welshdog

We got a HomePod recently (used my Costco rebate to reduce price to $80). We do enjoy the sound quality and it is positioned so that it can fill the entire downstairs area with sound. The Siri functions are nice for timers, music and a few other things.  We have seen a few problems that hopefully will go away with firmware improvements.  Sometimes Siri is invoked by the television sound. We are watching a show and suddenly Siri blurts out a non-sequitur or confirms some command we didn't give.  An option to learn our voices like on iPhone would be helpful.  Also, a couple of times the HomePod has just stopped playing music in the middle of a song (streaming Apple Music).  Yesterday it stopped playing and would not respond to commands.  A power cycle fixed that, but it is a bit disconcerting and disappointing.  Hoping a firmware update will fix some of these annoyances.

I interviewed at Apple Austin for a Mac support job several years back. It was a pleasant enough experience. I was struck by how professional everyone was - even the front desk/reception people were absolutely top notch.  My interview didn't go all that well and I did not et the job, but they called me back, suggesting I try for a different position as an At-Home-Advisor for iOS.  That job I actually got, but it turns out I am utterly not suited to phone based customer service. Totally stressed me out and I had to quit after only six weeks.

There was a long discussion thread on one of the other Mac info sites totally dedicated to discussing becoming an At-Home-Advisor.  Mostly, it was people interested in the AHA jobs or those who had applied and were waiting for an offer. There was one long time commenter who actually worked for Apple currently as an AHA. He was high level tier 2.  He commented there for a long time until Apple finally tracked him down and fired him.  He was generally very careful about what he said to ensure they couldn't figure out who he was.  Eventually he gave out one too many bits of information and they put the puzzle together.

I would recommend if you are thinking of applying and interviewing at Apple, you don't talk about it to anyone or post anything about it ever. They are watching and searching and are deadly serious about holding you to any NDAs signed. I was told it was best to not even tell people you worked for Apple to avoid uncomfortable situations that might arise from people wanting favors/discounts etc. Family was one thing, but other people not a good idea.

Elected officials must have marketable "achievements" under their belt in order to get re-elected. Being able to claim they "created jobs" is the golden goose of such achievements. The big corporations know this and thus have the officials over a barrel.  They get outrageous and often unworkable concessions with little or no risk to their bottom line.  Also, not everyone is a genius, not everyone has outstanding bullshit detectors, not everyone is suspicious by nature, so city and state leaders often get taken in by the sketchy promises, even if they aren't solely focussed on re-election.  The dog-and-pony shows put on by these huge corporations are often elaborate, sophisticated and convincing.

Austin lost approx. $10 million (in waived fees and deferred construction costs) around 2001, because Intel abandoned a $65 million building downtown. Intel left the structure half finished for six years before blowing it up to make way for a new Federal Courts building.  Sports teams all over the country have used public money to build stadiums, even when team owners were worth billions and could have easily self-funded. Many, many of these deals are one sided and help people of means and power and screw everyone else. There are many stories like this from all over the country now that competing to make the best bribe has become the norm.

Sometimes, though, things work out differently.  Fort Worth Alliance Airport was built with cooperation between the FAA, City of Ft. Worth and Ross Perot Jr.'s company Hillwood Development. By any metric it has been immensely successful and used large amounts of public money to get done.  It created more than 37,000 jobs and has pumped over $50 billion cumulatively into the local economy.  In this case the FAA proposed the project to Perot & Co. and later Fort Worth was brought in and that is the key difference.  It truly was an alliance between various entities instead of a one-sided, pseudo-scam perpetrated by an egomaniacal billionaire.  Maybe Alliance should be used as a template for future private sector/public sector projects.  Of course FoxCon would not have been interested in such an arrangement since they would not have been able to take and hold the upper hand.  

People keep bringing up 5G.  Couple of problems there.  First, it is not rolling out widespread any time soon.  Some companies are doing small scale installs, but it will be years before it is ubiquitous.  Dropping the Airports now would be way too early if you are going to argue 5G is the reason.  Second, most of the carriers plan to deploy 5G in the higher frequencies which is actually millimeter wave radio.  Radio waves at that frequency can't penetrate, walls, windows or even leaves on trees.  Outdoors there will be small transceivers installed everywhere - on top of light posts, traffic lights, corners of buildings, the walls of buildings - they will be a plague of boxes, antennas and fiber optic cables.  If you want 5G inside your home you will need some as yet non-existant hardware to bring the radio waves inside and distribute them to each room.  Yeah, that sounds practical.  5G is going to take a very long time to reach the ubiquity of 4G.  In fact what I have been reading says that 4G will always reamain in use as a fallback for the frequent times your phone drops off 5G.  Yep, 4G will never go away.

I gotta figure that for the Airports, some person inside Apple has charts and graphs for every product line showing expenses, profitability, growth potential etc. etc.  Obviously the charts and graphs showed the Airport division was waning and becoming unprofictable.  Apple runs their business in a very different way from a lot of compnies, but they still want divisions to make money.  Like someone said, the routers from the cable companies/ISPs get the job done and probably severely ate into Airport revenue over the lat 10 years.  I will miss them and there's no way Apple is bringing them back.  It's goodbye forever.