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Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

sachin.posterous.com

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Fina...

So I guess that we can say for sure (2009-2010 numbers) that online stuff is now loosing money, windows is now doing better that office, and gaming is quite behind but stable and profitable (albeit a lot less that office or windows). Let's be frank too, were talking about billions here, so those segments are quite big.

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Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess that we can say for sure (2009-2010 numbers) that online stuff is now loosing money, windows is now doing better that office, and gaming is quite behind but stable and profitable (albeit a lot less that office or windows). Let's be frank too, were talking about billions here, so those segments are quite big.

I can't tell you specifics but I can tell you that Microsoft knows the cloud is losing money for now.

It seems like, in my opinion that the online services are really the front facing side of the company and they are really trying to work their image through those services, not their core revenue streams. Appearing too bad on this segment might mean mid-term losses on the other streams, lobbying might be affected, etc. So losing or making money might not be too important (for the online services), as long as they keep their presence.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#53

This article, like many others, seems to overestimate how large the actual numbers of developers is at Microsoft, as opposed to full teams with Test and mgmt and their associated marketing, sales, etc. organizations. The .NET GC was roughly 1 person (sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more). Most of the base class libraries were one person. Even larger things, like the text editor, were usually a senior pers…

Not to be obtuse, or maybe miss the joke, but how can you sometimes have a little less than 1 person working on one of the most important parts of your runtime? Sounds like a bug more than a feature to me. :)

"Full-time equivalent (FTE) is a way to measure a worker's involvement in a project, or a student's enrollment at an educational institution. An FTE of 1.0 means that the person is equivalent to a full-time worker, while an FTE of 0.5 signals that the worker is only half-time. Typically, different scales are used to calibrate this number, depending on the type of institution (schools, industry, research) and scope of the report (personnel cost, productivity)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-time_equivalent

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#54

This article, like many others, seems to overestimate how large the actual numbers of developers is at Microsoft, as opposed to full teams with Test and mgmt and their associated marketing, sales, etc. organizations. The .NET GC was roughly 1 person (sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more). Most of the base class libraries were one person. Even larger things, like the text editor, were usually a senior pers…

Not to be obtuse, or maybe miss the joke, but how can you sometimes have a little less than 1 person working on one of the most important parts of your runtime? Sounds like a bug more than a feature to me. :)

It's a perfectly valid question, no need to downvote the guy.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#55
post #48
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Live, Bing, Xbox, Servers, Cloud Services... It's easy to bash on them, but they make quality products in a diverse range of markets. Sure they fail and fail big, but who the hell doesn't? If you have made anything successful, you've probably failed 100s of times. It comes with the territory.

Windows Live, Bing, Xbox, Servers, Cloud Services Did you have any examples that contradicted me? All of the above are losing MS money in a BIG way.

Um, not to get all defensive, but we at STB are making quite a bit of money. It's probably over a million a quarter per developer. I don't know many people who can say that. ;)

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#56
post #12

"The engineers on the Mac OS and iOS teams move back and forth between the two projects based on release cycles and what's needs to ship next." As somebody who has been rather dismayed with the way the Macintosh platform has started to stagnate in the past couple of years, I don't really view this as a good thing.

Stagnate? Snow Leopard is just under a year old. I wouldn't expect a desktop OS to have a same release frequency as a mobile os.

Just over a year old, and just past two years since Apple first showed it at WWDC 2008. Snow Leopard was a relatively minor upgrade even by Apple's admission (hence the price tag $100 lower than for previous iterations), yet it still suffered delays because of work on iOS.

Meanwhile, there was zero mention of anything Macintosh at WWDC this year, meaning we're probably at least a year off from any real news at 10.7, which would put us at 4 years since OS X has had any significant user facing updates.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#57
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stagnate? Snow Leopard is just under a year old. I wouldn't expect a desktop OS to have a same release frequency as a mobile os.

Oddly, Debian has about the same release cycle (once per 12-18 months), and ends up being the butt of lots of jokes about how they rarely ever release anything.

Debian has only recently settled on a 2 year feature freeze cycle. In the past, Debian has suffered from releases being pushed back due to constant feature creep in the name of stability -- that's much of the reason why Ubuntu was forked from Debian in 2004.

So the jokes may be dated in 2010, but there's a reason they came about in the first place.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#58
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person who hates that animation? This is about the only reason why I use Stanza, no animation to waste my time with.

I can't stand it either and I think Kindle has a better e-Book reader than Apple. Amazon did a good job at thinking, "this is not a book... this is not a book" where-as Apple brought all of the physical things from a book into an electronic application.

I bet a lot of the iPad target audience wants it to be close to a physical book. They aren't geeks.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#59
Its indeed awesome for a company as large as Apple to keep things this way. I have several friends at Cisco and Oracle and the teams there are just bloated beyond belief. I think a lot of this flows top down and the management needs to get it. Once you work at a well-run startup, you know that the only way to get things done is with small teams and a core team of star engineers who move around and get things done.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#60
post #12

"The engineers on the Mac OS and iOS teams move back and forth between the two projects based on release cycles and what's needs to ship next." As somebody who has been rather dismayed with the way the Macintosh platform has started to stagnate in the past couple of years, I don't really view this as a good thing.

Stagnate? Snow Leopard is just under a year old. I wouldn't expect a desktop OS to have a same release frequency as a mobile os.

Stagnation doesn't necessarily refer to the frequency of release.
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