What you need to know
- Intel has hired away Jeff Wilcox from Apple.
- Wilcox had worked at Apple as its Director of Mac Systems Architecture.
- The executive has now signed on as an Intel Fellow and CTO of the Design Engineering Group.
Intel has just made a big hire at the expense of Apple.
As reported by Tom's Hardware, the company has hired Jeff Wilcox as an Intel Fellow and CTO of the Design Engineering Group. Wilcox, who was previously Director of Mac Systems Architecture at Apple, helped lead the Mac's transition to Apple silicon that now powers the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac.
During his previous eight years as Director of Mac Systems Architecture at Apple, Jeff Wilcox oversaw system architecture, signal integrity and power integrity for Mac systems, and was instrumental in leading the transition to Apple Silicon beginning with the M1 chip. His new role at Intel feels like a continuation of that road.
Wilcox has actually already worked for Intel in the past for three years between 2010 and 2013 before joining Apple a couple of years later.
This isn't the first time Wilcox has worked for Intel; in fact, his professional journey in the semiconductor industry has seen him work at the blue giant for a cumulative 12 years already, besides a year-and-a-half stint at Nvidia. Before joining Apple eight years ago, Jeff Wilcox worked for Intel from 2010 through 2013 as a power management architect for the chipset program of Intel's Atom processors. If anything, his work in decoupling Apple from its Intel x86 dependence shows that he's not too concerned with merely upholding the status quo, so long as innovation is possible.
Executive poaching has always been an issue for high-profile technology companies like Apple and Intel. This, of course, isn't the first and surely won't be the last. For anyone.
Bottom line: Professionals should open their wallets and purchase a 2021 MacBook Pro. All others might want to pause and consider last year's 13-inch model instead.
