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So they promoted the CFO to CEO and now they are firing the chief engineer - that tells a lot on where the company is going and I'm afraid it's not a good place

So they promoted the CFO to CEO and now they are firing the chief engineer - that tells a lot on where the company is going and I'm afraid it's not a good place.

b34r 6y ago
Boeing 2.0
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  At least no one will die from Intel's mistakes.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    Who knows? I can imagine there’s an Intel CPU in a life critical application in more than a few places.
    - sjwright 6y ago
      Such life critical applications would be validated for safety by the product manufacturer/integrator, not by Intel.
      - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        How can they validate a CPU if Intel can’t?
        sjwright 6y ago
        The same way as they validate the serial UART: by validating its application. Does the CPU fail if it’s close to an x-ray machine or an MRI? Intel isn’t going to tell you that.
        read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        True. But I was thinking along the lines of hardware bugs like the Pentium division bug. I doubt manufacturers go looking for those, and that would be one (albeit slightly contrived) way how someone could die from Intel's mistakes.
coopierez 6y ago
As Steve Jobs said: "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."
- MarcellusDrum 6y ago
  Ironically, this happened to Apple.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    By what measure? They seem to be moving tons of product, with competing products that don’t come close to its margins.
    - bantunes 6y ago
      They forgot how to make great products. See Macbook keyboard debacle and TouchBar irrelevance, AirPod rattling debacle, cancelled AirPower, etc.
      - drcross 6y ago
        All those things have been or can be fixed. They're still moving massive amount of products. I'm no apple apologist but you're overblowing things.
    - TheRealSteel 6y ago
      I would argue the MacBook Pro. Taking out the SD slot (so you can't expand storage, and have to buy a more expensive or replacement machine) and replacing the function keys (with a Touch Bar, which looks good in ads but sucks to use) were driven by marketing/sales people, not product people. This machine is awful to use and I'm in the processing of researching something to replace it with. I would happily switch back to a 2015 model, even with the drop in CPU and GPU power. I actually like typing on the butterfly keyboard, I'm doing it right now - but it has reliability issues. They also took the headphone jack off phones - making it a worse device, because the AirPods/HomePod marketers didn't want anyone plugging their phone into their existing headphones or speakers. The awful mess they've made of Lighting/USB-C ports on different devices is also confusing and irritating. I wish every device of theirs had the attention to usability the Apple Watch does. That thing is a pleasure to use, it's just expensive and incompatible with Android. But the way they're going, they'll put a verification chip in the strap, to make sure you have to buy those from Apple too. Unfortunately they have by far the best chips, trackpads, and smartwatches on the market.

So they promoted the CFO to CEO and now they are firing the chief engineer - that tells a lot on where the company is going and I'm afraid it's not a good place.

b34r 6y ago

Boeing 2.0

HenryKissinger 6y ago
At least no one will die from Intel's mistakes.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  Who knows? I can imagine there’s an Intel CPU in a life critical application in more than a few places.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    Such life critical applications would be validated for safety by the product manufacturer/integrator, not by Intel.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      How can they validate a CPU if Intel can’t?
      - sjwright 6y ago
        The same way as they validate the serial UART: by validating its application. Does the CPU fail if it’s close to an x-ray machine or an MRI? Intel isn’t going to tell you that.
        read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        True. But I was thinking along the lines of hardware bugs like the Pentium division bug. I doubt manufacturers go looking for those, and that would be one (albeit slightly contrived) way how someone could die from Intel's mistakes.

coopierez 6y ago

As Steve Jobs said: "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."

MarcellusDrum 6y ago
Ironically, this happened to Apple.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  By what measure? They seem to be moving tons of product, with competing products that don’t come close to its margins.
  - bantunes 6y ago
    They forgot how to make great products. See Macbook keyboard debacle and TouchBar irrelevance, AirPod rattling debacle, cancelled AirPower, etc.
    - drcross 6y ago
      All those things have been or can be fixed. They're still moving massive amount of products. I'm no apple apologist but you're overblowing things.
  - TheRealSteel 6y ago
    I would argue the MacBook Pro. Taking out the SD slot (so you can't expand storage, and have to buy a more expensive or replacement machine) and replacing the function keys (with a Touch Bar, which looks good in ads but sucks to use) were driven by marketing/sales people, not product people. This machine is awful to use and I'm in the processing of researching something to replace it with. I would happily switch back to a 2015 model, even with the drop in CPU and GPU power. I actually like typing on the butterfly keyboard, I'm doing it right now - but it has reliability issues. They also took the headphone jack off phones - making it a worse device, because the AirPods/HomePod marketers didn't want anyone plugging their phone into their existing headphones or speakers. The awful mess they've made of Lighting/USB-C ports on different devices is also confusing and irritating. I wish every device of theirs had the attention to usability the Apple Watch does. That thing is a pleasure to use, it's just expensive and incompatible with Android. But the way they're going, they'll put a verification chip in the strap, to make sure you have to buy those from Apple too. Unfortunately they have by far the best chips, trackpads, and smartwatches on the market.