In January Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple to Open New Canadian Office in Automotive Industrial Park." We noted in the report at the time that Apple had established a presence in Ottawa, Canada. Sources had said that the facility was believed to be devoted to an Apple research and development center. Ottawa has a major presence in the automotive software sector. Kanata Research Park is already home to BlackBerry's automotive division, QNX Software Systems, which recently unveiled a slate of new software for the rapidly evolving driverless car market. That was an interesting development for Apple in context with their Project Titan and developing car systems. Today Bloomberg provides us with an update on the developments in Apple's research facility in Canada and it appears that they're aggressively chasing top QNX talent. 

The Bloomberg report states that "Apple Inc. has dozens of software engineers in Canada building a car operating system, a rare move for a company that often houses research and development projects close to its Cupertino, California headquarters, according to people familiar with the matter.

Many of the engineers working in Canada were hired over the past year and about two dozen came from BlackBerry's QNX, a leading automotive software provider. Apple purposely targeted QNX employees because of their experience developing fundamental components of operating systems and power management, a former QNX executive said.

The most notable Apple hire from QNX was its chief executive officer, Dan Dodge. Since joining Apple's Project Titan car initiative early this year, he's taken on a larger role overseeing the car operating system, splitting his time between Canada and California, the people said. Another notable addition is Derrick Keefe, who left QNX last year after more than a decade as a senior engineer, one of the people said.

The car operating system is the software core of a future Apple car platform, in the same way iOS powers the iPhone. A separate Apple team is developing software that would guide future self-driving cars and run on the operating system, one of the people said.

Apple engineers also envision a heads-up display like our cover graphic. Such a display windsheild would allow drivers to access apps like maps so the driver would only have to shift their eyes to see the map.

For more on this story read the full Bloomberg report here.

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