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Comment by canistr | Hacker News Reader

"I hear you no longer work for Apple; is that true? A. Correct. I joined Apple in January of 1997, almost twenty years ago, because of my profound belief that “the power of the computer should reside in the hands of the one using it.” That credo remains my truth to this day. Recently, I was informed that my position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies was eliminated for business reasons. Consequently, I am no longer employed by Apple Inc. But, I still believe my credo to be as true today as ever."

Wow.

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The quote implies that Apple left him in the dust after 20 years, but if you look at careful phrasing it leaves open that Apple offered him an alternative position.

I agree. I doubt it is as black and white as people have interpreted. I suspect it was more along the lines of "we want to take a different approach to _automation_, are you with us or not?"

What's so "wow" about this ? This happens every second of every day across companies. People are always made redundant for business reasons e.g. restructures, strategic realignments etc.

It's definitely not unique for Apple which recently has seen them do a purge of areas they no longer want to be in e.g. Displays, Wifi routers.

He spent 20 years building technology to empower users, and Apple decided that user empowerment is an an area they no longer want to be in. That's wow a new era in computing, that is all in on changing users into mere consumers

They didn't decide that. They decided this particular guy was not necessarily the guy to do that. You don't just go and buy the best automation app on the marketplace because you don't like automation - you do it to bring in new blood and a new perspective.

This is all just speculation. We don't know anything. But it's possible that there was a difference in opinion about what sort of user to target.

Courting power users used to be much more popular than it is today. It seems that today all large tech companies target IT professionals and consumers with a completely separate set of offerings. There's very little in between any more. On the consumer side they go for ultimate scale because nothing else moves the needle for them.

It wouldn't surprise me if Apple had decided to deprecate everything that isn't accessible to all consumers, which would have frustrated someone who has worked for decades to let power users automate tasks in ways that the average consumer never would.

As I said, all pure speculation for our entertainment :-)

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