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Phil Schiller

Senior Vice President - Worldwide Marketing

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Phil Schiller rejoined Apple in 1997 as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, the same year that Steve Jobs returned. Phil is a well recognized Apple executive with his regular, enthusiastic stage presence at Apple events. He is also known for personally addressing customers’ product concerns. Some of his major accomplishments include the rise in popularity of Mac computers, innovating in the mobile phone space with iPhone, and spearheading the digital music revolution with iTunes and iPod. Also, he is supposedly credited with conceiving the click wheel idea for the original iPod.

Phil first started at Apple in 1987 as a Product Marketing Manager. He went on to work as the Director of Product Marketing at FirePower Systems and then as the Vice President of Marketing at Macromedia before he returned to Apple after a decade. Even though his Bachelor’s degree is in Biology from Boston University, he has a background as a programmer and systems analyst in addition to his almost thirty years of marketing and management experience.

WSJ profiles Phil Schiller, who is working nearly 80 hours a week defending the App Store

As Apple continues to face App Store battles around the world, it’s leaning heavily on Phil Schiller, its former Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. A new report from The Wall Street Journal gives an interesting look at how Schiller, who now holds the title of Apple Fellow, is still working 80-hour weeks to defend the App Store against antitrust allegations and developer criticism.

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Former App Store director criticizes review process, blames Phil Schiller for app rejections

Apple App Store

Phillip Shoemaker is a former App Store director who was responsible for leading app approvals until he left the company in 2016. Since then, Shoemaker has publicly criticized Apple for its strict App Store rules. In a new interview with MobileGamer.biz, the executive – now the CEO of Identity.com – said that the App Store guidelines are tricky and blamed Phil Schiller for rejecting many apps.

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Phil Schiller says SD card slot and other ports ‘probably not’ ever returning to MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro SD card reader Phil Schiller interview

Along with the debut of the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple SVP Phil Schiller shared more about designing the scissor switch Magic Keyboard for the notebook, how pros’ top request was to have a physical escape key, and more in an interview with CNET. YouTuber Jonathan Morrison was also able to sit down with Schiller and dive into some questions including the new thermal system, six-speaker setup, and even whether Apple will ever bring back the SD card reader to the MacBook Pro.


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Phil Schiller talks WWDC history, the art of live demos, and more during Accidental Tech Podcast

Yesterday evening, Apple executive Phil Schiller made a surprise appearance on the Accidental Tech Podcast with Marco Arment, John Siracusa, and Casey Liss. During the interview, Schiller talked about the history and goals of WWDC, how Apple works to make WWDC more accessible to everyone, the art of live demos, and more.


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Phil Schiller joins the Accidental Tech Podcast to talk about WWDC 2019, more

The latest episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, released earlier today, includes an hour-long interview with Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller. He joins the show to talk about the recently announced 2019 edition of WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference, which takes place in San Jose from June 3 through June 7.


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Report: Phil Schiller has a friendly ‘NFW’ shorthand for killing bad ideas

Phil Schiller NFW

A new report from The Information today takes a look at 180 influential leaders at Apple who are molding the future of the company. Among the topics discussed including Tim Cook and his management style and the rise of other leaders at the company, is an interesting detail about a “NFW” shorthand that SVP Phil Schiller allegedly uses to shoot down bad ideas.


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Phil Schiller talks about the gamble of dropping the Home button; says iMac Pro ‘days away’

iMac Pro release date has now been confirmed as December 14.

British gadget magazine T3 has an interesting interview with Apple SVP Phil Schiller in which he talks about the ‘gamble’ the company took in dropping the Home button from the iPhone X.

He also revealed that the iMac Pro is just days away from launch …


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Phil Schiller discusses iPhone 10 year anniversary, downplays voice-only interfaces like Amazon Echo’s Alexa

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On the Backchannel blog, Steven Levy has posted a concise interview with Apple SVP Phil Schiller timed with the iPhone’s tenth anniversary. The post includes Levy’s anecdotes about Steve Jobs back in 2007 at the original iPhone launch followed up with some questions to Schiller about the success of the iPhone looking back and looking forward.

Regarding voice-only personal assistant devices like the Amazon Echo’s Alexa, Schiller says that the best intelligent assistant is the one that’s always with you, and that you can’t discount the value of a color display to present information …


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Apple working with Consumer Reports to understand MacBook Pro battery results and 1st ‘do not recommend’ rating

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Consumer Reports yesterday dropped a bombshell on Apple, making the new MacBook Pro the first MacBook ever to not receive the publication’s recommendation. As for its reasoning, Consumer Reports explained that the inconsistent, yet sometimes impressive, battery life was too big of an issue to overlook.

Now, Apple Marketing executive Phil Schiller says that the company is working with Consumer Reports to “understand” the tests.

Working with CR to understand their battery tests. Results do not match our extensive lab tests or field data

That’s what’s so ironic about this: Consumer Reports reported a three and a half hour test on the MacBook Pro, which if you’ve used one like me, know is completely possible with some serious CPU-intensive tasks. But then again tested in the 18-19+ hour range which is totally unbelievable, even if just the screen was on. So if anything, this test is in Apple’s favor.


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Phil Schiller again breaks down why new MacBook Pro is limited to 16GB RAM, citing battery & logic board design

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The new MacBook Pros have been met with a wide array of responses thus far, with some praising the new machines and others viewing them as a step back for a variety of reasons. One common question since the announcement of the new models, however, has centered around why the machines max out at 16GB of RAM.

While Phil Schiller originally penned this limitation on battery life concerns, a new email from the Apple executive offers a bit more insight as to the reasoning…


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Schiller: Apple tried touch screen MacBooks but doesn’t work for iMacs, landed on Touch Bar instead

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Despite what companies like Microsoft may be doing and what some customers continue asking for, Apple is really confident that you wouldn’t like a touch screen on your MacBook. Here’s Phil Schiller explaining Apple’s view on touch screen Macs to Backchannel‘s Steven Levy:

Apple came to this conclusion by testing if touch screens made sense on the Mac. “Our instincts were that it didn’t, but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years,” says Schiller. “We’ve absolutely come away with the belief that it isn’t the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct.”

Of course, Apple is slowly introducing multi-touch to Macs with the release of new MacBook Pros that replace function keys with a dynamic touch panel…


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Phil Schiller addresses new MacBook Pro controversy, explains why Apple dropped the SD card reader but kept the headphone jack

In an interview with The Independent, Apple marketing exec Phil Schiller discusses the development and public response to the new MacBook Pros. He says that “many things” have impressed people and “some” have caused some controversy, referring to the ongoing debates about Apple’s design goals versus the needs of pro users. Rebutting critics, Schiller announces that orders for the new MacBook Pro have set a new online sales record, beating previous sales for ‘pro Apple notebooks’.

The interview also focuses in on a few specific complaints, such as the decision to remove the SD card slot but keep the 3.5mm headphone jack which it classed obsolete for the iPhone 7. Schiller has interesting answers for these questions …


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Reports seemingly clarify Phil Schiller’s explanation of why there’s no 32GB MacBook Pro

Some of Apple’s decisions regarding the new MacBook Pro models are causing as much heated debate on the Internet as its removal of the headphone socket from the iPhone 7. In particular, the decision to limit the maximum RAM to 16GB rather than 32GB has been the subject of huge controversy.

Phil Schiller briefly commented on this, stating that 32GB ‘wouldn’t be power-efficient enough for a notebook’ but without going into more detail. Others have now chimed in with what appears to be a fuller explanation …


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Phil Schiller & Craig Federighi talk deleting apps in iOS 10, iMessage, more in new interview

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Following Apple’s jam-packed WWDC keynote, Apple executives Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi sat down with John Gruber on ‘The Talk Show’ to discuss the company’s recent announcements. Schiller and Federighi addressed some of the unknowns that remained after the keynote and went into more details regarding the announcements.


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