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> Apple has limited resources I keep seeing this written in various places and I don't understand it. Apple aren't short of a dollar and they haven't been shor

by lcbs 10y ago

> Apple has limited resources I keep seeing this written in various places and I don't understand it. Apple aren't short of a dollar and they haven't been short of a dollar for a good long time. How is it that they can find themselves with "limited resources"? What does that actually mean?

wmf 10y ago
For example, every revision of every product has to be signed off by Jony Ive.
- tassos 10y ago
  How how have you come to know this?
toyg 10y ago
It's just an old refrain that Jobs used as a mantra, back when Apple was indeed short on cash. It gets burned into customers' brains as a catch-all excuse whenever they ask "Why don't you do <perfectly logical thing> ?" "well, y'now, we have limited resources." This was fine up to and including the first couple of iPhone releases; now it really sounds like bog-standard corporate weaselwords. Apple just built a space-age campus as big as a town, could run a small country for years with all the money stashed offshore, and keeps raking in cash from their ecosystem and content services. If they don't do X is simply because either they don't want to, or they are not good enough at doing it.
- whywhywhywhy 10y ago
  > Apple just built a space-age campus as big as a town Wonder how much director time was spent signing off the minutiae of that project VS these so called Pro laptops and the touchbar as a concept over the past 2 years.
  - wmf 10y ago
    Yep. Mac Pro, AirPort, and monitors are canceled but check out that spaceship, art book, and Christmas tree!
chillacy 10y ago
Software projects at least don't scale linearly, doubling your 3 man team doesn't double output. It's not a stretch to say that having 10x money and manpower won't scale your engineering project that far, and may even hurt it as you add managerial layers and politics.
- tassos 10y ago
  That seems like an answer to a different question. All of Apple's output is not a single engineering project.
  - chillacy 10y ago
    It's an analogy. All of apple's output is maybe 10 products so even if apple had perfect vertical organization (which they don't, they have a functional organization around tech layers), they're still already putting thousands of people on a product. There are diminishing returns to packing more people in.
    - tassos 10y ago
      I don't question that, to quote yourself "There are diminishing returns to packing more people in". I do question that this, or their organizational structure explain their execution in recent years.

by lcbs 10y ago

wmf 10y ago

For example, every revision of every product has to be signed off by Jony Ive.

tassos 10y ago
How how have you come to know this?

toyg 10y ago

It's just an old refrain that Jobs used as a mantra, back when Apple was indeed short on cash. It gets burned into customers' brains as a catch-all excuse whenever they ask "Why don't you do <perfectly logical thing> ?" "well, y'now, we have limited resources." This was fine up to and including the first couple of iPhone releases; now it really sounds like bog-standard corporate weaselwords. Apple just built a space-age campus as big as a town, could run a small country for years with all the money stashed offshore, and keeps raking in cash from their ecosystem and content services. If they don't do X is simply because either they don't want to, or they are not good enough at doing it.

whywhywhywhy 10y ago
> Apple just built a space-age campus as big as a town Wonder how much director time was spent signing off the minutiae of that project VS these so called Pro laptops and the touchbar as a concept over the past 2 years.
- wmf 10y ago
  Yep. Mac Pro, AirPort, and monitors are canceled but check out that spaceship, art book, and Christmas tree!

chillacy 10y ago

Software projects at least don't scale linearly, doubling your 3 man team doesn't double output. It's not a stretch to say that having 10x money and manpower won't scale your engineering project that far, and may even hurt it as you add managerial layers and politics.

tassos 10y ago
That seems like an answer to a different question. All of Apple's output is not a single engineering project.
- chillacy 10y ago
  It's an analogy. All of apple's output is maybe 10 products so even if apple had perfect vertical organization (which they don't, they have a functional organization around tech layers), they're still already putting thousands of people on a product. There are diminishing returns to packing more people in.
  - tassos 10y ago
    I don't question that, to quote yourself "There are diminishing returns to packing more people in". I do question that this, or their organizational structure explain their execution in recent years.