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> 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 lau

> 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 times.

jdgoesmarching 4y ago
“Surprise and delight” is just the PR line, the point is having more control over the marketing and positioning of a product on launch. We could debate whether that’s worth the R&D inefficiency, but Apple hasn’t exactly failed by deferring to their marketing folks over the years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
infogulch 4y ago
Imagine the counterfactual: an Apple engineering blog that routinely publishes in depth articles describing the awesome challenges that their engineering teams are overcoming in an org as vertically integrated as Apple. That would make me more hype about their products than anything.
- openknot 4y ago
  I would personally be very interested in such a blog, but so would Apple's competitors. I've read that being too open about methods can let competitors catch up to once-unique advantages quickly, especially as it lets them design a roadmap of future features to work on. Suppose Apple had an engineering blog that released a roadmap about the M1 chips before their release. Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a massive lead on Intel/AMD processors today, as laptop manufacturers may have invested more in ARM processors by seeing them as viable due to Apple's work.
  - infogulch 4y ago
    Oh please. There's no need for any engineering blog to publish a company's 2 year product roadmap slides moments after presenting them to leadership, or ever. There are surely a bazillion problems solved every year at much finer detail than would be useful as a decision tree for competitors. How about OS engineering? Apps? Physical manufacturing? Logistics engineering? CAD design? At the level of detail. None of these things if covered at a small enough scope would provide competitors an undue advantage, but each would definitely inspire a young or aspiring engineer to up their game. Maybe they can just hoard the best talent with money to keep them away from competitors, but how much future and potential talent are they leaving on the table by forcing their engineers to bottle up their innate human desire to share their wisdom? It's a short-sighted local minima, they can do better.
  - minimaxir 4y ago
    A software engineering blog would make more sense; it's what WWDC essentially is, anyways.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >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 worked together in CPUs before. Intel knows what Apple wants/needs, and refuses to give it to them. I seriously can't imagine that Apple and Intel never met about how the Intel chip just wasn't advancing, yet Intel plodded on anyways.
    - jimnotgym 4y ago
      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 of years (like last time), but Photoshop and Logic will keep working and the most users won't care. So whilst Intel have not innovated at the speed us techies would have liked, x86 is here to stay in the non-apple world.
- Sirened 4y ago
  Apple (at least their security org) has done this before with their talks at Blackhat [1] where they've detailed pieces of their boot chain and interesting challenges they solved while building Find My's offline location feature [1]: https://youtu.be/3byNNUReyvE https://youtu.be/3byNNUReyvE
- dewey 4y ago
  They have something for ML: https://machinelearning.apple.com https://machinelearning.apple.com
- fsflover 4y ago
  This is how Purism works.
raverbashing 4y ago
Exactly Most of the stuff is "officially leaked* to some places before the new releases anyway When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? I think it was on the iphone unveiling.
- frutiger 4y ago
  > When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? The performance per watt and rollout schedule of Apple Silicon?
  - kstenerud 4y ago
    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 update my phone software to a higher version than it supports, so now I need a new phone, which now won't work with my computer unless I update that, but it doesn't support the latest OS so now I need to buy a new computer..." For want of a nail.
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      AirPods were the first Bluetooth headset that just worked and made you want to ditch the cord.
      - tintedfireglass 4y ago
        We had Bluetooth earpods in the early 2010s used by a lot of people. What's innovative in releasing the same product but for two ears something revolutionary. Capacitive touch is revolutionary, a Bluetooth earpiece is not
        uuyi 4y ago
lostlogin 4y ago
> 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?
- lajamerr 4y ago
  People have been calling for/or expected Apple to switch to ARM/make their own chip for years and years before they actually switched. At that point people were just surprised to see Apple actually do something.
  - alimov 4y ago
    Maybe people in tech, but this doesn’t apply to (I’d like to say- Most of) their regular users
    - kstenerud 4y ago
      Most of their regular users don't even know what Arm or Intel is, let alone cares about it. A macbook is a macbook. The fact that it's faster is lost on most people as well, since their daily use consists of opening the browser or video conferencing or (if they have a PC) gaming. Computers have plateaued for their current use case. The only innovation that will make a difference in the near future is AI.
      - wincy 4y ago
        I was a PC gamer but primarily use Macs for work. But I bought the MacBook Air and aside from one game (Elden Ring) every game I usually play works on the MacBook Air, some with Rosetta and some with native ARM support.
        Applejinx 4y ago
        Heh. "Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the game selection?" I'm an Apple guy, I just thought it was funny. And my Airpod Pro observation isn't on how great they were at creating it, rather 'can you please help me get mine to switch back out of mono mode, after I put them in my ears one at a time and inadvertently convinced 'em that life is mono now?' (mind you, I kind of know: they freak out if asked to play 96k content and you get a mono low-res version)

jdgoesmarching 4y ago

“Surprise and delight” is just the PR line, the point is having more control over the marketing and positioning of a product on launch. We could debate whether that’s worth the R&D inefficiency, but Apple hasn’t exactly failed by deferring to their marketing folks over the years.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

infogulch 4y ago

Imagine the counterfactual: an Apple engineering blog that routinely publishes in depth articles describing the awesome challenges that their engineering teams are overcoming in an org as vertically integrated as Apple. That would make me more hype about their products than anything.

openknot 4y ago
I would personally be very interested in such a blog, but so would Apple's competitors. I've read that being too open about methods can let competitors catch up to once-unique advantages quickly, especially as it lets them design a roadmap of future features to work on. Suppose Apple had an engineering blog that released a roadmap about the M1 chips before their release. Then, Apple's laptops might not have such a massive lead on Intel/AMD processors today, as laptop manufacturers may have invested more in ARM processors by seeing them as viable due to Apple's work.
- infogulch 4y ago
  Oh please. There's no need for any engineering blog to publish a company's 2 year product roadmap slides moments after presenting them to leadership, or ever. There are surely a bazillion problems solved every year at much finer detail than would be useful as a decision tree for competitors. How about OS engineering? Apps? Physical manufacturing? Logistics engineering? CAD design? At the level of detail. None of these things if covered at a small enough scope would provide competitors an undue advantage, but each would definitely inspire a young or aspiring engineer to up their game. Maybe they can just hoard the best talent with money to keep them away from competitors, but how much future and potential talent are they leaving on the table by forcing their engineers to bottle up their innate human desire to share their wisdom? It's a short-sighted local minima, they can do better.
- minimaxir 4y ago
  A software engineering blog would make more sense; it's what WWDC essentially is, anyways.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >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 worked together in CPUs before. Intel knows what Apple wants/needs, and refuses to give it to them. I seriously can't imagine that Apple and Intel never met about how the Intel chip just wasn't advancing, yet Intel plodded on anyways.
  - jimnotgym 4y ago
    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 of years (like last time), but Photoshop and Logic will keep working and the most users won't care. So whilst Intel have not innovated at the speed us techies would have liked, x86 is here to stay in the non-apple world.
Sirened 4y ago
Apple (at least their security org) has done this before with their talks at Blackhat [1] where they've detailed pieces of their boot chain and interesting challenges they solved while building Find My's offline location feature [1]: https://youtu.be/3byNNUReyvE https://youtu.be/3byNNUReyvE
dewey 4y ago
They have something for ML: https://machinelearning.apple.com https://machinelearning.apple.com
fsflover 4y ago
This is how Purism works.

raverbashing 4y ago

Exactly Most of the stuff is "officially leaked* to some places before the new releases anyway When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? I think it was on the iphone unveiling.

frutiger 4y ago
> When was the last time people were surprised by what they saw? The performance per watt and rollout schedule of Apple Silicon?
- kstenerud 4y ago
  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 update my phone software to a higher version than it supports, so now I need a new phone, which now won't work with my computer unless I update that, but it doesn't support the latest OS so now I need to buy a new computer..." For want of a nail.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    AirPods were the first Bluetooth headset that just worked and made you want to ditch the cord.
    - tintedfireglass 4y ago
      We had Bluetooth earpods in the early 2010s used by a lot of people. What's innovative in releasing the same product but for two ears something revolutionary. Capacitive touch is revolutionary, a Bluetooth earpiece is not
      - uuyi 4y ago

lostlogin 4y ago

> 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?

lajamerr 4y ago
People have been calling for/or expected Apple to switch to ARM/make their own chip for years and years before they actually switched. At that point people were just surprised to see Apple actually do something.
- alimov 4y ago
  Maybe people in tech, but this doesn’t apply to (I’d like to say- Most of) their regular users
  - kstenerud 4y ago
    Most of their regular users don't even know what Arm or Intel is, let alone cares about it. A macbook is a macbook. The fact that it's faster is lost on most people as well, since their daily use consists of opening the browser or video conferencing or (if they have a PC) gaming. Computers have plateaued for their current use case. The only innovation that will make a difference in the near future is AI.
    - wincy 4y ago
      I was a PC gamer but primarily use Macs for work. But I bought the MacBook Air and aside from one game (Elden Ring) every game I usually play works on the MacBook Air, some with Rosetta and some with native ARM support.
      - Applejinx 4y ago
        Heh. "Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the game selection?" I'm an Apple guy, I just thought it was funny. And my Airpod Pro observation isn't on how great they were at creating it, rather 'can you please help me get mine to switch back out of mono mode, after I put them in my ears one at a time and inadvertently convinced 'em that life is mono now?' (mind you, I kind of know: they freak out if asked to play 96k content and you get a mono low-res version)