Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), today confirmed the dismissal of no less than 190 employees from the division that develops autonomous guidance software for cars, the decision being announced by a rumor a few weeks ago. The confirmation comes from the documentation submitted by those from Apple to the authorities in California, where personnel changes must be announced.
According to the documents submitted by Apple, 38 managers, 33 engineers, 31 designers, and 22 software developers are to be fired, among others, until April 16. Apple had announced that it would lay off more than 200 employees as part of a restructuring made within its divisions, but for now only 190 are unlucky, the rest to be laid off later.
The division through which Apple develops guidance software for cars has not had much luck in actually creating a product that is useful in the wider world, so probably everything had to be stopped at some point. Apple said that the restructuring is centered on management's desire to focus on a number of important projects that the company has been working on for some time.
We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple. We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever.
Apple has tens of thousands of employees around the world, so firing 200 shouldn't be a big deal, unless it's a secret project. How much this decision will matter for the future of Apple is not known, but it is clear that things are not going as well as those from Cupertino would like, unfortunately.
