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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.
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! :)
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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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.
Apple is the "Tesla graveyard." "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple," Musk recently told a German newspaper.
It seems that whatever entity it was that possessed Steve Jobs and gave him his boundless arrogance has found a new host.
Other issues aside with displays, you know Apple doesn't make their displays, right? The only thing they had to do with "retina" was the marketing term retina. Their displays are made by LG and Samsung. Apple doesn't do any LCD or OLED research, they just buy what the display makers can sell them.
Apple is dead. I don't see them ever launching another hit like the iPhone which by all means won't be the last massive hit in the tech sector. Apple will slowly fade away. Without their (relatively low yield) dividends and the massive 218 billions in cash the stock would be pretty much worthless now.
Michael Dell is that you?
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."
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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.