Bloomberg reports that Apple has hundreds of software engineers in Canada working on a car operating system. This is a rare case for Apple as the company has a tendency to keep all of its operations within reach of its Cupertino, California headquarters.
According to the report, Apple has been hiring over the past year with “two dozen” coming from BlackBerry owned QNX, a leader in automotive software. The engineers are currently working at an Apple office in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata, which makes it a five minute walk from QNX.
More notably, Apple hired QNX CEO Dan Dodge. He now oversees Apple’s car operating system, making regular trips between Canada and California.
In essence, Apple envisions the car operating system as the future of the car platform, similar to how iOS powers the iPhone. A separate, more known team is working on developing the software for the future of self-driving cars, which from numerous reports, seems to be shelved at this point in time.
It seems like Apple is splitting up its Project Titan team into separate divisions in order to gain more focus on the individual divisions. However, Apple would need to bring them together at one point to really get the “it just works” portion together. Regardless, the Apple Car at this point is years away, expected no earlier than 2021.
