From Gurman's "Apple loses at least its sixth car executive this year" posted Sunday to Bloomberg Technology's Power On subscribers:
Six. That’s the number of top managers who have left Apple’s car project this year. Who do I consider a top manager? The person who runs the project and anyone directly reporting to that person. Doug Field, who ran the Apple car team since 2018, bolted in September. Earlier this year, Dave Scott, Jaime Waydo, Dave Rosenthal and Benjamin Lyon all left as well.
Now we have the departure of Michael Schwekutsch, who led hardware efforts at Apple for the car project. His exit comes just weeks after I reported that Apple is accelerating development of its car and is aiming to showcase a fully autonomous vehicle as early as 2025.
When Kevin Lynch, the Apple Watch software chief, took over the car project, there was a clear hole in terms of hardware leadership. Schwekutsch was supposed to fill that gap. Now that he’s out, the company may need to bring in a replacement from the car industry if it wants to achieve its goals.
My take: Good news? Bad news? Can't tell from this whether they were fleeing Lynch or axed by Lynch or something in between.
There’s probably been some incredible culture clashes, as Apple has a culture unlike everyone else. This project requires patience, detail and even a willingness to concede that at some point it may not come to fruition at all … or that a different direction is needed. That’s something no other company would do, at least on this grand of a scale, and I suspect that’s very difficult for some “top” folks to digest.
Thanks for typing exactly what I would have typed.
Meanwhile this is all speculation and hopium designed to sell crack to traders and then feed off their losses.
The car will come when there’s enough global infrastructure to make the use case viable. Not everyone lives in urban America. Ergo, no cars for years, but perhaps more glimpses of the technology Apple might use in one appearing in other products.
I’m ignoring AppleCar blather for now as much as I am AR headsets. The fundamental case is so strong without them, that including these in share price speculation is just Wild West.
These departures may another validation of the Apple brand. Who wouldn’t want to hire an Apple employee, whether retail floor or top brass?
You are correct to denote the term Geaux deployed as a reference to LSU’s Tigers. Geaux is Louisiana slang for “go.” Louisiana has French in its slang derived from the wonderful Cajun peoples who left Canada in 1755 migrating to South Louisiana where they were welcomed with open arms and embraced to this day. (BTW, the little boy in the picture with me is a Creole Cajun, descendant of French and Spanish ancestry living on a house boat in the Atchafalaya Basin.)
Most Louisiana teams use Geaux to emphasize their Louisiana Cajun heritage. By spelling it as “Geaux,” Cajuns make it clear that this word is to honor their French heritage. The most common time you hear the word is at sports events. So, one normally would not hear Geaux applied to sport teams outside Louisiana, although I applied it to the Crimson Tide.
The LSU Tigers are my premier college sports team. Alabama’s Crimson Tide is next. After those two schools I pull for any college team in the West or East Division of the SEC.
I suspect that I am the only individual globally (other than one other person on this forum) who uses Geaux . I do make a concerted effort, as appropriate, to use Geaux when cheering on Apple.
End of story.
Caveat Lector!
It also reminds me of how Apple was going to fall apart at the seams after Jony Ive departed. Another example of how well Apple is prepared to move forward as a company regardless of who departs.
“SEC, SEC, SEC!”
And this isn’t a chant for the “Securities Enforcement Commission” heard at every stadium in the south from September to November every year during college football season!
Wow! For a Penn State Nittany Lion fan you sure have a high level of empathy for what SEC means to college football fans in the South Central and Southeastern United States. 🙂
The tradition and atmosphere in those stadiums is indescribable and can only be conveyed by actually going to a game. Did you every get a chance to see the “Grove” at Ole Miss? Descriptions defy that tradition as it was something that can only be experienced by seeing it first hand.
Let’s stop right there…lest you become a talking head.
(What was that John Gruber continuing complaint about Bloomberg? Hmmm. Let me think…)