Chomp co-founder Ben Keighran is exiting his role at Apple according to a new report out of Re/code:
Ben Keighran, who joined Apple four years ago when it bought a startup he co-founded, says he is leaving soon and eventually intends to start something new. “I want to create not just a killer product, but my own iconic company,” he said.
Keighran joined Apple in 2012 when it bought his firm Chomp to overhaul iTunes and App Store search. Universal search among key media partners is a major feature of the new Apple TV. Chomp’s other co-founder Cathy Edwards joined Apple through that acquisition and worked on Maps Quality before leaving in March 2014.
The report notes that Keighran oversaw “the look and feel of the software on the new Apple TV” and ranked three steps down from Eddy Cue who runs the iTunes team. Here’s to hoping whoever takes Keighran’s place Chomps down on the finicky Siri Remote and creates something a little more ergonomic … kidding, Keighran likely played a key role in Apple TV’s universal search feature through Siri which works pretty well.
It is an interesting pattern to observe Apple employees brought on through company acquisitions leave Apple after the product they were brought on to help make ships to customers. Beats Music’s Ian Rogers comes to mind. My guess is people that create these companies are better suited at creating on their own versus working within a major company like Apple.
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If he oversaw the “look and feel” of the fourth generation Apple TV, I say good riddance! Sure, he’s “leaving soon” to “pursue other interests.” I think Apple had the sense to let the guy go after the mess that was the new Apple TV. Don’t get me wrong, the gaming is good; but for media steaming? There were a number of regressions from the previous generation. First, a painfully bright UI, with no dark mode option. Siri is virtually useless; she can’t even search your local iTunes music or any other local media. The computers app remains virtually unchanged. They brought in the beautiful parallax feature, only to use it on the select titles that show in the menu bar; why not show it off with a overhauled image oriented UI that will look much better than the text based UI currently used. TV Shows are still broken up by season, rather than a sub-menu for seasons, making scrolling through a list of shows infinitely longer, swipe after swipe on the new remote. No longer can you just hold down the button to scroll through your list. I do appreciate the new autoplay feature watching TV shows though. Music videos have become a pain because the new remote no longer allows you to skip, but rather fast forward through music videos to get to the next one. The remote app wasn’t even compatable at launch, making set up a chore through the endless swipes of the remote as you entered in password after password. The functionality with the remote app is not nearly as robust as the previous generation. You can no longer browse your local library and queue up media. The HD flyovers are a great treat, but they still haven’t provided us with a native music visualizer akin to iTunes classic visualizer. Here’s to hoping they just push out an update to right these wrongs.
I agree, the latest Apple TV is crap. Shame on Cook/Apple for releasing such a second rate incomplete product!