bsimpsen

1) I care. During my 35 year engineering career, I worked with hundreds of white male engineers, perhaps a dozen males of color (mostly Asian, two Indian) and two white females. I encountered zero females in top management. Only four of my engineering school graduating class of 150 were women, The few women I had the pleasure of working with where bright, motivated, thoughtful, and frustrated by the lack of opportunity, even in places where management seemed progressive. I want better for women because they’re more than half our future, they’re undervalued and I want their different perspective involved in my decision making.

2) If you don’t care whether Apple’s workforce has the diversity of its public face, why do you care whether Appleinsider does?

Woz was simply in the right place at the right time. In the spring of 1975, a senior in my engineering school opened his briefcase in the student lounge to reveal a portable computer. It was battery operated, had an 8080 CPU, a 4” (16 lines of 64 chars) screen and full keyboard, and loaded programs from cassette tape, far faster than the Kansas City Standard that was born the same year. It could play music (crude, but recognizable) and communicate over a serial port to the school’s PDP-11. I’ve no idea what happened to that engineering student, but I imagine he was every bit as “brilliant” as Woz.

Woz’s inability to do anything of note since the Apple II tells you all you need to know about his “genius”. Steve Jobs continued to pursue his vision of personal computing for more than three decades, setting Apple on the path to becoming the world’s most successful company.

melgross said:

bsimpsen said:

I don't know the particulars of Apple's ARM architecture license, but if royalty payments for older versions decline over time, or if payments for new versions increase over time, there's financial incentive for Apple to drift away from ARM into its own custom designs. Whether the ARM design teams can keep Apple interested is an open question.

Apple doesn’t use ARM designs, so they don’t pay for them. Apple’s designs are entirely home grown. They have an architectural license which means they use the instruction set, basically.

Apple pays for the Architectural license. As instructions are added to the instruction set, I expect ARM will want compensation for them. To the extent those instructions support ancillary functions like AI, I expect Apple might not adopt them.

I don't know the particulars of Apple's ARM architecture license, but if royalty payments for older versions decline over time, or if payments for new versions increase over time, there's financial incentive for Apple to drift away from ARM into its own custom designs. Whether the ARM design teams can keep Apple interested is an open question.

GeorgeBMac said:

I can't wait.

But one hold up will be those private enterprises who require hard documents that they then photocopy and digitize themselves.   Chief among them are healthcare offices -- the first thing they ask is "Give me your ID and medical cards" that they then photo copy.

It took them years to get away from Fax Machines (which are STILL being used!).  It will take them decades to get away from being able to hold a card in their hand and photocopy it.   Meanwhile it is they who complain about medical ID fraud -- while promoting it by keeping unsecured copies of people's cards!

All of my health care providers allow me to upload photos of my insurance cards. I haven't had to hand over a physical card in years.