Two big things at Apple

Emailed on June 7th, 2019 in The Friday Forward

RIP iTunes
After 18 years, Apple is killing iTunes — well, sort of. The media management software for most Mac users (and many Windows users) is being broken into separate pieces for separate uses: Music, podcasts and television will soon have their own apps on the new Catalina Mac operating system.

The iTunes Store will remain, as will the music you bought from it. All of this is presumably in response to the long-running complaint from users that the iTunes desktop app is trying to be too many things at once.

Making moves in driverless cars
Apple is in the process of acquiring a well-known but struggling self-driving shuttle firm, Drive.ai, for its engineering talent in order boost Apple’s own development of a self-driving vehicle system, according to The Information.

Several years ago, Apple started its own self-driving vehicle effort, called Titan, but has since changed the project’s focus multiple times, turned over its leadership and laid off a large group of employees following a hiring binge. Most recently it has hired engineers and managers from companies such as Waymo and Tesla.

Over the past year, Apple’s Titan project appears to have made what one peer in the field, Oliver Cameron, CEO of robotaxi developer Voyage, called “rapid” progress.

This acquisition is a clear sign that progress continues.

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