iPod father Tony Fadell joins Arm board of directors

Tony Fadell, former Apple Vice President and designer of the classic iPod music player and Google Nest, has officially joined Arm’s board of directors.

Tony Fadell, 53, who worked at software and electronics companies General Magic and Philips in the 1990s, joined Apple in 2001 on the iPod and iSight design team.

He was promoted to Apple’s vice president in 2004, where he oversaw the design and production of the iPod, and was responsible for worldwide sales of the iPod in the 2000s and became Apple’s main source of income prior to the introduction of the iPhone.

After leaving Apple in 2008, Fadell founded Nest Lab to develop an internet-connected, self-learning thermostat, which was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014, and then developed the Google Nest Smart Home product line, but Fadell, I left Nest Lab in 2016 to work for investment advisory firm Future Shape.

The iPod uses the ARM architecture, and Fadell, who was also Apple’s vice president at the time, worked closely with the Arm company. The success of the iPod also laid the groundwork for the use of the ARM architecture processor in the later iPhone.

CNET reported that Fadell hopes to strengthen the low-power characteristics of the ARM architecture in the future, and the ARM board also expressed the expectation that Fadell will bring the company more user experience and improve the competitiveness of the ARM architecture.

iPod inventor Tony Fadell joins Arm’s board amid Apple Silicon transition