What is happening at Apple? I’m honestly worried for them. Is their QA department in disarray?
It's not a matter of one department, it's a matter of culture which starts from the top. Jobs insisted on perfection, and that permeated the entire organisation. Cook is satisfied with gimmicks and is contented to just coast on the reputation Jobs earned. He just doesn't have the personal stake Jobs had, he's a manager not a leader. Just like the iconic HP was never the same once Fiorina took over.
> "Just like the iconic HP was never the same once Fiorina took over."
HP was in trouble well before she joined the company.
[0]https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/female-ceo-blame_us_581...
She is getting more flak than the other terrible CEOs, but IMO it isn't caused by the fact that she's a woman. At least not directly.
Back when she was appointed as a CEO, media were treating her like a second coming of Jesus (which probably indeed was caused by her gender, she was a perfect role model for feminists). That set expectations bar really high, and when she failed to deliver, people turned against her.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...!
[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/25/yahoo-chi...
[3] - https://www.recode.net/2016/2/2/11587472/marissa-mayers-big-...
[4] - http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-blows...
It seems like a house of cards right now, and it will only get worse as they keep having the next crunch time just to deliver on an arbitrary management deadline...
It’s been that way since the 1960s.
It “has to be done” sometimes, but put that day off as long as possible.
https://blackpixel.com/writing/2012/02/radar-or-gtfo.html
Considering that some people will continuously adjust their iPad clocks into the future to be able to play Candy Crush without waiting (sic!!!), this bug must have affected people, and was certainly somewhere on Apple's radar.
It's just that management then shrugs and sticks to yearly releases instead of working down this mountain of debt.
?
Its only a matter of time until every silicon valley tech company faces the same problem.
I work for a Bay Area technology company with a decidedly mediocre engineering team.
My experience over the past 2-3 years is that the worst software engineers (at our mediocre organization) are being hired by Apple. This is totally anecdotal and the sample size is maybe five. But I just cannot escape the fact that Apple continues to hire our engineers that barely know how to program.
Hiring engineers in the Bay Area is hard. I'm sure Apple has a deep bench of talented engineers, but my own anecdotal experience tells me they have very much reduced their standards.
- Everything must be Scrum or a similar sprint system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8836734 - Move to an open office layout to foster collaboration: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962663 - Kick out high-performing "heroes" like Scott Forstall - Instead, build teams of mediocre (but probably nicer) engineers. They can then lift each other up through positivity and pair programming.
This is of course a lot of speculation (and wishful thinking) on my part, and honestly it's likely that any process would be doomed to failure under Apple's self-imposed deadlines. But I almost want to get a job at Apple only to see what it's like on the inside.
In the last years their scope has expanded immensely, both hardware-wise (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, now HomePod) and software-wise: AirPlay, CarPlay, Homekit, HealthKit, AR, Apple Music, Force Touch, machine learning, Siri, Handoff, Airdrop, Emoji with face recognition, etc. A lot of these technologies work somewhat, but are glitchy.
Of course, there are many times larger than the Apple of 2007, but managing an extremely broad palette of technologies is difficult. Especially when you want them all to produce something in-sync in the autumn. In some sense, Apple may have spread themselves to thinly.
I think think that we would be better served by an Apple that was more focused on core technologies and would let the third-party ecosystem focus on applications. Or perhaps completely separate divisions that would focus on macOS, iOS, and hardware. Or shipping features when they are done (rolling-release style) rather than one big drop every year.
At any rate, their current direction is hurting core, traditional use cases for Apple products. E.g. Preview.app/PDFKit has been really terrible the last two releases, to the point where I can barely use it for previewing my lecture slides, etc. Basic technologies like PDF rendering used to be stuff that they had nailed down extremely well.
I have yet to find a pdf viewer which does anti-aliasing right except acrobat reader. If you have two colored objects with a common edge on a white background, that edge will be lighter in color.
> let the third-party ecosystem focus on applications
I'm worried that this is exactly what Apple tried to do with tvOS, and since it hasn't worked out (Amazon is still MIA), they're now going to spread themselves even thinner by producing content and related apps themselves.
WHY that happens is much less clear to me.
Bozo explosion.
Things have been getting worse for quite a while. It appears to have finally hit a tipping point.
iPhone 5S to X (plus iPads, Apple Watches, and the iPod Touch) is a lot. All with different aspect ratios.