Apple executive John Stauffer poached by Roblox

John Stauffer was the head of the Apple division behind CarPlay and Group FaceTime — and now he's leaving the company for Roblox.

Roblox is bringing in John Stauffer as a VP of engineering responsible for the virtual world's core engine. He will report directly to CTO Daniel Sturman.

According to a report from Axios, Stauffer was approached by Roblox about a year ago. He said it took a little bit to convince him, but his kids are excited at the prospect of his father building Roblox.

"John got to see Apple grow from a much smaller company," Sturman said. "That's a path we hope/want/expect to be on."

John Stauffer worked at Apple for over 23 years, and spent the last 14 running Apple's Interactive Media Group. They are behind products like CarPlay, Group FaceTime, and AirPlay.

His engineering and leadership experience will likely be very useful to Roblox, which hopes to get its platform working on as many devices as possible. The game is quite the earner for Apple, with one report from June 2021 suggesting it earned $1 million in App Store revenue per day.

3 Comments

FileMakerFeller 1561 comments · 6 Years

About 2 years ago

Going to be quite the culture shock - Roblox is the company that has been exploiting developers for almost the entirety of its existence, whereas Apple...

Oh.

retrogusto 1140 comments · 16 Years

About 2 years ago

FileMakerFeller said:

Going to be quite the culture shock - Roblox is the company that has been exploiting developers for almost the entirety of its existence, whereas Apple...

Oh.

Maybe I’m missing your point, but has anybody done more for developers than Apple?

They helped to start the personal computer market, then pushed it forward by a huge leap by bringing PARC’s window/mouse GUI to market, making computing much more accessible to the masses. With the iPhone, they made the first sophisticated smartphones with a very intuitive user interface, way better and easier to use than anything that preceded it, creating a huge worldwide smartphone market, and created the App Store that gave developers easy access to every single iPhone user, without the need for hard copy manufacturing, inventory management and a distribution network. They even distribute it for you for free if you don’t charge cash for it. They have created new markets with the iPad and watch too, and they provide significant educational tools and developer support. Et cetera, et cetera.

n2macs 87 comments · 14 Years

About 2 years ago

retrogusto said:

FileMakerFeller said:

Going to be quite the culture shock - Roblox is the company that has been exploiting developers for almost the entirety of its existence, whereas Apple...

Oh.

Maybe I’m missing your point, but has anybody done more for developers than Apple?

They helped to start the personal computer market, then pushed it forward by a huge leap by bringing PARC’s window/mouse GUI to market, making computing much more accessible to the masses. With the iPhone, they made the first sophisticated smartphones with a very intuitive user interface, way better and easier to use than anything that preceded it, creating a huge worldwide smartphone market, and created the App Store that gave developers easy access to every single iPhone user, without the need for hard copy manufacturing, inventory management and a distribution network. They even distribute it for you for free if you don’t charge cash for it. They have created new markets with the iPad and watch too, and they provide significant educational tools and developer support. Et cetera, et cetera.

Why is it so difficult for everyone to understand this? If it wasn’t for the Apple App Store, developers would not have easy access to this lucrative marketplace.