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Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

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Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#81

Post by jfb »

apike wrote: post #70
danilocampos wrote: post #19

The iPad sales are just staggering. Moving that many units of a product that didn't even exist a year ago, in a category that was long thought dead, is incredible. Identify an optimal user experience, polish the hell out of it, then perform an airtight integration of every single component, from end-to-end. The software and hardware, the content ecosystem, the physical distribution, all of it fits together perfectly.…

When you look at it closely, Apple, as a portfolio of talent, technologies and interacting businesses, resembles the sort of microorganism that Intelligent Design proponents advance as evidence of a god. Having been an Apple employee, it's funny to me when people describe Apple this way. If you think of their operations as perfect, godlike, or seamless, you have no chance of really understanding them or replicating t…

This corresponds closely with my experience, as well. What keeps the wheels from falling off is largely people's emotional investment in product; the harshest assessments of Apple's product I've ever heard came from Apple employees. Too, everybody loves a winner, and Apple's been doing a lot of winning lately; it keeps people motivated when they can read about their projects in the Times.

But it's a big company, and it has a lot of big company problems.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#82

Post by danilocampos »

jfb wrote: post #81
apike wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at it closely, Apple, as a portfolio of talent, technologies and interacting businesses, resembles the sort of microorganism that Intelligent Design proponents advance as evidence of a god. Having been an Apple employee, it's funny to me when people describe Apple this way. If you think of their operations as perfect, godlike, or seamless, you have no chance of really understanding them or replicating t…

This corresponds closely with my experience, as well. What keeps the wheels from falling off is largely people's emotional investment in product; the harshest assessments of Apple's product I've ever heard came from Apple employees. Too, everybody loves a winner, and Apple's been doing a lot of winning lately; it keeps people motivated when they can read about their projects in the Times . But it's a big company, and…

This is really interesting to me – self-organizing passion keeps things juiced more than the strategy or leadership?

Puts the whole "biggest startup in the world" business into perspective, I suppose.

I'd love to hear stories from your experience that illustrate how this motivation works. Others have told me that Apple is very big company but somehow this doesn't poison the end-product. I was crediting this to leadership and smart planning, so I'm fascinated to hear the real deal.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#83

Post by jfb »

danilocampos wrote: post #82
jfb wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This corresponds closely with my experience, as well. What keeps the wheels from falling off is largely people's emotional investment in product; the harshest assessments of Apple's product I've ever heard came from Apple employees. Too, everybody loves a winner, and Apple's been doing a lot of winning lately; it keeps people motivated when they can read about their projects in the Times . But it's a big company, and…

This is really interesting to me – self-organizing passion keeps things juiced more than the strategy or leadership? Puts the whole "biggest startup in the world" business into perspective, I suppose. I'd love to hear stories from your experience that illustrate how this motivation works. Others have told me that Apple is very big company but somehow this doesn't poison the end-product. I was crediting this to leader…

It largely depends on which group you're in. There are people working on stuff that's just sort of ticking along (there's a lot of technology in OS X, some of it sort of hidden -- like the latent semantic analysis framework, which is solely used for Parental Controls), or are inherently sort of gross (QuickTime for Windows, I'm looking at you), and I imagine that their experience would be different from e.g. the people working on iOS or hardware engineering on the Macbook Air or XCode.

I worked at the iTunes Store on video, and it was wild; I started about a year after the store launched, and there were maybe a dozen engineers on the team; by the time I left there had to have been a hundred (10x growth in five years.) What was really motivating was watching the broadcasts of the keynotes -- or being invited to attend -- and seeing the stuff you'd been working on presented by Steve. There was also, I have to admit, a certain charge that came from knowing stuff about future products that wasn't widely disseminated; Apple keeps their teams very segregated, and you often just know a code number or name of something that's passed over the transom, and you don't find out what it is until the rest of the world does.

But that said, siloing can have an adverse effect if you're not working on a hot product; once something is established, executive attention can wander onto something newer and cooler, and big company politics with all that that entails can come into play.

All taken with all, though, it was a fantastic place to work. I recommend it unreservedly.

EDIT: Cleaned up a couple of clunky sentences.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#84

Post by apike »

danilocampos wrote: post #77
apike wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you look at it closely, Apple, as a portfolio of talent, technologies and interacting businesses, resembles the sort of microorganism that Intelligent Design proponents advance as evidence of a god. Having been an Apple employee, it's funny to me when people describe Apple this way. If you think of their operations as perfect, godlike, or seamless, you have no chance of really understanding them or replicating t…

> Having been an Apple employee, it's funny to me when people describe Apple this way. If you think of their operations as perfect, godlike, or seamless, you have no chance of really understanding them or replicating the good parts yourself. A completely agree, so I think you may have missed my point. It's worth noting that I think Intelligent Design is horseshit, so god leaps neither from that argument nor from Appl…

It would be interesting to learn just how aggressively leadership must filter and otherwise confine these impulses to end up with the focus, profits and product mix we see today.

A big key is that things don't ship unless Steve thinks they're great. There's lots of stuff that doesn't ship, and lots of stuff that isn't pursued. However, as a consequence, there's a lot of internal competition to get Steve's attention - or to not get Steve's attention if you're in a services group.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#85

Post by linuxhansl »

Not a single cent of my money.

I stopped using Apple products when they started to lock down the iPods (by using encryption) and tied devices to a specific installation of iTunes.

And do not even get me started on the closed platforms that are the iPhone or the iPad (i.e. the Apple Store).

The amount good will this company has with consumers is staggering.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#86

Post by danieldon »

dasht wrote: post #53

Hehe. You know the old saying "always darkest just before the storm"? How's about: "always highest revenue just before the bubble bursts"? Huge numbers of consumer leaders or consumer suckers have, in the past few years, bought lots of this line of products. Either a large number of them and non-buyers agree "Well, that was worth it" or, the opposite. Place your bet. (I'm not saying "droid wins" or "MSFT wins". I'm s…

Proclamations predicting the imminent decline of Apple got old many years ago.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#87

Post by cletus »

marze wrote: post #34
ugh wrote: post #18

Steve Jobs is just now highlighting Android’s “fragmentation” and discussing Android’s openness. He is also talking about upcoming tablets and their 7" screens. (Trash talking them, that is. No 7" screen from Apple anytime soon.) Ars Technica is blogging: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/10/liveblog-q4-2010-e...

There were rumors of an Apple 7" device earlier this year. I wonder if they were deliberately started by Apple to send competitors down what they considered a blind alley.

I don't buy into this kind of conspiracy thinking.

Apple builds more products than it releases. It's entirely possible (if not probable) that Apple developed a 7" prototype. Just like I'm sure there's been a CDMA iPhone prototype. That means nothing however. Just because there is/was a prototype doesn't mean there will be a product.

I believe the 7" competitors come down to two things:

1. The competitors might feel like they need to differentiate themselves from the iPad; or, more likely,

2. Apple has tied up the world supply of 10" capacitative touch screens so the competitors needed to go for parts they could get.

Unfortunately a lot of these Apple rumours are started and propagated by people who simply don't understand how Apple operates or are simply link-baiting.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#88

Post by danilocampos »

apike wrote: post #84
danilocampos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having been an Apple employee, it's funny to me when people describe Apple this way. If you think of their operations as perfect, godlike, or seamless, you have no chance of really understanding them or replicating the good parts yourself. A completely agree, so I think you may have missed my point. It's worth noting that I think Intelligent Design is horseshit, so god leaps neither from that argument nor from Appl…

It would be interesting to learn just how aggressively leadership must filter and otherwise confine these impulses to end up with the focus, profits and product mix we see today. A big key is that things don't ship unless Steve thinks they're great. There's lots of stuff that doesn't ship, and lots of stuff that isn't pursued. However, as a consequence, there's a lot of internal competition to get Steve's attention -…

Oh, too interesting. So because Steve holds the keys to the kingdom, incentives align in such a way that competition within Apple surrounds capturing his interest. Every system has an exploit – Apple's would then depend upon hacking Steve, or his circle, for maximum personal gain. Steve ends up being the filter for ambition that doesn't match Apple's long term agenda, while amplifying ambition that does. He's sitting at a loom, weaving all the stuff he likes into the long term vision and squashing everything else.

Thank you for posting and describing it this way – it's interesting and not how I originally thought of it, but of course it makes perfect sense.

The basic kernel of replicable process here seems to be:

  *Create a single point of accountability for product
  *Exercise restraint and focus
  *Have uncompromising taste
It doesn't necessarily scale well, but Apple's numbers suggest it doesn't really need to.

(aside: Putting it this way, Jobs reminds me of the Illusive Man.)

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#89

Post by andrewljohnson »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

Down 5.8% (-18.70) in AH trading: http://www.google.com/finance?client=ig&q=AAPL edit: whew, and seeming to stabilize around a 4.5% drop still leaving it above $300. I was amazed it broke $300 so easily last week and was afraid it'd fall back below with this drop.

That was profit-taking. The sell-off wasn't because the news was bad.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#90

Post by panic »

benologist wrote: post #71
msbarnett wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's pretty much what I said - it's a problem that Adobe, Mono, Unity etc. are hoping they can solve for us. It's a problem that companies have been trying to solve, in one form or another, since the advent of the microcomputer. I'm highly sceptical that a solution is ever going to appear. There is no silver bullet that will allow you to paper over the significant differences in platforms in a transparent, non-cl…

It's a problem that HTML5 is promising to solve too, and that HTML/CSS/JS in general did a pretty good job at in many use cases.

Francisco Tolmasky (of 280 North / Cappuccino fame) had an insightful blog post about this subject:

But let’s get to the real issue here, because this is once again a misunderstanding of design vs. programming. HTML, JS, and CSS do not magically create wonderful experiences on every platform they are run. As you can see from the above screenshot, they certainly have the nice side effect of working on said platforms, but if you’re expecting HTML to somehow handle the subtle and explicit differences between a handheld multitouch peripheral and a desktop application, well then you’re doing it wrong. These are completely different environments and they require completely different designs and often implementations.

http://www.alertdebugging.com/2009/11/04/mockingbird-cappucc...

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