Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

swaaanson.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 77 posts

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#31

Post by tudorw »

taligent wrote: post #26
tudorw wrote: post #15

Sounds like a massive exercise in ball waving ego' nonsense, I am pretty sure this is not how real progress is made... It's not as if anything Apple did was truly original (suit on), they are great finishers but I believe true innovation comes from co-operation.

I fail to see how turning around a company from nearly bankruptcy to the largest in the industry isn't progress.

I meant progress as in 'the idea that the world can become increasingly better in terms of science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, quality of life, etc.'

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#32

Post by redthrowaway »

its_so_on wrote: post #29
fpgeek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it No, they don't. They mean battery life is important in mobile devices as long as it doesn't get in the way of making them thin (among other things). After all, the modern smartphone with the best battery life is the Droid RAZR MAXX (soon to be dethroned by its international sibling the Motorola RAZR MAXX, which doesn't have the battery-l…

Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing). an unimaginable number of such laptops are brought out by every major brand other than Apple. (likewise apple has its standards in a phone, which is not the standard you cite, but not 45 minutes either.). Apple is opinionated on every part of the user interface and design, on usability and ease-of-use. They then go on to put their money w…

>It's very hard to find design decisions at Apple that seem to have 0 thought or discussion behind them.

That doesn't mean the result of said thought was good, however:

http://i.minus.com/dQhzPuq2CZUc/264182-apple-mac-os-x-lion-1...

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#33

Post by peteretep »

tudorw wrote: post #15

Sounds like a massive exercise in ball waving ego' nonsense, I am pretty sure this is not how real progress is made... It's not as if anything Apple did was truly original (suit on), they are great finishers but I believe true innovation comes from co-operation.

> It's not as if anything Apple did was truly original (suit on), they are great finishers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#34

Post by ralfd »

raverbashing wrote: post #17
gnarbarian wrote: post #3

>"Arguments at Apple are personal and confrontational. This began at the top, and it is part of the company’s culture." That sounds like a terrible environment.

legend says Tony Fadell (iPod creator) threatened to quit when SJ wanted to put a x86 processor on the iPad I believe such an environment can be very important. if you have very good people Also, it's one thing to stand for your idea agressively, other, to just swear at people.

This is an interesting point. It is valuable to have this kind of engineer instead of a Yes-man.

Steve Jobs was famously difficult. Certainly not the kind of boss I would want. But the turnover in his inner circle was really low. Craig Federighi who on Monday demonstrated the next OS X is a Guy from the old NeXT days. I think Jobs selected people as underlings who were able to stand up to him (sometimes).

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#35

Post by exDM69 »

gnarbarian wrote: post #3

>"Arguments at Apple are personal and confrontational. This began at the top, and it is part of the company’s culture." That sounds like a terrible environment.

Dear god, I would not want to work in this company. I want a job, not a religion.

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#36

Post by Angostura »

tudorw wrote: post #31
taligent wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how turning around a company from nearly bankruptcy to the largest in the industry isn't progress.

I meant progress as in 'the idea that the world can become increasingly better in terms of science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, quality of life, etc.'

As a matter of interest; what do you think the phone market would look like today if the iPhone hadn't come out. And what about the iTunes Store? Do you think you'd be able to buy a single track from album, yet?

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#37

Post by kabdib »

“High-performance teams should be at each other’s throats” is how one person with relationships with multiple Apple executives summarized the culture. “You don’t get to the right trade-off without each person advocating aggressively for his position.”

How ironic -- when I was at Apple in the 90s, our meetings were scattered creampuff things and this is how I imagined Microsoft would be. Now that I'm at Microsoft it's the other way around . . . :-)

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#38

Post by steverb »

its_so_on wrote: post #29
fpgeek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Apple says that battery-life is important in mobile devices, they mean it No, they don't. They mean battery life is important in mobile devices as long as it doesn't get in the way of making them thin (among other things). After all, the modern smartphone with the best battery life is the Droid RAZR MAXX (soon to be dethroned by its international sibling the Motorola RAZR MAXX, which doesn't have the battery-l…

Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing). an unimaginable number of such laptops are brought out by every major brand other than Apple. (likewise apple has its standards in a phone, which is not the standard you cite, but not 45 minutes either.). Apple is opinionated on every part of the user interface and design, on usability and ease-of-use. They then go on to put their money w…

The 1.5 hour battery laptop serves (for me) an important niche. You see, I don't actually need a laptop. I need a portable desktop with built in battery backup, which is what the 1.5 hour battery laptop is.

Of course, it's entirely within Apple's prerogative to ignore that very niche market (I would if I were them) and it seems to be working well for them, but every odd ball computer configuration you see was created to meet the needs of at least one market. You are not the target market for the desktop replacement laptop. I am.

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#39

Post by cryptoz »

redthrowaway wrote: post #32
its_so_on wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing). an unimaginable number of such laptops are brought out by every major brand other than Apple. (likewise apple has its standards in a phone, which is not the standard you cite, but not 45 minutes either.). Apple is opinionated on every part of the user interface and design, on usability and ease-of-use. They then go on to put their money w…

>It's very hard to find design decisions at Apple that seem to have 0 thought or discussion behind them. That doesn't mean the result of said thought was good , however: http://i.minus.com/dQhzPuq2CZUc/264182-apple-mac-os-x-lion-1...

Windows XP didn't ship with a user-level calendar. If Apple had a calendar before 2006, they'd be winning the calendar design front without much effort.

Re: Lessons from Inside Apple: Why Focus is Horrifyingly Scary

#40

Post by freehunter »

steverb wrote: post #38
its_so_on wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple would never release a laptop with a 1.5 hour battery (wifi web browsing). an unimaginable number of such laptops are brought out by every major brand other than Apple. (likewise apple has its standards in a phone, which is not the standard you cite, but not 45 minutes either.). Apple is opinionated on every part of the user interface and design, on usability and ease-of-use. They then go on to put their money w…

The 1.5 hour battery laptop serves (for me) an important niche. You see, I don't actually need a laptop. I need a portable desktop with built in battery backup, which is what the 1.5 hour battery laptop is. Of course, it's entirely within Apple's prerogative to ignore that very niche market (I would if I were them) and it seems to be working well for them, but every odd ball computer configuration you see was created…

In college I loved my desktop replacement. This was before wifi was campus-wide, so bringing my laptop to class didn't give me much more benefit than bringing a pad of paper, so the laptop stayed firmly put on my desk all semester. What was really important to me was being able to haul my computer out of the dorm in one trip. A desktop would require multiple trips and would need to be shut down to move (the laptop lasted and hour on battery and 5 hours in sleep mode). A desktop replacement offers almost all the benefits of a desktop, but with a built-in UPS and a one-piece form factor.
Post reply on HN