Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#151

Post by rimantas » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 7:32 AM UTC

seizethecheese wrote: post #97

tlogan wrote: post #22

Not sure if this is true - I would like to see some stats. I think the problem is that the press will not write about some founder as "ex Apple engineer", "ex Oracle engineer", etc. It is not cool. The story will sell if founder are "ex-Google", "ex-Facebook", "ex-Dropbox", "Y-combinator", etc. For example, if you are ex-Oracle, then you need to have significant revenue in order to be mentioned in the press as ex-Ora…

I disagree entirely. Many of the Nest articles that I read were heavy on the "ex Apple" rhetoric.

Maybe because it was founded by former Senior VP and the "father" of iPod, not just some random Apple engineer?

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#152

Post by gumby » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 8:50 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #149

gumby wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Apple went through that mode and was within a few weeks of dying. Luckily they debugged themselves. > Not really, Bill Gates rescued them. Microsoft unquestionably kept them from dying at that point by giving them $150M. And probably it was a call from Jobs to Gates so I suppose you can say "Gates" instead of "Microsoft". But my point was that foolish management got Apple to that point and they replaced that with…

> Microsoft unquestionably kept them from dying at that point by giving them $150M. Apple had $1.2B cash at the time. It was symbolic, not substantial, for either party.

philwelch, it took me a bit of rummaging but in fact I was 100% wrong.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#153

Post by vilmosi » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 10:50 AM UTC

larrys wrote: post #32

vilmosi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really an answer. Many companies offer just that and more.

But with Apple there is the "aunt and your friends and family factor". Everybody has heard of Apple and a large swath of people would tend to be impressed by the fact that you worked there. It would also tend to be the type of place that obviously looks good on your resume if you need to get another job in the future so it offers that as additional security. Techies might care that you worked at Tesla, much of the re…

There are many companies that offer just that "status" as well.

I don't know why you think Apple is special in any way when it comes to jobs. In fact, I heard they're worse, exactly because of the "status" that comes with it.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#154

Post by dasil003 » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #142

dasil003 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a dev box not a server Mr. holier-than-though smartass.

You are wrong. At that time the whole universities had, if they were rich, a couple of mainframes for the whole institution, if they were poorer, one or none. All the students wich are entitled to access to the mainframe worked typically on a single mainframe which was also used for the university accounting etc. Mainframes were, using the more modern words, the big servers with the capital S, effectively. Hobbyist k…

Don't lecture at me, you are not giving me any new information. Yes, having access to a mainframe was incredibly expensive and difficult. Yes, Microsoft leveraged that access.

But were they selling Altair_BASIC running on said mainframe? No they were not, hence they did not have servers. They used a mainframe as a dev box.

You can't redefine my terminology just to suit your own viewpoint.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#155

Post by dasil003 » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

jeroen wrote: post #123

dasil003 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a dev box not a server Mr. holier-than-though smartass.

thou (you)

thanks, I was a little hasty in my typing homophones responding to https://twitter.com/karlvanhoet

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#156

Post by acqq » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 10:32 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #154

acqq wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. At that time the whole universities had, if they were rich, a couple of mainframes for the whole institution, if they were poorer, one or none. All the students wich are entitled to access to the mainframe worked typically on a single mainframe which was also used for the university accounting etc. Mainframes were, using the more modern words, the big servers with the capital S, effectively. Hobbyist k…

Don't lecture at me, you are not giving me any new information. Yes, having access to a mainframe was incredibly expensive and difficult. Yes, Microsoft leveraged that access. But were they selling Altair_BASIC running on said mainframe? No they were not, hence they did not have servers. They used a mainframe as a dev box. You can't redefine my terminology just to suit your own viewpoint.

The attempt to hang to the verbatim word "server" is at best anachronistic.

Re: Why Has Apple Spawned So Few Startups?

#157

Post by beambot » Tue, Jun 09, 2015, 8:34 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #150

beambot wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't underestimate how much secrecy plays a role psychologically. Not being able to talk to friends, family, and loved ones about what you work on can be a real drain. (Spoken from some experience; I did classified work at a DOE nuclear lab in the past.)

I must be odd, because I never talk about my work with my family even when I'm allowed to. None of them have the context to understand or care. It's a different compartment of my life entirely. Do normal people really do this?

Perhaps I'm the odd one then. Much of my family and most of my closest friends are perfectly capable of having informed discussions about technology when those discussions are rooted in basic physics. Actually, it goes beyond that: We all enjoy talking about those subjects.