Andy Rubin’s story is worth a movie. Although knowing the outcome, I don’t think it will air on Apple TV+. This engineer is known as “father of Android”. But its past began at Apple, which is why many consider that the creation of the world-dominating operating system was revenge against the company founded by Steve Jobs.
The beginnings at Apple: the spark that lit it all
Few people know that Andy Rubin’s career It started at Apple in the 90s. And the way he got the job is most curious. Andy was in the Cayman Islands when hosted an Apple employee who had been kicked out of the room by his girlfriend after a fight. This gesture earned him a job offer to join Apple. It was an engineering position in the Apple Network Servers division, a product line that the company was going to abandon due to the difficult economic situation it was going through.
Apple experienced many difficulties and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Even CEOs as big as Dell have suggested shutting down the company. Fortunately, Steve Jobs knew how to redirect it, but Andy Rubin, our protagonist today, was no longer on the Apple campus. But if anything remained in his mind, it felt like His companions called him: “Android”. He was nicknamed so because of the passion he had for robots.
During his work at Apple, Andy grew up in a culture of innovation and attention to detail. However, also I experienced firsthand the limitations of working in such a large company and structured. This experience was enough to make him want to create something on his own.
Andy Rubin
And he became famous for creating Android
After leaving Apple, Andy Rubin worked at several technology companies such as General Magic and Danger Inc., where he worked on some of the first mobile communicators. But his real rise to fame came with creation of Android in 2003. Yes, long before the arrival of the first iPhone.
Android was born with the vision of creating an open operating system for mobile devices that could compete with the then dominant Symbian. The work he did was so good that two years later Google bought Android for $50 million.
In the early days of Android, the first Samsung Galaxy, the Google Nexus… Andy was working for Google and improving his own creation. However, In 2013, he left his position as head of Android to lead the company’s robotics division.. He only stayed in this new role for a year and in 2014 he left Google amid rumors and speculation. It was only four years later, in 2018, that we learned that his departure was the result of inappropriate sexual behavior with a worker. Google then investigated this allegation and requested the resignation of Andy Rubin.
And then he tried to compete with Apple and Google at the same time
Far from retiring, Andy Rubin He used everything he learned at Apple and Google to create Essential Products in 2015a company that aims to revolutionize the concept of smart homes and smartphones. You probably remember the Essential Phone. It was launched in 2017 and Andy’s vision went much further: he wanted to create a complete smart home ecosystem, with its own operating system called Ambient OS.
Essential phone
However, the path has not been easy. The Essential Phone did not have the expected reception and ended up being sold to Nothinga successful company, but without Andy Rubin as a member. Since then, he has preferred to stay in the background. And although he runs a company called Simple Things, he focuses on developing innovative technologies to safeguard the integrity and privacy of data online, something more focused on businesses than the end consumer.
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