The key criteria is loyalty. Lattner left for the competition before Swift was ABI stable and mature. He didn’t see it through. If he had still been around now, he would likely be on the list.
But I see Apple Fellows as something for people in retirement and he's still mid-career. They can always award it to him later.
The person missing from this list who I'd like to see added is Susan Kare. She defined the look of the early Mac and iPod, designing all the original bitmap fonts and icons. Hugely influential.
Absolutely!
Susan Kare explains Macintosh UI ergonomics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_q50tvbQm4
Atkinson was given fellowship because Jobs wanted to make him happy. [1]
The way I see it, Apple gives fellowship to people to make them feel themselves important and keep everyone in the room happy and when the press put's their name next to other giants,that must be massive ego satisfaction -- in a positive sense(it was apparently Schiller's idea to use click wheel for original iPod.[2]), for the lack of better choice of words on top of my mouth right now.
1.https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
2.Valley of Genius
+1000 karma points for people like Vikram who stay in academia and continue to teach.
Tech output with high business impact + company loyalty = Fellowship
Formula works pretty much the same way at any tech company, including the one I work at now.