rogifan_old

Apple culture hinders recruitment and talent retention efforts, report says

January 2016

foad said:

ac1234 said:

Good point - and with all these world class engineers you would expect an impressive pipeline rolling out by now - which it is not.

Seriously? Point to a tangible product that any of the large tech companies put out that is impressive, groundbreaking, and not evolutionary. Just because Google publicly announces its research projects, doesn't mean Apple's engineers aren't doing anything. Just because Facebook increased their revenue last quarter doesn't mean that they are revolutionizing the technology space. Other than the Echo (which is a cool product from what I have read), Amazon has their online store and AWS, which aren't a part of this conversation. The only thing that comes to mind is the Oculus Rift and rumor is that Apple has been pretty active in the space, especially with some recent high profile hires. The Rift was also a very long development cycle and is only just about to be released.

Ultimately, there are a lot of things at play. Other than Samsung, no other hardware company is operating at the scale that Apple is. Not even close. Even if Apple comes up with the greatest thing since sliced bread, their manufacturing partners need to be able to make them at their scale. 75 million iPhones in 3 months is bananas. Most of Samsung's phones are their lower end models. Most cutting edge technology wouldn't even be able to hit those yields. I'd add that the iPad Pro is a great product. The Pencil is something that no other product can compete with right now, and with it being some complicated, they are still hitting yield issues. Apple hasn't released sales numbers, but Watch and the new Apple TV are having a material impact on their revenue less than a year in. These are early products. People forget that the first iPhone didn't have an app store, or 3G, or MMS, or copy & paste, etc. The first iPad barely had enough RAM.

We are at a bit of a technological transition for consumer tech right now. A lot of money is at stake in the future and legacy companies are holding on for dear life to stay relevant, and tech companies have different incentives than those legacy companies. There is a lot of stuff at play.

I'd close with this. We are also hitting up against some genuinely complicated technology barriers from batteries to processors and many other extremely tough hurdles. Look at how hard it has been for Intel to hit their roadmaps. Intel has probably been a huge crimp in Apple's Mac product roadmap.

You can have the best engineers in the world and that will only be a part of a much larger pie.

This. Plus Apple is very secretive about it's pipeline. It's easier for Apple to not look innovative because we don't really know what they're working on. Bryan Chaffin, who writes for the Mac Observer and has contacts in SV says he knows Apple is working on stuff that has never been rumored about. He's heard this from people who have seen stuff. They didn't give any hints to what this stuff is, just that it exists. Jony Ive has said 80% of what Apple works on will never ship so it's understandable why Apple keeps most of this stuff secret. But unfortunately it leads to memes like this story.

What I find really disingenuous though is this notion that when Steve Jobs was around Apple had all this amazing stuff they were cooking up and everyone knew it and now everyone assume the pipeline is completely dried up. I think that's looking at history with rose colored glasses. Someone in my Twitter feed posted historical stock charts from Apple. In 2000 Apple stock lost 80% of its value in 8 months. In 2007/8, after iPhone 3G the stock lost half of its value. The Apple of then and the Apple of today aren't really that different except Apple is selling A LOT more product now than they did then. In this last holiday quarter Apple sold roughly 34,000 iPhones an hour or 570 per minute. That is absolutely nuts. To me that's what's most incredible about the company right now. Nobody, except maybe Samsung is manufacturing at a scale like that. How is that not innovative?

Production already underway for Apple's new 4-inch 'iPhone 6c' - report

rogifan_old

January 2016

mike1 said:

Interesting rendering that has the display wrapping around the home button.

That rendering his hideous and ridiculous to boot. IF Touch ID gets integrated into the display it's not going to be a physical button with a silver or gold ring.

Production already underway for Apple's new 4-inch 'iPhone 6c' - report

rogifan_old

January 2016

Mr_Grey said:

AppleInsider is probably backing the wrong horse in the naming game here. It's been said before by me and many others, but "iPhone 6c" makes absolutely zero sense as a name for this purported device. It's is a ridiculous name for a device that has none of the iPhone 6 level features, and doesn't (as far as we know) come in multiple colours.

I'm not convinced on "iPhone 5se" either, but it makes some kind of sense for a device that is based on an iPhone 5s.

But if the device has ah A9 and M9 chip it's not based on the 5S.

Bug or conscious change? Apple Pencil for iPad Pro gets gimped by iOS 9.3 betas

rogifan_old

January 2016

Hmm...I must admit I never use my pencil for anything other than making marks. Though I know there are people who do use it in place of their fingers for certain things. Hopefully they bring that capability back.