Apple's Automotive Team Includes Former Tesla, Ford and GM Employees Posted: 19 Feb 2015 09:15 AM PST Apple's alleged automotive team consisting of hundreds of employees working on an electric vehicle includes several former Tesla, Ford and GM employees, according to 9to5Mac . The report reveals that Apple has also recruited talent from smaller firms in the automotive industry and other fields, including A123 Systems, MIT Motorsports, Ogin, Autoliv, Concept Systems and General Dynamics.
Another notable hire is Mujeeb Ijaz, who most recently served as chief technology officer at A123 Systems. Ijaz led a team responsible for research and development for the company's leading lithium-ion energy storage technology. Prior to that, he worked at Ford as an electric and fuel cell vehicle engineering manager for nearly sixteen years. The hiring adds fuel to yesterday's report that Apple faces a lawsuit for poaching key employees from A123 Systems. The report adds that Apple has also recruited former Ford engineers David Perner and Jim Cuseo, although the latter has been with the company since 2010 as a product design lead and manager for the iMac. General Motors' Fernando Cunha recently joined Apple as well after working various engineering and product design roles at the auto maker since 2001. Dillon Thomasson of General Dynamics, Robert Gough of Autoliv, Hugh Jay of EMCO Gears and Rui Guan of Ogin are other new hires. Last week, multiple reports from credible sources claimed that Apple is developing an electric vehicle that is possibly autonomous in a top-secret research lab near its headquarters in Cupertino, California. Some reports say otherwise, claiming that Apple is working on expanding its dashboard presence through CarPlay. These hirings suggest that Apple may be working on a larger project after all, but it remains to be seen if a full-fledged electric vehicle is in the works. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Apple Watch Makes U.S. Magazine Cover Debut In Latest Issue of 'Self' Posted: 18 Feb 2015 05:27 PM PST Back in October, the Apple Watch made its magazine cover debut with Vogue China, on the wrist of Chinese model Liu Wen. Now, as Apple prepares to launch the Apple Watch in April, the device is seeing its U.S. magazine cover debut, featured in the March issue of Self magazine (via AppleInsider ). Model and Victoria's Secret Angel Candice Swanepoel will be wearing the Apple Watch Sport with a white fluoroelastomer band on the cover of the magazine. Self also has more in-depth coverage on the device, highlighting its accelerometer, heart rate sensor, GPS and WiFi (through the iPhone) in print and in photos.
Up until now, Apple's Apple Watch marketing has been heavily focused on fashion, but with the piece in Self, the company appears to be targeting fitness enthusiasts who might purchase the Apple Watch for its health-related functions -- step tracking and heart rate monitoring. It's likely that Self will be just one of many publications to feature the Apple Watch in the coming weeks as the device's launch approaches, and Apple is expected to market the Apple Watch to a wide range of potential customers. Apple's marketing efforts have been fairly reserved thus far, limited to an appearance at Parisian fashion boutique Colette in September, the Vogue China cover in October, and this month's Self issue, but there are hints that Apple is preparing for a major marketing push. As we reported last month, Apple asked some developers creating content for the Apple Watch to have their apps completed by mid-February, possibly to have apps ready to go for marketing or event purposes. As of this week, Apple is also reportedly inviting select developers to its Cupertino headquarters to put the finishing touches on many Apple Watch apps. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple is planning to begin Apple Watch sales in April, though a more specific date has not yet been shared. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Apple Facing Lawsuit for Poaching Key Battery Engineering Employees From A123 Systems Posted: 18 Feb 2015 04:21 PM PST Amid rumors that Apple is hiring employees for a secret car project, the company is today facing a new lawsuit for poaching employees from battery manufacturing company A123 Systems. While the specific battery expertise of many of the employees is unknown, at least one of the employees had experience with developing battery technology for electric vehicles. According to a lawsuit shared by Law360 (via 9to5Mac ) Apple recently hired five employees from A123 Systems to create a "large scale battery division," violating noncompete agreements that employees signed with the latter company.
The employees are said to have left under "suspicious circumstances," and A123 discovered correspondence between its former employees and Apple recruiters on company computers. A123 warned Apple about the noncompete contracts and sought assurance that Apple would not develop a competing business, but Apple reportedly stopped responding to A123's letters. According to its website, A123 Systems creates "advanced Nanophosphate lithium iron phosphate batteries and energy storage systems," supplied to many vehicle manufacturers. Two of the employees that Apple hired, Dapeng Wang and Indrajeet Thorat, were PhD scientists who manned separate projects at A123, which the company has had to shut down because of difficulty finding replacements. Wang's LinkedIn profile lists him as a "Development Engineer" at A123 Systems, working on prismatic cell design and tests, among other things. Thorat's LinkedIn profile indicates he held the position of "Battery Research Engineer, Modeling" and A123, where he worked on batteries for hybrid vehicles.
Other employees listed in the lawsuit are Mujeeb Ijaz (A123 CTO), Don Dafoe (Cell Product Engineering), and Michael Erickson (Battery Materials Scientist). Many of the employees' profiles list them as still with A123, and none have any listed association with Apple. Dafoe's profile lists a "Bay area startup" as his place of employment since January 2015. It is not clear what the A123 Systems employees hired by Apple are working on at the company or whether their work is related to the company's secret car project because Apple is constantly evolving its technology and working on a wide array of battery improvements for all of its future devices. The lawsuit suggests that A123 Systems is, however, concerned that Apple is working on something that competes with its own product lineup, which is focused on passenger and commercial electric vehicles. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Samsung Acquires Apple Pay Rival LoopPay Posted: 18 Feb 2015 01:01 PM PST Samsung today announced plans to purchase LoopPay, in an effort to compete with Apple's Apple Pay payments service. The two companies were in previously talks over a potential partnership in December for a payment system that would rival Apple Pay. LoopPay's technology stores payment information from a credit or debit card's magnetic stripe, transmitting payment details to card readers in lieu of a physical card. Because it works over a magnetic field, LoopPay is compatible with 90 percent of existing card readers and does not require merchants to support NFC as Apple Pay does.
According to Samsung, LoopPay will provide the company's customers with a "seamless, safe, and reliable" mobile wallet solution. LoopPay already markets itself as an alternative to Apple Pay, and it's likely Samsung will build upon the technology to create a payment service that even more closely mirrors Apple's offering.
The current version of LoopPay doesn't have the same security features that Apple Pay offers, like tokenization, but it does have some benefits, including the ability to store IDs, loyalty, and membership cards along with payment cards. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Former GM CEO on Apple Car: 'They Have No Idea What They're Getting Into' Posted: 18 Feb 2015 11:12 AM PST In an interview with Bloomberg , Akerson said that Apple may be underestimating the difficulty of operating in the car business, as it's hard to navigate regulatory and safety requirements. "A lot of people who don't ever operate in it don't understand and have a tendency to underestimate," he said
According to Akerson, Apple should stick with the iPhone, which has much higher margins than a car and none of the issues with safety. As highlighted by Bloomberg, while Apple made $18 billion in December with a gross margin of 39.9 percent, GM made just $2 billion with a gross margin of 14 percent. Akerson doesn't believe Apple should get into the car business, but he does admire Apple's entrance into the car infotainment arena with CarPlay. Speaking on his time as CEO of General Motors, Akerson said that he absolutely would have partnered with Apple. "I'd have turned over the infotainment and interconnectivity of every car." News of Apple's electric car plans surfaced last week after The Wall Street Journal shared details on a secret project at the company. Apple is said to have hundreds of employees working on the car in a secret research lab near its Cupertino headquarters. The car, which is electric, could potentially resemble a minivan. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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'GIF Finder' Pulled from App Store Over Copyright Issues With Disney Characters [Updated x2] Posted: 18 Feb 2015 09:52 AM PST GIF Finder creator Matt Cheetham today announced that his popular GIF curating app will be pulled from the App Store following a lengthy back-and-forth with Apple (via iPhone Hacks ). Cheetham faced stonewalling from the company thanks mostly to a few copyright issues of Disney-related characters within the app. Begun by Cheetham as a side project a few summers ago, the app used Tumblr and Imgur's APIs to discover and curate a collection of GIFs and images and distill them into categories or as search results for users to browse. It launched in 2012 and had nearly 90,000 downloads in the years since.
A recent update caused the app to crash on the iPad version when sharing a GIF, so Cheetham submitted an update to fix the issue. Instead of the usual okay from Apple, on January 25 he received a rejection notice for the update because the app "includes content or features that resemble various well-known, third-party marks, including Disney characters."
Cheetham pointed out that he doesn't directly own the images and proceeded to offer copyright, disclaimers, and links to the Tumblr and Imgur terms of service, but he admitted it "all has fallen on deaf ears." He ultimately relented, pulling the crash-prone app from the storefront upon Apple's repeated requests for documentary evidence of his ownership of the content.
Apple and Disney's history is well-known, especially Steve Jobs' hand in the now Disney-owned Pixar Animation Studios, but Apple's crackdown on GIF Finder is unusual. GIF Finder has been in the App Store for three years without rousing attention and there are several other similar GIF apps in the App Store. Apple has recently been enforcing App Store policies that it's been lenient about in the past, rejecting a number of apps that included screenshots of violence or guns, causing developers to modify the shots or remove the imagery all together before being able to update or release their apps at all. Update 10:00 AM PT: Cheetham announced, via the GIF Finder Twitter page, that he has submitted an appeal to the App Store review board and is scheduling a call with Apple to go through the results of the appeal. Update 11:04 AM PT: Cheetham now says his appeal has been heard and that GIF Finder will be returned to the App Store after he submits an update removing specific mentions of three image categories.
Cheetham also says he's been told any future rejections due to improper categories will include details on the issues rather than a simple form letter. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Thursday, 19 February 2015
MacRumors : Mac News and Rumors
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