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Apple Hires Top Google Satellite Executives For New Hardware Team (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The iPhone maker has recruited a pair of top Google satellite executives for a new hardware team, according to people familiar with the matter. 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. 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. A Boeing spokesman declined to comment.
It'd mean they become something other than an advertising company.
With all due respect, satellite communication doesn't make sense and is impossible. For one thing most of the satellites are moving in orbit around the Earth. Second, if you have 1000 satellites that means, assuming none of them are over the ocean ever, each satellite has to support 7000 people at the same time simultaneously. How much bandwidth will that need? That is probably in the tens of terabit range if you need to give each person a 10 mbit Netflix stream. And yeah many people stream Netflix in a town. How many people are streaming Netflix in the Bay Area right now? How can one satellite support tens of terabits of data simultaneously at the same time? It can't. It won't.
Excellent way for Timmy to spend the Billions and drive Apple Ink into bankruptcy.
Jajajajajajajajajaja
...About too many things in orbit eventually causing a chain reaction of collisions that blots out the Sun (small exaggeration, but you see the point). This will destroy existing and future satellites.
Dropcam used cheap Axis 1011 camera (the cheapest Axis sold at the time), and replaced the camera FW/SW so to turn it into a, yup, cloud camera.
Location base satellites services that can be used by most people seem to be a reasonable use of oribital space near term, while Nations figure out how to deal with growing space debris. Maybe need to contribute to a new Super fund before adding to the potential junk, but this fund deserves a bigger name like Super Duper fragilistic... Fund. Connecting developing areas by satellite may seem more expedient and cost effective near term with good benefits to the poorer residents but should consider long term view as well. Maybe in parallel These high tech Co's secretly developing a space janitor, shields or something to address the growing debris and decommissioning aspect but don't see much published .
Is that some dude orbiting around a CEO? At $DAYJOB I know a few of them!
Ah yes, the world from the point of view of executives... If you want to move into a new field, you need to start by importing the bloated, overpaid legion of administration that floats above the actual workers in that field. That's definitely where the action happens!
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.