa is one of the most integrated cities in Israel,” he says. “You have Christians, you have Muslims, Jews, Bahá’ís, you have any religion you want, and everyone lives together in peaceful harmony. Integration worked for me.”
Srouji’s father owned a metal pattern-making business outside the city, and from age 10, Srouji spent weekends and summers helping him pattern wooden moldings that were used to make engine parts, medical equipment, and other machinery. His father had an unusual philosophy: He would undercharge customers for complicated work while overcharging for easier jobs. “If there was a very complex thing that he’d never done, he wanted to do it,” Srouji says.
His father, who died in 2000, constantly reminded him not to get comfortable in the family business. Education was more important. In high school, Srouji got perfect grades in math, physics, chemistry, and science. He was introduced to computers by an instructor who also taught at the nearby Technion Israel Institute of Technology, one of the world’s top engineering schools. “I fell in love,” Srouji says.
I recommend the read at
The Most Important Apple Executive You’ve Never Heard Of
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-johny-srouji-apple-chief-chipmaker/
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