251–260 of 405 posts
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So essentially the basics of building any resilient system. Sad that our market economy punishes this approach in the general case.
Punishes? Apple is the most highly valued company of all.
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Google makes billions in profits by selling ads. Many of the buyers of those ads are affected by interest rates. Therefore, Google is affected by those interest rates.
This is fair, but general economic health applies to every company in the economy, and this large cap tech company segment is both profitable and seemingly laying off employees at a higher rate than the economy as a whole. So that blame seems misplaced. From a theoretical perspective at this level of scale the number of engineers in particular does not scale with the ebb and flow of the selling of ads to the degree o…
When the risk-free rate increases, the RoI hurdle for any investment also increases. That's how economic stimulus by lowering interest rates works, by creating incentive to "try things" (by removing the incentive to "park your money").
Advertisers on Google now bid on ads based on an environment where they are more conservative (because they have better alternative investments), where their input costs have increased (labor, raw materials, energy), where some industries (like mortgage refinancing) have been dramatically curtailed directly by the change in rates, and for some companies, buying back their own bonds is more attractive than advertising on Google with a portion of their spend.
Google can look out on the horizon and conclude "OK, we had a really great business when rates were near zero; now we have a pretty damn good business with rates several points higher than that, but it's definitely not as good as it was, so we need to tweak our frugality dial in response."
https://techpp.com/2023/01/25/tech-layoffs-apple-2023/ > Amazon, for instance, hired about 780,000 people during the pandemic. Meta, too, had more than doubled its staff in this period, going from about 40,000 to 87,000. Even Microsoft had hired about 77,000 people just before the pandemic. > Apple, in comparison, is believed to have hired under 20,000 people during the period of the pandemic. Can't layoff people you…
Did the pandemic really increase business so much that they had to hire that many people?
Those businesses boomed during the pandemic and deflated once it was over.
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Apple is the only one that doesn’t seem to start up hundreds of obviously useless projects. Google will hire thousands to work on an obviously doomed streaming service, to build a new OS, and so many other obviously bad ideas and then just fire them all later. Vanishingly few Apple products seem to be discontinued. Usually after a long life like the iPod.
While I respect Apple as a whole, "they didn't start up hundreds of obv useless projects" is an empty claim. Not only they sank so much money into subpar offerings like iCloud/iWork, not pay attention to some of their competitive advantages like Automator, they ran some of their once-great stuff into ground as well (Finalcut pro).
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> I can't think of a company more blatantly engaged in anti-competitive practices than Apple In a world where Amazon, Meta, Google, Wal-Mart, Time-Warner, Comcast, etc exist, you think Apple is the most anti-competitive?
These companies you mention, at least the tech ones, are all way more open to third parties interfacing with whatever products they have or data they produce. They are more like big city gangsters willing to do business with whomever as long as you pay them protection money, while Apple's ecosystem is like a gated community where you get shot at the door if you even so much as look like you can't afford to get in.
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I would just love to be able to run my own OS on the car.. I'd write the shit out of a better interface.
I think if you asked me to write a car OS the ethical thing to do would be to quit.
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Apple is the only one that doesn’t seem to start up hundreds of obviously useless projects. Google will hire thousands to work on an obviously doomed streaming service, to build a new OS, and so many other obviously bad ideas and then just fire them all later. Vanishingly few Apple products seem to be discontinued. Usually after a long life like the iPod.
A/UX, Taligent, Dylan, Pippin, Java Bridge, Quickdraw 3D, Copland,... We don't know more due to the secrecy. EDIT: A few more I just remembered, MacRuby, OpenCL, WebObjects, Quicktime
These were arguably pretty reasonable hedging; it was _far from certain_ that developers would accept Objective C, and then later there was a general sense that dynamic interpreted languages might eat the world. I can't imagine either were particularly expensive; MacRuby in particular was basically someone's side project?
> WebObjects
This was inherited, and was pretty successful in its day (though it did perhaps outstay its welcome).
Most of the others you name are either _very_ old, or were actually quite useful in their day but have aged out.
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I never wanted to commute. Not in busy trains and certainly not getting stuck in traffic jams. I also never wanted to shop or spend time in the supermarket getting spaced out by their weird lightning they install to make you make bad decisions. I do want to visit friends, go out in nature and once in a while eat at a restaurant. But for me, I am so happy to wfh 80% of the time and do 99% of shopping and groceries onl…
Something that the pandemic has rammed home with my wife and I is just how poor the out of home dining experience is in general. The food is lackluster, the ambiance is awful, being surrounded by other people eating is terrible (my wife is a quiet talker and being fat always makes eating in public a shameful experience), so we'd MUCH rather eat at home. The quality of the ingredients are far higher, the food is tasti…
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Cook has made several decisions in the past handful of years that seem to show an ability to resist the group think that exists among the large tech companies leadership.
No scandals, no twitter addiction, no sexual assault cases. No bullshit. All this guy does is wake up at 4, work till 10, and sleep. Cuts his own pay voluntarily. Didn’t double his headcount while revenues fell like so many. Tim Cook is such a beast. Jobs left one last blessing for Apple shareholders in his decision to elevate Cook.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/26/apple-china-website-censorshi...