foad

ac1234 said:

jonl said:

Working for an Apple store is not the same as working for Apple as a developer or engineer, which is what this article is about, as stated in its opening sentence.

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.

It might not be completely Microsoft's technical issue, but ultimately it doesn't matter. It's about perception. Look at the LA school district and the iPad roll out. It wasn't mostly Apple's fault but they sure got blamed for the district's incompetence. 

The latest Surfaces are having their fair share of issues. 

https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/64095/welcome-to-surfacegate