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Mac Chick of The Month

Mark Papermaster’s ransom has been paid

January 27, 2009 by Dr. Macenstein
Filed under: News, deals

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Ah, it seems like it was only November 4th when Apple Announced:

Mark Papermaster is joining the Company as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod(R) and iPhone(TM) hardware engineering teams. Papermaster has 25 years of product and technology experience, and was previously a vice president at IBM.

Well, as you may recall, IBM had a thing or two to say about that decision â€“ namely that Papermaster was in violation of the 1-year â€œno competeâ€ clause in his IBM contract which legally bars him from accepting a job with a competing company. Papermaster at the time attempted to argue that in his 25 years at IBM, he never heard the company describe Apple as a “competitor”, an argument which sounded a little lame to us, but apparently someone somewhere bought it, because today Apple released the following press release:

Mark Papermaster will be coming to Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, on April 24. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod(R) and iPhone(TM) hardware engineering teams. The litigation between IBM and Mark Papermaster has been resolved.

Actually, odds are Apple paid a huge cash ransom in exchange for Papermaster’s safe return. No word yet on whether Mark has all his fingers intact, but seeing as he is going to be heading up the largely “touch-based” iPod division, we’re hoping the answer is yes or else we have a feeling valuable research dollars are going to be diverted towards a way to navigate an iPod using your nose.

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