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Do Apple attract the best software engineers? If I were a talented hardware engineer, chip designer, hardware designer - I'd want to work at Apple because Apple

Do Apple attract the best software engineers? If I were a talented hardware engineer, chip designer, hardware designer - I'd want to work at Apple because Apple attracts the best people in these fields. I imagine that Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon get the lion share of the best software engineers. No one has ever said Apple services, like the iCloud and Apple Music backend, or Siri, are quality piece of software engineering.

lnsru 3y ago
Best? Probably no. But the good ones willing to have high salary for sure. The best work for niche companies where they have comparable or even better conditions. Ex colleague just rejected offer from Apple and picked 30 person very specialized company.
thebruce87m 3y ago
The fact that you don’t think about them probably tells a story.
- smt88 3y ago
  Siri is the worst piece of software I'm forced to interact with daily. iOS is also near the top. GP didn't seem to be saying they didn't think about that software. They were saying they didn't have a good reputation, which is true. Apple is actually astonishingly bad at software considering the amount of money they have to do it properly. Even Google eventually got Android to a place where it's very resilient and rarely buggy, but iOS has bugs for me almost daily where I have to reboot to fix it.
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    I have no reason to doubt you, but that does not mirror my experience. I generally don’t have to think at all about iOS. It just silently does everything I need, including backups with no fuss. The only time I have to think is every three years when I upgrade, but that has always gone seamlessly. Siri being bad is probably more to do with data collection / privacy. I’ve not looked into it, but that’s my assumption.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    I switched to iOS not long ago because Android got more and more annoying, at some point I even got popups from Google telling me to rate the preinstalled phone app on the play store (the app isn't on the play store btw). Now that iOS has important features like widgets it's fine. You may be right that Android runs stable, but many parts of it are still just badly designed. I used Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 & 10 and Blackberry 10 OS and each time going back to Android was a disappointment. And contrary to your experience I never had to reboot iOS except for installing updates. However some preinstalled apps on Macs are indeed terrible. Within a week of getting my Macbook I found ways to crash two apps with normal UI interactions. And it kind of baffles me how much the app for displaying pictures has trouble with opening pictures.
sneak 3y ago
iMessage and APNS is one of the largest and most reliable webscale services run by anyone. Apple's cloud product design is crap (really, you're gonna try to sell me a $5 storage plan ten minutes after buying a $2000 phone?!) but iMessage and APNS are used by hundreds of millions of devices daily and is down less than S3. Credit where credit is due.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
Apple has pockets of excellence. It used to be most of the company, something about how Jobs ran it, inspired people much overqualified to apply, and not even for very high salaries. At NeXT infamously a PhD (EDIT: in comp-sci, or physics?) worked as a janitor as he simply wanted to be around Jobs and cool smart people. Currently entropy is getting to Apple in many ways. iTunes and Apple Music didn't use to be mediocre, but are now. Siri is very mediocre. OS quality is declining although still pretty good. Hardware division is excellent, but most hardware divisions are.
- smt88 3y ago
  Under Cook, Apple products have become bland and overpriced in most categories (the M_ processors are a huge exception), but it's also wildly successful. The stock price is 7x what it was when Cook took over. He's one of the most successful CEOs of all time. Unfortunately the only conclusion we can draw is that consumers don't care about: - software quality - bugs - voice assistants ...and do care about: - hardware quality - integrated ecosystems - cameras - battery life
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    I don't agree customers don't care about bugs, software quality and voice assistants, you can hear them complaining in literally every forum for Apple users. An ecosystem has stickiness, so many things go wrong, that people strongly care about, but the overall equation still tips in favor of "I'll stay". The UI design went completely downhill in iOS7 with Forstall leaving and Ive taking over. I love Ive, but he's not perfect at all. Currently it's almost as if it's slowly, slowly, slowly recovering, but we'll see. Vision Pro's OS also shows some excellent design sensibilities, although the product as a whole is a solution in search of a problem. Tim Cook needs a "product guy" to help him round out the management team. He was/is an insanely good COO, though.
    - nkotov 3y ago
      I really respect Ives as a great product designer but not a great UI designer in my opinion. iOS 6 Skeuomorphism was taken to the extreme so that iOS 7 felt like a breathe of fresh air. Now everything just feels bland.

lnsru 3y ago

Best? Probably no. But the good ones willing to have high salary for sure. The best work for niche companies where they have comparable or even better conditions. Ex colleague just rejected offer from Apple and picked 30 person very specialized company.

thebruce87m 3y ago

The fact that you don’t think about them probably tells a story.

smt88 3y ago
Siri is the worst piece of software I'm forced to interact with daily. iOS is also near the top. GP didn't seem to be saying they didn't think about that software. They were saying they didn't have a good reputation, which is true. Apple is actually astonishingly bad at software considering the amount of money they have to do it properly. Even Google eventually got Android to a place where it's very resilient and rarely buggy, but iOS has bugs for me almost daily where I have to reboot to fix it.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  I have no reason to doubt you, but that does not mirror my experience. I generally don’t have to think at all about iOS. It just silently does everything I need, including backups with no fuss. The only time I have to think is every three years when I upgrade, but that has always gone seamlessly. Siri being bad is probably more to do with data collection / privacy. I’ve not looked into it, but that’s my assumption.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  I switched to iOS not long ago because Android got more and more annoying, at some point I even got popups from Google telling me to rate the preinstalled phone app on the play store (the app isn't on the play store btw). Now that iOS has important features like widgets it's fine. You may be right that Android runs stable, but many parts of it are still just badly designed. I used Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 & 10 and Blackberry 10 OS and each time going back to Android was a disappointment. And contrary to your experience I never had to reboot iOS except for installing updates. However some preinstalled apps on Macs are indeed terrible. Within a week of getting my Macbook I found ways to crash two apps with normal UI interactions. And it kind of baffles me how much the app for displaying pictures has trouble with opening pictures.

sneak 3y ago

iMessage and APNS is one of the largest and most reliable webscale services run by anyone. Apple's cloud product design is crap (really, you're gonna try to sell me a $5 storage plan ten minutes after buying a $2000 phone?!) but iMessage and APNS are used by hundreds of millions of devices daily and is down less than S3. Credit where credit is due.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

Apple has pockets of excellence. It used to be most of the company, something about how Jobs ran it, inspired people much overqualified to apply, and not even for very high salaries. At NeXT infamously a PhD (EDIT: in comp-sci, or physics?) worked as a janitor as he simply wanted to be around Jobs and cool smart people. Currently entropy is getting to Apple in many ways. iTunes and Apple Music didn't use to be mediocre, but are now. Siri is very mediocre. OS quality is declining although still pretty good. Hardware division is excellent, but most hardware divisions are.

smt88 3y ago
Under Cook, Apple products have become bland and overpriced in most categories (the M_ processors are a huge exception), but it's also wildly successful. The stock price is 7x what it was when Cook took over. He's one of the most successful CEOs of all time. Unfortunately the only conclusion we can draw is that consumers don't care about: - software quality - bugs - voice assistants ...and do care about: - hardware quality - integrated ecosystems - cameras - battery life
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I don't agree customers don't care about bugs, software quality and voice assistants, you can hear them complaining in literally every forum for Apple users. An ecosystem has stickiness, so many things go wrong, that people strongly care about, but the overall equation still tips in favor of "I'll stay". The UI design went completely downhill in iOS7 with Forstall leaving and Ive taking over. I love Ive, but he's not perfect at all. Currently it's almost as if it's slowly, slowly, slowly recovering, but we'll see. Vision Pro's OS also shows some excellent design sensibilities, although the product as a whole is a solution in search of a problem. Tim Cook needs a "product guy" to help him round out the management team. He was/is an insanely good COO, though.
  - nkotov 3y ago
    I really respect Ives as a great product designer but not a great UI designer in my opinion. iOS 6 Skeuomorphism was taken to the extreme so that iOS 7 felt like a breathe of fresh air. Now everything just feels bland.