Software developer Steve Sakoman, a former Palm and Be executive, has returned to Apple, according to Bloomberg News .
Sakoman, who recently left his post as chief product officer at Palm’s software unit PalmSource, will report to Avie Tevanian, senior vice president of software engineering. Sakoman’s title will be vice president of software technology.
In his previous role at Apple, Sakoman worked as vice president of engineering. He was director of CPU development, managing the hardware group, which was responsible for the Mac and Apple II product lines. Subsequently, Sakoman started and managed Apple’s Newton development team.
He joined Be Inc. in 1999 and was responsible for setting the company’s direction and developing strategic relationships in the Web appliance market. For those unfamiliar with Be, Inc., it was founded as a company “focusing on building new foundations for the next generation of digital content and media design tools” in 1990 by the flamboyant Jean-Louis Gassee, also a former Apple employee.
Sakoman became part of the Palm Inc. operation in 2001 when the company bought Be’s intellectual property. He served as chief technology officer of Palm’s OS subsidiary.
“A lot of great people are coming to Apple for the opportunity to do innovative work like we are doing with Mac OS X and some of our other core technologies,” Apple said in a statement regarding Sakoman’s return.