Tesla Is Snatching Apple’s Stars to Make Itself the New Apple
IF YOU DON’T follow the ins and outs of Silicon Valley personnel moves, you might have missed the news. Even if you saw it, it may not have made much sense. Chris Lattner is leaving Apple for Tesla? Chris who?
Lattner doesn’t enjoy the name recognition of a Tim Cook or a Jony Ive. But he’s a rock star among software engineers. As the guy who built Swift, Apple’s iPhone-centric programming language, he’s one of those coders that other coders put on a pedestal. He personifies Silicon Valley’s relentless push toward technology capable of changing the world.
Tesla is not just building a car. It’s building an entirely new kind of computer.
Now, he’s moving on, becoming the head of software engineering for Autopilot, the technology that’s transforming Tesla’s electric vehicles into autonomous vehicles. Apple’s innovation machine is losing another key cog to a company that has lured so many others away from the House That Jobs Built. And that provides an obvious storyline for the tech press and so many other Silicon Valley watchers: Tesla is the new Apple.
In many ways, the story is true. Apple vice president of Mac engineering Doug Field, director of alloy engineering Rich Heley, and MacBook Air engineer Matt Casebolt are among those who’ve left Cupertino for Tesla. But the truth goes deeper than that. Sure, Tesla is snagging some of Apple’s mojo, becoming a defining symbol of Silicon Valley innovation. “Apple is stuck in the world of phones and watches,” the argument goes, “while Tesla is well down the path to self-driving cars, for Jobs’ sake!” Look beyond the A-list talent and sexy public image, though, and you’ll see that Tesla is mimicking Apple (and Google and Amazon and Facebook) in a more meaningful way. Lattner’s arrival is just the latest evidence of this. Like those other tech giants, Tesla is not just building new products. It’s building them from entirely new parts, remaking them from top to bottom. Apple did this with phones. Now, Tesla is doing it with cars—and with computers, too.
continues at wired.com |
