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

How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

fastcompany.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 177 posts

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#81

Post by EdwardDiego »

cameronh90 wrote: post #80
kstenerud wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who besides industry geeks actually cared about that? ipod was innovative for the common man. iphone was innovative for the common man. ipad was innovative for the common man. The rest? Meh. Nowadays it's just an upgrade treadmill, consisting of "To re-pair my old watch I first need to update to the latest watch software (even though it worked fine before I unpaired it). But to update the watch software I need to upd…

Apple Watch, Apple Pencil, AirTag, AirPods...

They made a pencil?

Huh. And I guess stalkers quickly embraced the AirTag.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#82

Post by EdwardDiego »

lostlogin wrote: post #13
88913527 wrote: post #5

> Secrecy is a value it held dear, to preserve the “surprise and delight” for customers. I think the last time I felt this way about an Apple Event was the launch of the iPad. Not only are they burning out engineers, they're optimizing for a value that isn't part of their secret sauce anymore. I expect innovation, but not surprise. An N'th generation anything just won't have the same zing as it did the first few time…

> An N'th generation anything just won't have the same zing as it did the first few times. I agree, but the new MacBooks have had a fair bit of excitement around them. So maybe you just have to make several duds first?

I stopped giving a shit about MacBooks when they started limiting RAM to 16G, and put in that stupid bar thing instead of function keys.

If anyone was excited about the new MacBook, I'm guessing it's because they're already deep into Apple as a brand.

Me, I just want a computer that works, has decent specs* and doesn't treat me like an imbecile, or refuse to ship Bash >3 because the legal team got antsy about GPLv3. (I just loooove when I'm writing shell scripts that might be used by coworkers running Macs and I need to make sure that I either limit myself to sh functionality, or Bash 3 functionality)

Which is why I've been running Linux laptops since then.

*And no, 16G is not enough, but I've had many fans try to explain to me why it was.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#83

Post by kqr »

jrockway wrote: post #78
amir734jj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But good luck figuring out how that code works. Disclosure I work at Microsoft and I work with ropes with millions of lines of code.

I think the best skill I learned at Google was figuring out how other people's code works. You read the documentation, and then you make some RPC. It doesn't work as documented. You go read the other service's logs and see an error message, but it doesn't make any sense. You search the codebase for that error message. You find that the super deprecated do not include field is mandatory; it's sent to some other servic…

I find this difference also between people who grew up on open source vs proprietary software.

I'm nervous about running in production software I can't open up and look at how it works under the hood. I often use that ability to understand my systems better.

Some people just don't care about that. They're used to paying a support agreement and opening a ticket or calling a support rep instead. I will never get it but clearly that's how some people like to, or are at least used to, operate.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#84

Post by mschuster91 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #71
dylan604 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a massive lead on Intel/AMD processors today That's giving Intel a heck of a lot of credit. Intel is a massive ship moving along at full speed. They aren't the most agile of companies to say the least. Intel's x86 giant hammer convinces themselves that everything is an x86 nail. How else do you explain the fact that they are so woefully behind in the times? Apple and Intel w…

Except... Whilst I acknowledge that the M1 macs are pretty good, Intel power pcs on everyone else's desks that work just fine for the standard Microsoft Office workload. Intel are not miles behind, they are just not ahead. In the world of Enterprise Applications x86s compatibility with legacy code is going to be important to many large organisations. Meanwhile Apple with probably pull support for Rosetta2 in a couple…

> So whilst Intel have not innovated at the speed us techies would have liked, x86 is here to stay in the non-apple world.

Not necessarily! A lot of office needs boil down to the Office 365 suite, Adobe and the SAP GUI - all of which now have native M1 variants. The only thing that's needed is someone other than Apple and Qualcomm actually putting out a desktop-worthy ARM CPU so that Microsoft can provide Windows-on-ARM for everyone (there are rumors of a secret deal between MS/QC that is bound to expire soon-ish). Once the price point gets low enough for corporate beancounters to buy a ton of ARM Windows devices for paper pushers, they will do so - and by that point, Intel is doomed. AMD is eating their lunch in the server market, and Intel doesn't have anything that can compete with ARM on power-per-watt and price.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#85

Post by awestroke »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #82
lostlogin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An N'th generation anything just won't have the same zing as it did the first few times. I agree, but the new MacBooks have had a fair bit of excitement around them. So maybe you just have to make several duds first?

I stopped giving a shit about MacBooks when they started limiting RAM to 16G, and put in that stupid bar thing instead of function keys. If anyone was excited about the new MacBook, I'm guessing it's because they're already deep into Apple as a brand. Me, I just want a computer that works, has decent specs* and doesn't treat me like an imbecile, or refuse to ship Bash >3 because the legal team got antsy about GPLv3.…

Time to lift your head out of the sand then. Macbook Pro now comes in 32GB RAM flavors, with fn keys instead of the touch bar, and zsh by default

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#87

Post by snom380 »

kstenerud wrote: post #33
frutiger wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? The performance per watt and rollout schedule of Apple Silicon?

Who besides industry geeks actually cared about that? ipod was innovative for the common man. iphone was innovative for the common man. ipad was innovative for the common man. The rest? Meh. Nowadays it's just an upgrade treadmill, consisting of "To re-pair my old watch I first need to update to the latest watch software (even though it worked fine before I unpaired it). But to update the watch software I need to upd…

My wife doesn’t care about CPU architectures, but she was astonished that her new MacBook Pro didn’t get hot on her lap, and how she could work through the day on one charge. Then she was astonished by the sound quality of the speakers. It’s not a revolution but people care about the end result of those incremental innovations.

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#88

Post by EdwardDiego »

awestroke wrote: post #85
EdwardDiego wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped giving a shit about MacBooks when they started limiting RAM to 16G, and put in that stupid bar thing instead of function keys. If anyone was excited about the new MacBook, I'm guessing it's because they're already deep into Apple as a brand. Me, I just want a computer that works, has decent specs* and doesn't treat me like an imbecile, or refuse to ship Bash >3 because the legal team got antsy about GPLv3.…

Time to lift your head out of the sand then. Macbook Pro now comes in 32GB RAM flavors, with fn keys instead of the touch bar, and zsh by default

Zsh isn't Bash. And Bash version compatibility is important when 75% of your team develop on Linux, but the other 25% on Mac.

I mean, I use Fish, but when I'm writing shell scripts for others, it's Bash, because it's a common default. But now I'm limited to Bash 3.

But I'm glad that they got rid of that stupid bar, and let you get a laptop with 32G of RAM now. So kind of Apple!

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#89

Post by nicoburns »

awestroke wrote: post #85
EdwardDiego wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped giving a shit about MacBooks when they started limiting RAM to 16G, and put in that stupid bar thing instead of function keys. If anyone was excited about the new MacBook, I'm guessing it's because they're already deep into Apple as a brand. Me, I just want a computer that works, has decent specs* and doesn't treat me like an imbecile, or refuse to ship Bash >3 because the legal team got antsy about GPLv3.…

Time to lift your head out of the sand then. Macbook Pro now comes in 32GB RAM flavors, with fn keys instead of the touch bar, and zsh by default

Indeed there’s actually a 64gb variant

Re: How Apple overcame its culture of secrecy to create AirPods Pro

#90

Post by nicoburns »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #88
awestroke wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to lift your head out of the sand then. Macbook Pro now comes in 32GB RAM flavors, with fn keys instead of the touch bar, and zsh by default

Zsh isn't Bash. And Bash version compatibility is important when 75% of your team develop on Linux, but the other 25% on Mac. I mean, I use Fish, but when I'm writing shell scripts for others, it's Bash, because it's a common default. But now I'm limited to Bash 3. But I'm glad that they got rid of that stupid bar, and let you get a laptop with 32G of RAM now. So kind of Apple!

Why not just install a newer version of bash? It’s trivial to do so with homebrew. I’m sure your team has other dependencies that must be installed in order to run your software.
Post reply on HN