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Apple: Losing Out On Talent and In Need of a Killer New Device (theguardian.com)
mspohr writes with a link to an interesting (and rather dour) take at The Guardian on the state of Apple, which holds that: "Despite its huge value, Silicon Valley developers are turned off by [Apple's] 'secretive, controlling' culture and its engineering is no longer seen as cutting edge." From the article: "Tellingly, Apple is no longer seen as the best place for engineers to work, according to several Silicon Valley talent recruiters. It's a trend that has been happening slowly for years – and now, in this latest tech boom, has become more acute. ... Or as Elon Musk recently put the hiring situation a little more harshly: Apple is the "Tesla graveyard." "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple," Musk recently told a German newspaper. The biggest issue for programmers seems to be a high-stress culture and cult of secrecy, which contrasts sharply with office trends toward gentler management and more playful workdays."
The other Steve was what made Apple technically great
Umm... care to inform us what Apple has done marketing-wise but to claim they reinvented the wheel every time they came out with a new device?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Small companies and startups tend to be more "playful". The only two things they care about are that you have the skills to do the job and you can get the work done on time. if you want to put up pictures of your family/girlfriend on your cube wall, that's OK. One trend with employers is that of "hot desking". You just go into the building, find a free desk/computer, login and start working. Then you leave at the end of the day. Others give you your own desk. Some places just give you a desk that is 1 meter wide and you are sitting side by side with ten other people. Some companies have a "no personal belongings" rule in your workspace (avoids problems with theft). Animators/artists like to surround themselves with action figures, furry toys like giant penguins or spiders, so that rule would drive them nuts. Others have recreation areas like ping-pong tables, console systems, have after-hours Chess clubs, card games, and even Yoga clubs.
If you're late in by 15 minutes because of bad traffic, they understand, so long as you make up the time. Some large corporations expected you to be in by 8am on the dot, no excuses, with the result that everyone leave at 4pm on the dot. For lunch, some companies take a dim view of you going outside/away somewhere for lunch, they expect you to use the work canteen. Other employers are located right downtown, so going to a different eatery each day is expected since they don't have their own food service. And there will be team parties every quarter. You might just get 15 minutes to eat your lunch at your desk, or you get flexitime for lunch.
Some companies dislike employees socializing outside of work, and might just send a couple of "heavies" to keep an eye on you.
With project management, you might have the freedom to view all tasks in the current sprint using Jira, and the whole team gets to decide what the objective will be. Other companies, only the producer gets to see all the tasks and hands them out one by one in no particular order.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It just needs a device that everyone can afford and needs. Such a shame that they priced their phones way above what the majority can afford, They would be WAY more popular if they had focused on the base instead of the "Elite".
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Not sure why I am bothering to reply to an AC, but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
$76B in revenue and $18B in profit in the LAST QUARTER.
For a doomed company, that ain't bad. If you disagree, please point out another company that made more profit in 2016. Hint, that's rhetorical, there isn't one.
Apple may need "another killer device" to continue to grow to that predicted "1 trillion dollar company". But holy fuck, how is not going from the biggest market cap in the world to the even biggerest market cap in the world "doomed"?
...never having to say your sorry.
When the P to E is high, that means the stock is a bubble and everyone should sell. When the P to E is low, that means there's no confidence in earnings and everyone should sell. Meanwhile they are compared to Facebook's 109 P to E in a completely serious manner.
Still increasing sales of desktop computers means the non-phone side of the business is being ignored.
Moving 8 iPhones for every Windows Phone means the former is dead and the latter is a viable product.
Apple's non-iPhone revenue is comparable to Microsoft's *total* revenue. The impact to Apples revenue due to just currency fluctuations is comparable to Facebook's *total* revenue. Maybe a case could be made that that is a business in decline, but no one seems to be doing so.
Apple is doomed in the same way that Microsoft has been doomed for decades. Very profitable doom with very significant market share, but if you're not on an exponential growth trajectory then people think of you as as a stale relic.
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Look at the macmini, for instance...... This used to be expandable with additional ram (to 16GB), two hard drives, and came with quad core i7 processor. Amazing.... really, I have one that has been running my website for the last 4 years, and it has given me no trouble at all.....
And apple canceled it. They replaced it with a soldered ram, duel core, which isn't as powerfull as something you could buy 4 years ago. For fuck sake Apple - this is what Commodore did, releaseing the Amiga 600, several years after the Amiga 500, which was no more advanced....... and we all know what happened to Commodore!!...
Apple can't do any of that stuff. They don't invent tech, they popularise it by selling to early adopters willing to pay over the odds for something shiny.
Take "retina" displays. Apple didn't invent them, they never made them. Sharp and LG pioneered the technology, and Apple was just one of the first to use it.
Synaptic developed the touch wheel. Siri was someone else that Apple just bought. Apple Maps was built in Nokia mapping technology. They bought that fingerprint scanner company. They use the same Sony cameras as everyone else, just with custom software that gives the output that photoshopped, unreal look.
Apple has two problems now. First, they are running out of interesting stuff to buy, and secondly everyone else cottoned on to their gimmick and started to out-innovate them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, Musk's statement is not incorrect. Tesla is a company that has a different management style and goal compared to Apple. Apple exists solely for profit and returns, Tesla exists solely to create scientific advancement, innovation, and push for technical/engineering projects that nobody else will do. Tesla is subsidized on the merit of advancement rather than returns.
It is only a logical conclusion that Tesla will have all the engineering/science talent, while Apple will have all the marketing/design psychology talent.
Go ahead, dump all of your 401K savings in Apple, I dare you.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Well, let's see, Apple is a high-pressure workplace, to which people go when they cannot make it at Tesla. Wait, what???
The article is mostly based on the opinion of a single hipster jackass who felt that he was too good to apply at Apple, backed up by the opinion of a few other people who don't want to work there, and a recruiter. Note the lack of information from anyone who has actually ever worked there.
There have been a lot of stories like this over the brief history of technology. IBM is a really good example. Their senior management is doing everything they can to sell off the company bit by bit while collecting money, and they still can't kill it. Microsoft is another excellent example, riding Windows and Office through to their current states. They're currently poised to pull the ultimate vendor lock-in trick with Azure and subscription software because they have loads of money to spend. Some companies, especially those with huge cash balances, can manage through transitions. Others will just keep beating money out of their cash cows for as long as possible (again, IBM is the perfect example.) Others, like Sun, end up getting bought at fire sale prices. All of the companies mentioned were absolutely dominant at one time or another. IBM is a total joke these days, but in the 70s/80s they represented the state of the art in all things computing.
Apple's problem is that they are now too consumer-focused and don't have a pipeline of expensive gadgets to sell them. Whether they'll use that huge pile of cash they have to buy into the next trend remains to be seen.
What a load of shit. How about engineers are more attracted to companies that respect a healthy work/life balance. That's it. Really. I'll come to work, bust my ass for 7-9 hours and go home, 5 days a week. You can keep your foosball, cafeterias, yoga, happy hours, . I'll take the perk where you pay me to go on vacation though.
Old data is just that...old data. Apple needs to become much more price competitive if it is going to succeed in today's marketplace. Your name can only get you so far.
Exactly. Look at all the high end products that are no longer with us because they refused to join the race to the bottom.:
Rolex watches - gone, should have made a swatch like $1.99 digital watch.
Lamborghini - too bad they didn't copy the Yugo or Ford Pinto. Now they are on the dustheap of history
Rolls Royce - A sad story. Gone out of business because they just didn't realize that the only metric in cars is cheap.
The entire diamond industry collapsed because people know that it's just overpriced glass in those rings.
So many more examples where industry has found out that only attending to the lowest common denominator is the only path to profit. If you want cheap, buy cheap. Just don't assume that everyone does.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Microsoft has a subscription model. You buy a new version of Windows every one or two years. Except they blew that one up by constantly changing the GUI layout rather than simply polishing the fonts and theme to take advantage of higher resolutions.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
They're buying them for aesthetics and user friendliness.
And reliability, and security, and because of the third party app support, and because if they do have any problems they can go into an Apple store and have their problems solved without being conned or fleeced.
Agreed. In a nutshell, OS upgrades should not invoke learning curves.
should not invoke learning curves.
That's the worst. As the techie in the family (including the families of friends and distant relations), even though my job has nothing to do with computers other than I use them at work, I'm constantly bombarded with questions like why won't my internet work. Fine, I'll help, should take 20 seconds and save someone from a lot of misery. Wait, where did all of the settings pages go? Google for ten minutes, wrong version, google another ten minutes...an hour later the internet is working again. W.T.F. The only thing these people use a computer for are solitaire and chrome.
Google pulls the same crap. Yes, I can figure it out. Yes, I have much better things to do than learning a new interface for zero productivity gain. People have been using the same interface to drive a car for the last 100 years. If car companies operated like software companies, besides being all dead now we would have gone through joysticks, paddle wheels, slider buttons, push buttons, hand gestures, foot pedals, voice control and mice just to make a right turn. And the left turn would have yet another interface. And they would alternate between them on different models.