“Chris Lattner isn’t the only high profile Apple executive who departed for Tesla over the past month, rather than sticking around to work on Titan,” Seth Weintraub reports for 9to5Mac. “9to5Mac has learned that Matt Casebolt, a high profile Senior Director of Design for Apple’s Mac lineup left the company last month for a role at Tesla as Sr. Director Engineering, Closures & Mechanisms. A job meant for a man named Casebolt.”
“Over the past two and a half years Casebolt led the development of the MacBook Pro with its standout and sometimes controversial Touch Bar feature,” Weintraub reports. “Before that, he led the team working on the iconic ‘trash can’ Mac Pro and was previously instrumental in the design of the first generations of MacBook Air. These are some of Apple’s most iconic Mac products over the past decade.”
Weintraub reports, “The departure follows reports of departures and downsizing in the wake of de-prioritization of the Macintosh groups at Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Apple-Tesla employee trading program is obviously working swimmingly.
SEE ALSO:
Chris Lattner, who designed and built much of Swift, is leaving Apple – January 10, 2017
Three members of Apple’s PR team have left for Tesla, Ford – November 4, 2016
If he’s responsible for the Trashcan design, then:
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
Casebolt may have designed it (and as an object, it’s beautiful, imo), but someone “above” him, thought it would make business-sense. Since Apple’s about more than “form,” it’s the business dis-function that’s TC’s prob.
This is a good point, as the Mac Pro wouldn’t really be considered all that bad of a machine if it’s MSRP was only $1000.
Problem is that higher management would have never allowed it to have been sold for so little.
Amen. MacPro should be an iMac replacement.
If you make a MacPro, it must be upgradeable, expandable and able to keep up with tech changes for 5-6 years minimum.
Otherwise it is not “Professional.”
People moving around has always been the case in companies.
After you spend a decade in a place you look to a different venue for a variety of reasons.
I don’t think that shows a problem for Apple, because Casebolt’s assistants can now move up and make their mark.
It would be another story if the assistants are told to stand down, do incremental improvements and not rock-the-boat.
I doubt that is the case. We will see by the end of 2017, just what the senior management of Apple has done with the Mac Pro.
Not impressed with his work. Macs would be in better shape if the designer actually listened to users.
If Henry Ford listened to the users who called for faster horses, where would we be now? Users are generally clueless and just want amps that go up to 11. (Spinal Tap)
Fine, but remember that while Microsoft floundered around attempting to sell win8, Apple’ Mac team did NOTHING to attract users. Dumbed down hardwar and software, zero ads. Apple today could be offering a full range of Macs and be earning easily twice what the Mac pulls in today. Instead we got gimmick bars, soldered components, zero upgrade ability, and big price increases. Not cool. The Mac used to deliver value, now it’s a fashion accessory like the rest of Apple products.
Ford replaced horses with a car.
What is Apple replacing the Mac Pro with? The new Touch bar MBP has about one third the GPU power of a mid range PC card placed in a 6 year old cheese grater MP (about 70 fps vs 200 fps).
Sorry but if you don’t have a better replacement the analogy breaks down.
Andy: Remember that when the iPh emerged, “users” couldn’t imagine what life would be w/o the physical keyboard. Also, Steve once said, “customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” With that said, Apple should have known that their most powerful machine should cater to to the power-users. It failed a number of ways in that regard.
Guess we will start seeing Tesla’s with the touch bar.
I thought Elon said he didn’t hire Apple employees.
Elon didn’t poach him. Casebolt fled the sinking ship for a growth company.
Thank you for offering an opinion disguised as facts.
We don’t know why Casebolt left; most likely, as others have said, these high profile guys already have enough money and want to go for a challenge and change of pace elsewhere.
Sinking ship/Growth company. Wow don’t think I would want to tie myself to your assessment of a successful company. Musk is on that exciting arc of creating the wow factor to obscure the scary predicament of the finances. Its a big risk move that when you build businesses you often have to take but its something that big mature companies do not and should not, except perhaps when they are desperate in the face of massive decline.
In all honesty companies like Apple need to try to take the best of those high risk companies mostly revolving around heightened innovation as a necessity to survive and excite, without that extreme risk that destroys most of them along the way leaving only a few to hit the heights. However that is always the difficult one for such companies as they transform into large established corporations. Musk’s businesses if they survive will find the exact same problems awaiting and that unsustainable initial spurt inevitably levels out. remember Apple was one of those companies once its just ahead of the curve when compared to Tesla and others where the true competitive environment it will have to deal with is still some way off.
I predict this a poor career move. Tesla is about to lose all federal funding.