The speculated Apple car project’s hiring has been frozen, Sam Oliver reports for Apple Insider:

Apple has placed a hiring freeze on the team responsible for the company’s nascent automotive ambitions after executives became unhappy with the project’s direction and progress, AppleInsider has learned.

The change was precipitated by a post-holiday progress review conducted by Apple design chief Jony Ive, according to a previously reliable source with knowledge of the team’s activities. Ive is said to have “expressed his displeasure” with the group’s headway.

In all, Apple is believed to have more than 1,000 people working on Project Titan at sites both inside and outside of Cupertino. Hiring was so aggressive that Apple’s poaching of engineering talent from Tesla is thought to have had a “big impact” on the Elon Musk-led company’s ability to keep up with development of future vehicles.

I would love to know the Apple leadership’s reasoning behind entering the car market. As I’ve speculated before, it wouldn’t be enough to just make a car, or an electric car, or a beautiful car … Apple is either hiding something big or making a big mistake, and they’re no fools in Cupertino.

I’m also curious how the Apple car project is affecting Apple’s existing products. For instance, the iPhone launch is said to have taken top engineers away from the Mac, resulting in a lackluster release one year. I certainly think that software quality on Mac has withered, and it could be in part because of the iPhone’s popularity, and in part because of the brain-drain from the Apple car.