Does anybody have a rough estimate of how many employees work at Apple doing Mac OS X development and how does it compare with of same type of employees at other companies which also develop proprietary UNIX OS' like HP, IBM or Sun?
Does anybody have a rough estimate of how many employees work at Apple doing Mac OS X development and how does it compare with of same type of employees at other companies which also develop proprietary UNIX OS' like HP, IBM or Sun?
Does this mean that it's about 1000 people? This is really impressive, and in fact hard to believe, given the amount of work that usually goes behind developing and maintaining UNIX-like OS's.
Does this mean that it's about 1000 people? This is really impressive, and in fact hard to believe, given the amount of work that usually goes behind developing and maintaining UNIX-like OS's.
Thanks again.
Combined Retail and Corporate is over 17,000 folks. If you conservatively took that to be around 5,000 retail employees then I'd say roughly 600 developers for the Engineering department.
I'm excluding the App teams.
They've always kept a very close eye on saturation of staff. Paying folks to wait on other engineers isn't good business. Having a growing Applications division gives these engineers a chance to move laterally within Apple and get more experience.
If you conservatively took that to be around 5,000 retail employees then I'd say roughly 600 developers for the Engineering department.
I remember a few years back when S. Jobs said that they had a development team of more than 1000 engineers. It was the time when Apple pushed really hard the OS X development. So, taking into account the iPhone effect, your 600 developers figure looks about right today.
Unless they have consolidated their engineering teams, I imagine much more than one thousand. Figure each technology that is supported by the OS has it's own team of at least eight developers, four testers, a team lead and a manager....
I remember a few years back when S. Jobs said that they had a development team of more than 1000 engineers. It was the time when Apple pushed really hard the OS X development. So, taking into account the iPhone effect, your 600 developers figure looks about right today.
He included everyone from Software Quality Assurance to Professional Services.
He included everyone from Software Quality Assurance to Professional Services.
Steve exaggerated the numbers. Surprised?
You are probably right, but surprised? Hardly. We are here after all accustomed to hear his exaggerations (3 GHz in one year, year of the HD, year of the notebook, and probablt others that I forgot now). He is just a good marketer these days. Well, he always was, but lately it became very prominent with his farces. But even so it probably works with the grand public, and this is what finally matters for the company.
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Hi,
Does anybody have a rough estimate of how many employees work at Apple doing Mac OS X development and how does it compare with of same type of employees at other companies which also develop proprietary UNIX OS' like HP, IBM or Sun?
Thanks!
Less than 1 in 20.
Less than 1 in 20.
Thanks!
Does this mean that it's about 1000 people? This is really impressive, and in fact hard to believe, given the amount of work that usually goes behind developing and maintaining UNIX-like OS's.
Thanks again.
Thanks!
Does this mean that it's about 1000 people? This is really impressive, and in fact hard to believe, given the amount of work that usually goes behind developing and maintaining UNIX-like OS's.
Thanks again.
Combined Retail and Corporate is over 17,000 folks. If you conservatively took that to be around 5,000 retail employees then I'd say roughly 600 developers for the Engineering department.
I'm excluding the App teams.
They've always kept a very close eye on saturation of staff. Paying folks to wait on other engineers isn't good business. Having a growing Applications division gives these engineers a chance to move laterally within Apple and get more experience.
It's a win/win for the users of OS X.
If you conservatively took that to be around 5,000 retail employees then I'd say roughly 600 developers for the Engineering department.
I remember a few years back when S. Jobs said that they had a development team of more than 1000 engineers. It was the time when Apple pushed really hard the OS X development. So, taking into account the iPhone effect, your 600 developers figure looks about right today.
Even the 1000 + estimate is impressive to me (not to say the ~ 600).
It almost seems like a disinformation tactic, since I would have expected the actual number to be in the several thousands (like 3-4 thousands).
Cheers!
I remember a few years back when S. Jobs said that they had a development team of more than 1000 engineers. It was the time when Apple pushed really hard the OS X development. So, taking into account the iPhone effect, your 600 developers figure looks about right today.
He included everyone from Software Quality Assurance to Professional Services.
Steve exaggerated the numbers. Surprised?
He included everyone from Software Quality Assurance to Professional Services.
Steve exaggerated the numbers. Surprised?
You are probably right, but surprised? Hardly. We are here after all accustomed to hear his exaggerations (3 GHz in one year, year of the HD, year of the notebook, and probablt others that I forgot now). He is just a good marketer these days. Well, he always was, but lately it became very prominent with his farces. But even so it probably works with the grand public, and this is what finally matters for the company.