Software a one-man project, says source

The official Remote app for the iPhone has gone months without an update because of Apple's corporate culture, claims Posterous CEO Sachin Agarwal. The software was last updated in November 2009, in order to provide compatibility with iTunes 9 and the Apple TV 3 firmware. It has yet to gain an iPad-native interface, or upgrades to take advantage of iOS 4.

The reason, says Agarwal, is that the app was developed by just one man, a friend of his who has since moved on to other tasks within Apple. The company is believed to maintain a very unusual approach to who develops what. "Apple doesn't build large teams to work on every product they make," according to Agarwal. "Instead, they hire very few, but very intelligent people who can work on different projects and move around as needed."

The situation is described as flexible enough that people can flip between very different technologies. "The engineers on the Mac OS and iOS teams move back and forth between the two projects based on release cycles and what needs to ship next," Agarwal observes. If so, the factor would support the idea that Mac OS X 10.7 may have been delayed to get iOS 4 out the door. While known to be in development, the new Mac OS has yet to be formally revealed.

by MacNN Staff