SiliconBeat

Let’s see. An  historic presidential election is coming to a climax with a surge of voters causing long lines at polling places. The nation, even the world, shivers with anticipation over the results. Good time to release significant pieces of personnel news?

That’s what Apple did this morning by posting a press release announcing the hiring of an ex-IBM vice president, Mark Papermaster, to head up its devices hardware engineering division. The news had actually been reported last week by CNet, via a court filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in which IBM claimed that Papermaster would be working closely with Apple CEO Steve Jobs in what IBM believes is an attempt to expand Apple’s presence in the markets for servers and chips for handheld devices.

Apple wouldn’t comment on either the law suit or Pagemaster’s pending employment last week.

Oh, and the guy he’s replacing? Tony Fadell, credited by many as a major brain behind Apple’s world-changing iPod and, more recently, its iPhone, is “reducing” his role at Apple by becoming an “advisor” to Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs. Coincident with that news is the news that Apple’s vice president of human resources, and Fadell’s wife, Danielle Lambert, will leave the company at the end of the year.

Apple’s release said that Fadell and Lambert “are reducing their roles within the company as they devote more time to their young family.” Clearly, this is one couple that needn’t concern itself with the current economic downturn.