Slashdot Mirror
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."
As insane and nasty as Steve Jobs apparently was as a person, he at least seems to have had a technological vision. Which seemingly cannot be said of the current CEO, whose vision seems to extend as far as adding new Emojis to the line-up.
The sad thing is that Apple would be uniquely positioned to introduce a whole range of new technologies into the consumer marketplace. On their devices, they control the entire technology stack: from hardware to software, it is all theirs. And they are the only player who has this sort of position that allows paradigm shifts to be done in-house.
For instance, they would be the only ones who could, conceivably, do a seamless job of integrating HDR into the user experience. Or WGD (Wide Gamut Displays). The latter would be particularly cool: if you are capable of doing something like a Retina display with its minuscule pixels, there is nothing that limits you to good old RGB anymore. Make it RGCB (Red Green Cyan Blue), or R/YG/BG/C/B/P (Red Yellow-Green Blue-Green Cyan Blue Purple - perhaps in some hexagonal pixel arrangement). And watch people swoon when they see the colours such displays can show. Purple and blue flowers, plants, sunsets, skies - all suddenly look vastly more natural than on an sRGB device. Cameras (at least SLRs) record wide gamut colours already, it is the displays that can't keep pace.
And what does Apple do? They now offer pink iPhone case options. Yeah, sure, guys. Makes me want to work for you - such vision, wow! :)
Woz made Apple a great company in 1983. Considering they aren't selling many Apple II's these days, I'm pretty sure even he would disagree with the statement that he had anything to do with Apple's current situation.
Apple have never really invented much. But, they have brought together technology and made it into amazing things.
The imac. It was colourful, compact, got rid of legacy ports. It was insanely great. The iPod put a Hard drive in a MP3 player, and made it easy to hold your entire music collection.... The others on the market just were shite in comparison. This was insanely great. OSX, bringing together open source Unix, with a Java JVM installed as standard, using open API's and with a GUI that was far ahead of anything at the time...... Insanely great.
But now....
Soldered in Ram - not insanely great. Non upgradeable SSD - not insanely great. no USB ports on latest macbook, and charging premium for a USB-c adapter. not insanely great. Charging $1,099 for a 2012 model laptop with 4gb ram and crappy i5-3210M processor......FFS, not insanely great.. For heaven sake, I remember Steve jobs reducing prices of models every single mac world presentation. No more.... Not insanely great.
Apple are dead. Maybe not in the financial sense - they have enough money to keep them going for decades. But, in the sense of what brought them back from the brink of bankruptcy back in 1998, they are dead and buried. I only wish Microsoft were a better company so I could switch back.
Starting with this bullshit from someone who's never worked there:
I've worked at Apple three times, starting back in 2002, and nobody ever yelled at me. VPs are too busy to go around doing that shit. As for the 60-80 hour weeks. that's a myth. We put in long hours when a deadline was close, but it was never a constant grind like that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Apple vs. Tesla. They are really two different markets. Tesla is attracting engineers, because what they are producing seems something useful and world changing, while Apple products while nice, and remain to be great products. But Musk's empire Tesla, Space X, and SolarCity. are bringing grander changes to the world, Something that perhaps history will look back with fondness, on our generation and say we accomplished something. While the generation preceding this Apple was credited for the personal computer for the masses, the iPhone and iPads while wonderful technology are at best would be footnotes in history. We know about Edison and Marconi, Ford and Einstein, Jobs and Gates. Because of what they did to change the infrastructure of the world. However Apple is profiting off the infrastructure it help built, while Tesla is building a new one.
If you were to talk to your grand-kids in 30-50 years, what would you like to say to them. That you invented a slightly thinner iPhone, which would still look bulky to your grand-kid. Or that you were involved in making electric cars practical for average use, helping get us off the dependency of polluting oil, giving you cleaner air to breath, and slowing down global warming, so you have the ability for a prosperous life.
That is why Apple is now second tear for engineering. Their business is in old stuff like personal computing, the future is in green energy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The cover of the January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced by Satya Nadella) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer Monkey Boy -- on its cover.
Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today." Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)
Nope. Woz is a tech geek. Jobs was a salesman.
Apple put their money on style, market appeal and, in a word, "shiny".
Woz is much. But shiny, he is not.
With Woz, we'd get actual great Apple products, they just wont appeal to Apple's core audience who dont care about reliability, modability and usability and just want to be told they're awesome for buying Apple.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.