Apple hires Tesla’s head of electric powertrains

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Apple might have scaled back its team that’s responsible for its self-driving car project, but it doesn’t seem like the company is giving up on the segment. In fact, a recent hire might mean they’re bucking down on it. Apple just hired Michael Schwekutsch, Tesla’s vice president for overseeing electric powertrains. He is now Apple’s senior director of Engineering at the Special Project Group, which is the division in charge of driverless cars. As expected, no one has mentioned what he’ll be doing in the company, but his background does tell us a bit of why Apple has taken him onboard.

Schwekutsch has a lot of experience working with electric drivetrains, and it isn’t limited to his work with Tesla. He’s worked on cars like the second-generation Roadster, the Semi, BMW i8, Fiat 500e, and Porsche 918 Spyder, among other EVs and hybrids. It’s expected he might continue on that path with Apple. But we won’t know for sure. We’re keeping our eyes peeled for any updates.

Source: Engadget

Apple bolsters smart home initiative with former CEO of failed smart lock startup

Sam Jadallah used to lead Otto, a smart lock company that went belly up. They tried to sell a US$700 smart lock, but that premium device didn't reach the market. Jadallah claims a mystery buyer pulled out of the deal at the last minute. Now, he will be leading what looks like a new smart home initiative at Apple. A rather unexpected move, but it looks like Apple wants to give its smart home segment another try. Apple and Jadallah haven’t commented on the report about his hire, but he has confirmed that he’s joined the team.

Source: The Verge

Facebook product director joins Uber as head of driver product

Under Uber’s current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the ride-hailing service has placed heavy emphasis on its drivers. But the company has been without a head for its driver product division since December, when Aaron Schildkrout left after the company wrapped its 180 days of change driver campaign. That just changed as former Facebook product director for video and Facebook Live, Daniel Danker, joins Uber. He will serve as a senior director and head of driver product. Danker will be in charge of planning, strategy, and execution for the said division. He has been working in Silicon Valley for a while already. Between 2000 and 2010, he worked in a couple of roles at Microsoft and left when he was a director of development and operations. He found his way to BBC in 2010 and then went to Shazam where he served as chief product officer for almost three years.

“Drivers are the heart of the Uber experience, and Daniel’s passion for our mission and deep product knowledge will ensure we continue to improve and innovate on their behalf,” Uber Head of Product Manik Gupta told TechCrunch in a statement.

Google snaps up key Apple chip designer

While we don’t know what Google has up its sleeve, its latest hire gives us an idea of what we could possibly expect from the tech company. Google just hired John Bruno, the founder and head of Apple’s silicon competitive analysis group, which is basically the team that helped give the iPhone and iPad processors and edge over competition. It isn’t clear yet what he’ll do for Google but his job title, as seen on LinkedIn is listed as “System Architect.” Bruno began his career at ATI and later became chief engineer at AMD, while there he led the design of Fusion processors.

Google has been taking in new talent, including veterans from Qualcomm, which makes it look like they’re looking to create more custom processors. The only chip that is currently made in-house is the Pixel 2’s Pixel Visual Core imaging chip. We can only speculate if Google is looking to create a full-fledged processor for its phones or build more specialized chips to make their products stand out more. We’re sure we’ll find out soon enough what the company is up to.

Source: Engadget