Kevin M. Lynch is an American software developer. He is currently the vice president of technology at

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

, joining in 2013 after working as the chief technology officer of

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

. Lynch has been responsible for developing the software of Apple's

smartwatch A smartwatch is a wearable computer in the form of a watch; modern smartwatches provide a local touchscreen interface for daily use, while an associated smartphone app provides management and telemetry, such as long-term biomonitoring. While ea ...

project, the

Apple Watch Apple Watch is a line of smartwatches produced by Apple Inc. It incorporates fitness tracking, health-oriented capabilities, and wireless telecommunication, and integrates with iOS and other Apple products and services. The Apple Watch was rel ...

, a device he demonstrated at the September 2014 Apple Launch Event.

Education

Lynch graduated from

Lincoln-Way Central High School Lincoln-Way Central High School, LWC, or Central is a public four-year high school about 3.5 miles south of Interstate 80 near the intersection of Schoolhouse Road and Lincoln Highway in New Lenox, Illinois, a southwest suburb of Chicago, Illin ...

in New Lenox, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) College of Engineering as an undergraduate student, where he studied computer science and interactive computer graphics and worked in the UIC College of Engineering's

Electronic Visualization Laboratory The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) is an interdisciplinary research lab and graduate studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, bringing together faculty, students and staff primarily from the Art and Computer Science depar ...

Career

Lynch helped start one of the first Mac software startups called Mac3D—the first Mac 2D/3D drawing application. He also created innovative desktop publishing software that combined drawing and page layout, word processing, the first editable property inspectors in the GUI, and a controllable page layout pane. Early in his career, Lynch worked at Frame Technology,

General Magic General Magic was an American software and electronics company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat. Based in Mountain View, California, the company developed precursors to "USB, software modems, small touchscreens, touch ...

, and

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Systems ...

. He helped develop General Magic's personal digital assistant in the early 1990s, widely recognized as the precursor to the modern smartphone. At Macromedia, Lynch led the

Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997 and developed by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Adobe Dreamweaver is available for the macOS and Windows ...

HTML authoring tool and introduced Flash to enable multimedia on the web, eventually reaching over 1 billion people. In 2005, Lynch became chief software architect at

after being involved in the company's $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia. He helped integrate the companies and develop new technology including a cross-OS application runtime called AIR, which enables an app to run across

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

, Mac and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. In 2008, he was promoted to chief technology officer, where he helped transform the company through the advancement of mobile, social and cloud technology. During his time at Adobe, Lynch was a staunch advocate of Flash—Adobe's multimedia software platform—and had highly visible debates with Apple CEO

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

for hindering the use of Flash on its mobile devices, the iPhone and

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

. Later, Jobs tried to recruit Lynch to Apple.

Honorary doctorate

In 2017, Lynch was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree by UIC for his work in software development. He is one of only two individuals who has received this distinction in the UIC College of Engineering's 50+ year history. The other recipient is Richard Hill, former CEO of

Novellus Systems Novellus Systems Inc. was a company founded by Brad Mattson that developed, manufactured, sold, and serviced semiconductor equipment used in the fabrication of integrated circuits. It was a supplier of chemical vapor deposition (CVD), plasma-enhan ...

. In a letter supporting Lynch's nomination for the honorary Doctor of Engineering degree, Apple's Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams stated: “Truly brilliant technical minds exist. Truly amazing leaders exist. The intersection of the two isn’t seen very often.”

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lynch, Kevin Apple Inc. employees American chief technology officers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)