iTunes designer jumps ship to Square
updated 01:55 pm EDT, Wed August 17, 2011
iTunes designer Louie Mantia hops to Square
Apple saw a second defection this week after Louie Mantia said he would be exiting the company. The relatively well-known iTunes Design team member, wallpaper creator, and Disney fan is joining Square's creative team to drive the artwork for its mobile payment system. He planned to be at the still-young San Francisco startup in two weeks.
The exit was considered amicable. "Working at Apple has been awesome, but I really need a change of pace," he said. "Super eager to work on something different!"
Departures by Mantia, iAd executive Andy Miller, and retail VP Ron Johnson don't equate to a mass exodus at Apple but do show rare instances of better-known workers quitting the company. Apple has had its share of recruitment success and, among others, got an engineer back from Palm who is considered important to iOS 5's notification system. Competitors like Google have most often focused their attempts on getting employees from Facebook or else smaller mobile players such as the former Palm team.
Square has been one of the fastest-rising, commercially successful startups and has accelerated to the point where it's due to handle $4 million in payments through its iOS and Android apps every day. The company also has the limelight thanks to its founder Jack Dorsey's pioneering role at Twitter.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2006
hope?
Hopefully all of the iTunes design team will quit, and Apple can bring in people who actually have a sense of good design, instead of trying to look cool (and faiing). Maybe they'll bring back the artwork look of iTunes 9 and earlier. Maybe they'll change the logo back, or add a little color here and there. Maybe they'll separate the different elements of iTunes so they can make a great music player, and keep the videos and apps separate.
Probably not.