Jeffrey L. Robbin is an executive and software engineer at Apple, Inc.. He developed the SoundJam music player software, which was acquired by Apple in 2000. There, he created iTunes, and was "closely involved" with the iPod's development. In 2011, Bloomberg reported that he was leading development of an Apple television set, a device rumored in Steve Jobs's autobiography. As of 2018, he led the Apple Music product and engineering teams. Early life Robbin was born in Chicago. He earned an undergraduate diploma in computer science, and later obtained an MBA. Career While pursuing an MBA, Robbin joined Apple in 1992. There, he worked on Copland, Apple's troubled operating system project, alongside fellow software engineer Bill Kincaid. Robbin and Kincaid both left Apple in early 1997; Kincaid joined a startup, while Robbin went on to create several Mac utilities which were distributed by Casady & Greene. One of these utilities was Conflict Catcher, a system extension for the classic Mac OS that could automatically detect and resolve conflicts between system extensions; these conflicts were one of the main causes of Mac OS system crashes. SoundJam MP In 1999, Robbin joined Kicaid and Dave Heller to start a small company, SoundStep, and develop SoundJam MP, a software jukebox that played MP3 files. The idea for SoundJam came from Kincaid's desire to make the Rio MP3 player compatible with the Mac. Robbin chose Casady & Greene as SoundJam's software distributor. David Pogue wrote the user manuals for SoundJam and Conflict Catcher, before he joined the New York Times. SoundJam received positive reviews, and won the Best of Macworld award in 1999; it eventually secured 90% of the Mac MP3 software market. SoundJam competed with the Audion app, made by Panic. Both companies were vying to be acquired by Apple, but since Panic was already discussing a buyout with AOL, and since Robbin and Kincaid were ex-Apple employees, Apple chose to buy SoundJam in 2000. Apple hired Robbin, Kincaid and Heller, and used SoundJam's code as the foundation for iTunes. iTunes At Apple, Robbin was chosen to lead the iTunes team, and tasked with making it easier to use to meet Apple's user experience goals. The iTunes team stripped the search box of its complex options, and adopted the brushed-metal look previously seen on iMovie. Less than four months later, in January 2001, iTunes was released for free as part of Apple's digital