Apple cloud services executive Patrick Gates departs for stealth startup Humane

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2019
Stealth startup Humane, founded by a pair of former Apple executives, last month announced longtime Apple cloud services engineer Patrick Gates had joined the company as chief technology officer.

iCloud
iCloud web interface.


Gates leaves Apple after 13 years of service, during which time he played a key role in developing products like iCloud, iMessage and FaceTime. Gates joined Humane cofounders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, both Apple veterans, as the company's CTO in December.

"Patrick is a critical partner in assembling a world class team of proven innovators and experts to build the next shift between humans and computing," Chaudhri and Bongiorno said in a post to Humane's website. "We have a history of creating groundbreaking products and solutions together and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to continue this at Humane."

The blog post, which went overlooked for some two weeks, was spotted by The Information on Thursday.

At Apple, Gates oversaw a major internal project that aimed to unify existing cloud services like iTunes, Siri and Apple Maps on a single core platform based on Siri's cloud infrastructure. That effort was reportedly plagued by political infighting between the Siri team, run by Gates, and the iCloud team overseen by Eric Billingsley.

Gates took control of iCloud infrastructure when Billingsley left Apple last October, though the unification initiative stalled.

Prior to Apple, Gates conducted research at Sun Microsystems and built developer frameworks at NeXT.

Humane is currently in stealth mode, but the company says it is developing the "next shift between humans and computing." Considering Chaudhri and Bongiorno's work at Apple, the firm is likely building products and services related to next-generation user interface design.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    bulk001bulk001 Posts: 764member
    This gives Apple another bite at, well, the apple, when it comes to cloud services. This is another one of areas where they really need to raise their game and lower their pricing. 
  • Reply 2 of 9
    "Apple Cloud Services". A business oxymoron.

    Haven't the finally outsourced it to AWS?
  • Reply 3 of 9
    tzeshantzeshan Posts: 2,351member
    This is why Jobs is so valuable to Apple. He won't depart instead he keeps innovating. Tim will not depart but he cannot innovate. And all other Apple employee will depart if given opportunity like Rubin. 
  • Reply 4 of 9
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member
    tzeshan said:
    This is why Jobs is so valuable to Apple. He won't depart instead he keeps innovating. Tim will not depart but he cannot innovate. And all other Apple employee will depart if given opportunity like Rubin. 
    You know Jobs is dead, right?
    watto_cobrabyronl
  • Reply 5 of 9
    "Apple Cloud Services". A business oxymoron.

    Haven't the finally outsourced it to AWS?
    Nope. That's not to say they don't utilize IaaS providers, but Apple builds/owns/maintains a significant amount of infrastructure in order to deliver iCloud and other services.  Very few companies have outsourced 100% of their infrastructure to Public Cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft...
    watto_cobrabyronl
  • Reply 6 of 9
    tzeshantzeshan Posts: 2,351member
    tzeshan said:
    This is why Jobs is so valuable to Apple. He won't depart instead he keeps innovating. Tim will not depart but he cannot innovate. And all other Apple employee will depart if given opportunity like Rubin. 
    You know Jobs is dead, right?
    Yes, so Apple is doomed. 
  • Reply 7 of 9

    Gates leaves Apple after 13 years of service,
    Wow! In an alternate reality it would be the other Gates...
    watto_cobrabyronl
  • Reply 8 of 9
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member
    karmadave said:
    "Apple Cloud Services". A business oxymoron.

    Haven't the finally outsourced it to AWS?
    Nope. That's not to say they don't utilize IaaS providers, but Apple builds/owns/maintains a significant amount of infrastructure in order to deliver iCloud and other services.  Very few companies have outsourced 100% of their infrastructure to Public Cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft...
    Cloud infrastructure is highly overrated and best left to companies (as mentioned) that deserve it.
    Apple should make products that stand on its own and need no additives.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    knowitall said:
    karmadave said:
    "Apple Cloud Services". A business oxymoron.

    Haven't the finally outsourced it to AWS?
    Nope. That's not to say they don't utilize IaaS providers, but Apple builds/owns/maintains a significant amount of infrastructure in order to deliver iCloud and other services.  Very few companies have outsourced 100% of their infrastructure to Public Cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft...
    Cloud infrastructure is highly overrated and best left to companies (as mentioned) that deserve it.
    Apple should make products that stand on its own and need no additives.
    Which would further reduce their point of difference by adopting a generic 1st-party device + 3rd-party services strategy.  Not good.

    A better strategy would be to advance their App Information Library approach to multiple applications (beyond Photos) and create macOS/iOS frameworks for 3rd-parties to create their app-specific Libraries.
    watto_cobra
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