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It may have been worth it for the author to mention that Apple is sitting on the biggest pile of cash in the known universe.
by joadha 4y ago
It may have been worth it for the author to mention that Apple is sitting on the biggest pile of cash in the known universe.
- olliej 4y agoGoogle, Facebook, Microsoft, … are also sitting absolutely giant piles of money as well.
- scarface74 4y agoGoogle has the focus of a crack addled flea and has products that aren’t profitable and people working on them - including probably 4 new messaging apps simultaneously. Facebook predicted that it would lose billions in potential revenue because of Apple making tracking optional. Microsoft is basically just cutting employees that are on products that it doesn’t care about anymore. You can say what you will about Apple. But no one can accuse Apple of a lack of focus on profitable product lines.
- nrp 4y agoApple does a much better job than most big tech companies of canceling or rebooting projects they don’t think will be successful before they ship rather than after. See for example the car project and AR/MR, both of which have been restarted more than once.
- tempnow987 4y agoGoogle was doing Fuchsia. SUPER cool... but what is the business case there? They are also ham strung by just not listening to customers it feels like - so I think that impacts traction. You get an 80% solution with simple glaring edges. Thousands ask - please fix this edge, but whoever is driving the product is onto something else it feels like sometime. Apple's main product lines all seem to make money, have positive margin. Their R&D is speculative as well, but at least too me seem to have a clearer path to product. I would love an apple interface in my car vs whatever the OEM ships in most cases. Even Tesla, with most advanced interface just can't keep it current / smooth / familiar etc the way apple does (music / playlist / etc integrations alone).
- surajrmal 4y agoYour phrasing makes it sound like Fuchsia was canceled. It is still being developed.
- karlkatzke 4y agoA bunch of Google’s lack of focus is their internal management culture and nothing will change (and google/alphabet will not be worth being a customer of or being investing in) until the culture problem is fixed. Google only promotes engineers when they are part of a program launch. No credit is ever given for feature launch or program maintenance. If you are not a part of a program launch within a few years at google/alphabet you are managed out. This doesn’t create a company that I’d find it worth investing my limited engineering hours in long term. A GCE sales person called me last week and I couldn’t help but laughing when I told them that I’d just agreed to five year terms on an AWS private pricing agreement the previous week. Google’s recent actions made me unsure GCE would still be a product in five years.
- ElFitz 4y ago> Google’s recent actions made me unsure GCE would still be a product in five years. Out of curiosity, which actions are you referring to?
- mattclarkdotnet 4y agoThese ones? https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- ElFitz 4y agoAh! Yes, ok. I wondered if there was anything out of the ordinary that I may have missed. Thanks!
- microtherion 4y agoI think it might be worth pointing out that Apple is less inclined than other companies to talk about pre-product R&D, so it may not be as evident when certain lines of investigation don't make money.
- olliej 4y agoOh yeah, the reason these other companies are laying off thousands is because they've spent years hiring indiscriminately, and having many boondoggle (sp?) projects, numerous loss leader products ("we'll be profitable selling this at a loss, because we can spy on people more" - people complained about the cost of HomePod vs Alexa, etc and have said "speaker quality!" as the reason, but also all of those assistants are sold at or below cost). The problem is that many are now doing a "we need to fire x% of the company so I can get my stock reward... I mean be profitable", and are doing it in arbitrary and short sighted ways (stack ranking is an incredibly stupid way to cut people), so while cutting N-1 of N chat teams at google might be reasonable, cutting teams working on potentially high value future tech _just_ because it's not currently profitable. Take Fuchsia: I worked on it during my brief google stint, and even if they did decide it didn't have a future (and I think that was not the rationale here), there were incredible engineers they've apparently discarded that would still have been good to keep working on other things at google. Others have said FB and G were also mass hiring to stop people being hired by each other - I'm not sure how true that is, I was never involved in interviewing people at G but even if I were the interview system there seemed very strange to me so even if I were interviewing people I don't know if I'd have been aware of hiring-to-stop-FB nonsense.
- nr2x 4y agoThey still put out stinkers, they just kill them fast. Ping?
- asdff 4y agoOTOH the butterfly keyboard was one of their biggest stinkers that was not killed nearly fast enough, and the new keyboards still don't feel as good as the 2012s.
- xarope 4y agoSlightly off topic, but when I encounter the phrase butterfly keyboard I think of that really cool sliding keyboard that IBM came up with for the Thinkpad 701c... and not a failing keyboard switch.
- varjag 4y agoButterfly keyboard was better than whatever the mushy crap before it was called.
- asdff 4y agoApple is full of lack of focus these days. The laptops use usb-c to charge like the rest of the worlds thankfully, but the phone still uses lightning. New ipad supports the old apple pencil and not the new one for some reason. Can't let them off too easy about the butterfly keyboards either.
- senttoschool 4y agoThat cash pile belongs to investors and stock holders.
- agloe_dreams 4y agoSo does Apple, it’s all the same.
- CGamesPlay 4y agoAnd is managed by a CEO who is choosing not to lay off workers. Are you saying that Apple is wrong to not do layoffs? You can go express that with your votes in the investor meeting, that you don’t want Apple to be the star in these PR pieces about being a great employer who doesn’t lay off employees.
- kaashif 4y agoI read their comment as implying that Apple should distribute that cash pile to investors through buybacks or dividends. I don't know what about their comment implies they want layoffs.
- senttoschool 4y agoI'm implying that Apple's cash pile belongs to investors and shareholders. Part of that money is used to pay employees. However, that cash pile is not a charity for employing workers that is no longer needed at the company.
- rosebay 4y ago[dead]
- californical 4y agoAnd what specific employees are unnecessary, which you feel qualified to fire?
- atkailash 4y ago[dead]
- ulfw 4y agoAs if Google was on the verge of bankruptcy... Microsoft, Google, Apple all have enormous amounts of cash stored thanks to their fantastic earnings for so many years.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago>Microsoft, Google, Apple all have enormous amounts of cash stored thanks to their fantastic earnings for so many years. Your earnings are fantastic until they suddenly aren't and then by that time, it's too late to turn the ship around on all the mistakes that lead to it. Just ask Nokia or Kodak.