AnandTech Founder Shimpi Reportedly Heading to Apple After Retiring From Publishing

From tech critic to industry insider, veteran technology writer Anand Shimpi - who founded AnandTech in 1997 - is reportedly joining Apple in an unspecified role. This was confirmed by an Apple representative to Re/code. Shimpi had earlier announced his retirement from AnandTech with a post titled 'The Road Ahead' on the tech news website.

While AnandTech is not as well-known as more generalist technology news sites, its influence cannot be underestimated. One of the most well-liked and respected publications, AnandTech has long focused on hard fact based articles, such as detailed performance reviews, and has over time emerged as one of the authoritative voices in technology news. At a time when most blogs strive for "exclusives", this tweet sums up AnandTech's style:

The AnandTech Mantra: Be the best first, then try to be the first. It's the standard we all aimed for.

-- anandshimpi (@anandshimpi) August 31, 2014

In his farewell post, Shimpi writes about being ready for a change after 17.5 years of "digging, testing, analysing and writing about the most interesting stuff in tech."

(Also see: Meet Anand Shimpi: The tech critic who matters)

The reports that Anand is joining Apple in a non-public facing role reinforce this, and so it makes sense to leave at a point where, in his own words, "we set a number of records in 2013 and expect that to continue. In other words, you don't have to worry about the ability of the site to continue to operate."

At this point, details of Shimpi's new role at Apple are not known. However, this is apprently not the only senior person from AnandTech to join Apple. According to a report in 9to5Mac, AnandTech's Senior Smartphones Editor Brian Klug had also left the site to join Apple earlier this year, where his role has a focus on building mobile processors for the company's iOS devices. It is possible that Shimpi will take up a similar role.

Ryan Smith takes over as AnandTech's new Editor in Chief, having worked at the site for ten years.