“After revolutionizing phones, Apple Inc. is testing self-driving cars and exploring augmented reality,” Mark Gurman and Mark Bergen report for Bloomberg. “Recent hires suggest the company is now also looking to the skies.”
“The iPhone maker has recruited a pair of top Google satellite executives for a new hardware team, according to people familiar with the matter,” Gurman and Bergen report. “John Fenwick, who led Google’s spacecraft operations, and Michael Trela, head of satellite engineering, left Alphabet Inc.’s Google for Apple in recent weeks, the people said. They report to Greg Duffy, co-founder of camera maker Dropcam, who joined Apple earlier this year, the people said. With the recruits, Apple is bringing into its ranks two experts in the demanding, expensive field of satellite design and operation. At the moment, these endeavors typically fall into two fields: satellites for collecting images and those for communications.”
“In a regulatory filing last year, Boeing Co. detailed a plan to provide broadband access through more than 1,000 satellites in low-earth orbit,” Gurman and Bergen report. “The aerospace company has talked with Apple about the technology company being an investor-partner in the project, a person familiar with the situation said. It’s unclear if those talks will result in a deal. At the annual Satellite 2017 conference in Washington D.C. last month, industry insiders said Boeing’s project was being funded by Apple, Tim Farrar, a satellite and telecom consultant at TMF Associates Inc., wrote in a recent blog.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let the speculation run rampant!
Who’d like an alternative broadband ISP via more than 1,000 satellites in low-earth orbit from Apple?
SEE ALSO:
Apple in talks to buy Boeing communications satellites – March 18, 2015
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
I guess there will be lots of competition. The OneWeb constellation looks promising when it comes online next year (I think), and I think Elon Musk has similar plans as well.
God I hope there are some Macs to talk about this time next year.
I’m for Apple having a partnership with using low-earth orbit satellites for communication and mapping but I do worry about all that flying space junk being a hindrance for future astronauts in any way. I hear there are already close to 2300 satellites in orbit. That’s just crazy. Russia owns the majority of them. Are they mostly spy satellites? Why would Russia need that many satellites?
They say satellites projects are expensive but if any company can foot the bill, it has to be Apple. Look at Jeff Bezos spending $1B every year on his own Blue Origin Space Company. Apple needs to step it up a bit or get left behind. There’s not one thing Amazon does that doesn’t get a huge amount of praise from Wall Street.
You raise a legitimate concern about himanity junking up its trails. There is now about 400,000 pounds of discarded equipment, waste really, on the Moon.
You know how the forest service asks you to take out your own trash. It needs to assert its policy on the moon were humanity acts like spoiled children.
Aye, Aye! Grrrr!
News of anything Google having a close connection with Apple is disconcerting. I hope they’re good boys.