Apple Snags Former Xbox Exec

nandemoari sends along word that Apple has picked up Richard Teversham, a senior Executive from Microsoft's European Xbox operations, ending his 15 years of service to Redmond. Some press accounts assume that Teversham's role may lie in beefing up the games scene on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Forbes goes farther, opining that Apple "appears to be preparing an all-out assault on the handheld gaming market." Other reporting associates the hire with Apple's recent buildout of chip-design expertise.

Comments

This just in..

[SupremoMan]

Hurricane Ballmer hits conference room. Scores of chairs injured and missing.

Maybe Apple will launch an attack on the console market next?! I wouldn't pout it past them, they move so quietly you don't know till it's too late! Imagine a console that is top of the line, but has all the games distributed directly to the console with Apple store, eliminating the retail and the distribution networks.

Re:This just in..

[anaesthetica]

Imagine a console that is top of the line, but has all the games distributed directly to the console with Apple store

Already exists, more or less. It's called AppleTV. It's a console in somewhat the same way that the XBox is basically a desktop computer. All that's missing is a controller and a software update allowing game downloads from the App Store.

Re:This just in..

[IamTheRealMike]

Generally, in order of preference I'd look at D, C# and then Java as what Objective-C should aspire to. But it'd have to change so radically why bother? If Apple insist on an obscure language with poor toolchain support D at least has the advantage of being a really well designed language, with lots of useful features.

Re:This just in..

[LionMage]

But you don't have to believe me. If Objective-C was so great, it'd be used outside the Apple platform. It's not.

And this is a fallacy that gets repeated a lot. Just because something is popular (computer language, video tape format, currency, etc.) doesn't mean it's good, or that it's good for you. Things become popular through a combination of factors, and dumb luck seems to be pretty high on the list. There are many cases where the "best" solution loses out to the cheaper solution that's "good enough."

Another thing to consider is what you mean by "good" (or "great" to use your wording). If you're doing government contract work and you're asked to write software, you may be forced to use ADA (or some other DOD approved language) because nothing else meets the stringent requirements of your employer. In short, nothing else is "good enough."

Arguing from popularity is a common logical fallacy. As it stands, it seems clear that the popularity of Objective C (or the lack of popularity) is due to a lack of traction with popular operating systems (i.e., Windows), and the only reason developers are even looking at Objective C now is that Apple has effectively forced iPhone developers to use Objective C -- in other words, the iPhone's popularity has forced developers to take a look (or a second look). Since there's nothing stopping developers from incorporating C and C++ code and libraries into their Objective C applications, I don't see what the big deal is?

another possibility

[Anonymous Coward]

With Jobs on the sidelines, we're back to the Sculley era at Apple, where senior executives and high-level techies are hired away from competitors to make a splash in the press and foster buzz around the stealth-mode projects. And incidentally rescue some careers that may have been in trouble.

Too bad that's not what creates great products. Usually what it does is create layers of non-accountability somewhere in the clouds above where the engineers and UI designers work.

Re:Dangerous Moves

[jcr]

Unless Apple can come out with a hardware and software solution to the parallel programming crisis

They're working on it. Check out "Grand Central" and "OpenCL".

-jcr

Re:Interesting possibilities...

[Ihmhi]

Plus with the DS, PSP, etc. you can have things like spare batteries.