“Michael Abbott – an engineer turned venture capitalist, with one of the most impressive tech resumés in the business – has reportedly been hired by Apple,” Ben Lovejoy reports for 9to5Mac.
“Abbott has been Twitter’s VP of engineering, Palm’s head of webOS, general manager at Microsoft, research associate at SRI International and an investor, advisor or board member to numerous tech enterprises,” Lovejoy reports. “While he has been focusing on his role as a venture capitalist, he wrote in a blog post last summer that he wanted to return to his engineering roots.”
“He wrote that while he was privileged to work at VC firm Kleiner Perkins, he wanted to get back to product development,” Lovejoy reports. “While Abbott kept quiet about where he was headed, French site MacG reports that he has been hired by Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Since his move to Apple hasn’t been confirmed, speculation suggests Abbott could be working on Siri development under Craig Federighi,” Lovejoy reports. “His blog post also directly references being ‘captivated’ by augmented reality and ‘real’ applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning — all areas that Apple and CEO Tim Cook have repeatedly referenced as being of great interest for the company.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Here’s a portion of what Abbott wrote last summer:
Ultimately, my desire to discover and invest in the next new thing became eclipsed by my desire to get my hands dirty again and build the next new thing. I have come to understand that my real passion lies in the grappling to understand, develop and build new technologies. Like you, perhaps, I am captivated by what AR could enable, and fascinated by ‘real’ applications of AI/ML, or how security techniques from the world of geopolitics are influencing enterprise technologies. — Michael Abbott, August 1, 2017
Read Abbott’s full blog post via uncapitalized here.
AR to me is like like what 3D TV was to HDTV. Fun for one movie but not something i wanted to deal with all the time. New big things can come and go just as fast