
How Apple Is Working From Home - aaronbrethorst
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-apple-is-working-from-home?pu=hackernewsusoift&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock
======
jedberg
> Most employees aren’t accustomed to holding meetings with colleagues via
> videoconference and some have found it difficult to use Apple’s own
> offerings such as FaceTime, iCloud and iMessage, as they weren’t designed
> for enterprise users, according to current and former employees.

Hopefully this motivates them to make these products better! Although I'm not
super hopeful.

I once asked a friend (and Apple employee) why Keynote doesn't have any
collaboration function. I said, "Don't you guys every collaborate on
presentations?" He said, "No, not really, and if you do, you're all in one
room and one person is driving the computer".

So their culture is very much engrained with in person collaboration.

Edit: I should clarify that I asked him this a few years ago, before they
added the "collaborate through iCloud" functionality.

The point still stands though, that while everyone else had collaboration in
their presentation apps, Apple didn't, because they didn't see the need for
it.

~~~
Angostura
Except of course for the big old 'Collaborate' button on Keynote's menu bar,
where you can choose who should be able to edit or view the presentation -
anyone with the link, or anyone you invited - mediated via iCloud.

To be fair it's a fairly recent addition - maybe in the last year or so.

~~~
jedberg
Yeah I asked him this a few years ago. They did eventually add it.

But the point was even when every other presentation app had it, they didn't,
and it was because they didn't understand the need for it.

~~~
xenadu02
> it was because they didn't understand the need for it

You keep making this claim but unless the person you knew was on the Keynote
team I doubt they had any actual insight into the process.

There are a million things you could do. It is important to layout things in
priority order. For example, unifying desktop and mobile implementations and
file formats so when you do add collaboration features in the future the two
can interoperate. Or adding a high-fidelity web experience so people who don't
use your apps at all can collaborate. Perhaps those two things are important
to get right before adding collaboration?

(Hypothetical, I don't have any knowledge of any of this).

~~~
rarepostinlurkr
Thats exactly the order of events since iWork '09, remarkable! =)

------
castillar76
Over the years I've had a few conversations with Apple recruiters about job
opportunities at Apple. Every time, they've tried to persuade me to move to
Cupertino, because Apple doesn't do remote work. I've had to start prefacing
the conversations with "I'm not moving to Cupertino. Do you still want to
talk?"

I get why Jobs wanted it that way: the value of hallway conversations and the
ability to bounce things off other engineers is invaluable, and until recently
it was difficult to make that viable with people flung off in different
locations. Moreover, it's really difficult to have most of your team in one
location and a few scattered people elsewhere: the people elsewhere just
aren't part of the loop in the same way, and it makes things really hard for
them.

That said, I'd be surprised if Apple continues with a hard-line stance on that
after all of this: I think we're seeing that an awful lot of work that people
insisted had to be local can indeed be done effectively from remote.

EDIT: Having read the thread on this one, I apologize for my over-
generalization based on anecdote. I work for a company that pushes the ability
to remote-work, and the folks I've talked with about working at Apple were all
very "yeah, they don't do work-from-home". However, the plural of anecdote is
not data. :)

~~~
rad_gruchalski
> That said, I'd be surprised if Apple continues with a hard-line stance on
> that after all of this: I think we're seeing that an awful lot of work that
> people insisted had to be local can indeed be done effectively from remote.

After speaking to some recruiters recently, the feeling is that everyone will
„do remote for the next 3 to 4 months, until pandemic is over” but afterwards
„we are looking forward to seeing our colleagues at the offices in X”.

~~~
holidaygoose
I think we also need to be open minded that maybe 'remote work for everyone'
is actually less effective. And it will be hard to show evidence otherwise --
this current test case we're going through -- I doubt people are going to say
"wow see, look how productive everyone was during the pandemic when they
worked from home."

~~~
castillar76
Oh, don't get me wrong here: for my own work, I'm 100% work-from-office. I
like working in an office with a desk and a proper setup and other people
around me also doing the same work. Big fan of NOT doing the "let's have
everyone work remote it's AWESOMESAUCE!" thing--it's not awesomesauce for
everyone, and there's a huge segment for which it's actively detrimental.

I was just guessing Apple might soften their stance on it a bit, although it
sounds from others like that ain't the case (which also doesn't surprise me--
Apple gonna Apple).

~~~
Frost1x
I like remote work but the benefit of an office, for me, is that it draws a
very clear line in the sand between personal and work time. In a field
saturated with infinite work queues and constant pressure to empty those
infinite queues, it provides physical bounds that are difficult to cross
without being obvious.

When you work remote it's assumed you have flexible hours and when people need
more or less of your time, they queue it up whenever it's good for them, your
freetime and personal life can take the back burner.

~~~
bradlys
I think this really varies on the company. I'd hesitate to make industry wide
statements about it... Right now, the company I'm at is treating remote work
no different than working from the office. We have core hours and regular
meetings. They're just remote. If anything, they're more lenient since about
half the people have kids at home right now too. So, they know you can't focus
completely...

I've seen plenty of my coworkers staying late at the office or, just as often,
having to login at home to do nights and weekends work. So, whatever line in
the sand you think exists for office work is purely imaginary. If they want to
extract more hours from you, they'll keep pushing until you say no.

------
georgespencer
For hardware companies there is a _vast_ amount of work which cannot be done
under these circumstances.

A lot of people here are sounding off on Apple's reluctance to enable remote
working (reasonably enough), but the fact is that a large amount of the work
Apple does is reliant on 1) sophisticated engineering and manufacturing
processes which are not possible in-home/remote, and 2) a pantheon of national
and international ISO requirements for safety and other compliance areas which
are not possible in-home/remote.

Final, mass, production happens in China, but it's a useful generalisation to
think of most hardware products as being prototyped to a high polished
standard within a hardware company's internal supply chain prior to testing
and mass manufacture.

Testing is also a process which is made extremely difficult with an entirely
remote workforce. A good example, from a decade ago: Apple deployed $100m USD
into building its own anechoic chambers and radio testing facilities.[1] These
things are closer to science experiments than the CNC milling machines the
article mentions: multiple persons operating them in-person, etc.

The challenges are not unique to Apple, but they are significantly deeper than
the article suggests. There are also some affordances which Apple has made in
the last 6-7 years which lend themselves to remote working. For example, their
own team of secure couriers who ferry prototypes around various sites in CA.

[1] [https://www.fastcompany.com/1671022/chambers-super-
silence-w...](https://www.fastcompany.com/1671022/chambers-super-silence-
whats-inside-apples-100-million-iphone-radio-test-facility)

~~~
saagarjha
Apple is not exclusively a hardware company.

~~~
georgespencer
This seems inane. Did anyone claim they are?

~~~
saagarjha
You started off with "for hardware companies"; so I assumed you put Apple in
this bucket.

~~~
georgespencer
Sorry if that wasn't clear: I meant that for every company making hardware
("hardware companies"), there are a series of deep challenges presented by
shelter-in-place which the article ignores. Or, put another way: a series of
challenges which would not be present if Apple was solely a software company
:)

------
archeantus
It’s amazing to me that Apple’s refusal to support remote work has caused them
to be caught flat-footed here. I doubt they considered the need to be remote
friendly as a contingency plan in case of a disaster, but here we are.
Hopefully more companies can be more open-minded in the future; to avoid doing
so could be very risky to their business.

~~~
hinkley
They just built a giant spaceship to try to get everybody in the same
building, didn't they?

~~~
Redoubts
Honestly that building was oversubscribed the year they broke ground. Apple
probably has half the office space in Cupertino.

~~~
saagarjha
> Apple probably has half the office space in Cupertino.

Almost three quarters, as of a couple years ago.

~~~
Bahamut
85% as of a couple of years ago.

------
_ph_
I had to smile a bit when reading about the technical problems they were
facing with working from home, especially the software stack. This is
something, that Apple has the power to address. I am using Webex myself on the
Mac. With the last big update, it has become much better, but there is
certainly room for improvement. The performance with video conferencing
doesn't seem to be great though.

By investing into the relevant software features required for working from
home, Apple could not only solve their own problems but also make the platform
more attractive for business users outside of Apple. Great screensharing, with
voice and video would be a start. Perhaps a native Webex client. Or, make
their own client work with Webex.

P.S.: maybe they also should consider offering a new iSight. A physically
separate webcam that improves the video conferencing experience. If it is
separate, it can be moved to show documents or other things people are working
on, like their hardware prototype. It could also offer improved quality in
comparison to the builtin cameras.

~~~
intopieces
> maybe they also should consider offering a new iSight.

Logitech makes a 4K camera for the XDR. It’s fantastic and available in the
Apple Store.

------
sxcurry
"leaving them to rely on grainy photographs to make hardware decisions" \- why
would the photos be grainy? I would think that the Chinese hardware folks
would have decent cameras?

~~~
ISL
At full zoom, every image is grainy.

The part of an image you want to look at, unless you've asked for a specific
image to be made, is usually in shadow and in the corner -- Murphy's Law of
documentation.

~~~
MengerSponge
The equivalent of the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused
lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'

------
saagarjha
> It encourages employees to use the company’s own communications and file-
> sharing services for security and reliability reasons, though it has begun
> allowing them to use some third-party tools like Slack and Box.

As mentioned later in the article, the use of these third-party tools isn't
new.

------
chadlavi
Would be cool if this resulted in some nice enterprise-focused
improvements/advanced user features in apple's native apps

------
deedubaya
When was the last time an Apple product launch wasn't leaked? I feel like
we've known what was coming ever since the infamous lost iPhone prototype
(iPhone 6 maybe?). It has been a while.

~~~
kylec
AFAICT the new Magic Keyboard for iPad didn't leak. There were rumors about a
keyboard with a trackpad, sure, but I think everyone was surprised about the
design.

~~~
nnx
Note it won't be released before May though. It helps against leaking to
announce things before mass production even begins.

------
pentae
I'm always amused at the lengths we, as a western society, must now go to
because everyone refuses to wear a mask. A lot of the problems described in
this article would not be problems with some simple tweaks. Sick? Stay the
fuck at home! Not symptomatic? Wear a mask and carry on. Surely Fortune 500
companies that require in person collaborations are able to produce some
company issued N95's and hand sanitizer and get on with it.

~~~
ddrt
Just because you don’t have symptoms doesn’t mean you can’t spread it. What
you outlined, wear a mask and carry on, that’s exactly the mentality that IS
spreading it right now.

~~~
pentae
That'd be a great point if it wasn't for the fact that all the asian countries
enforcing mask use are actually flattening the curve.

~~~
dabraham1248
There is no place on earth that has said "Not symptomatic? Wear a mask and
carry on." and seen the curve flatten. As you say, a lot of asian countries
_are_ enforcing mask usage. But none of them are just "carrying on".

IIRC China is enforcing a "1 person per household is allowed outside once
every three days for supplies" policy in the most affected areas, has built
multiple new hospitals, has implemented multiple cordon sanitaires, locked
down millions, has _free_ testing, and is enforcing that testing.

South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan were among the first to ban flights from
China (and given where they are that's MUCH bigger than the US doing so, both
politically, and in percentage of flights). They are testing people constantly
before they're allowed out of or in to places. They are _enforcing_
quarantines of people with fevers, they are interrogating people that might
have been exposed to the disease, and are quarantining based on that, even
without symptoms. They have a _lot_ more people staying home than usual. They
are accessing people's financial data in real time without warrants.

No one's saying masks make things worse. Given how many masks we have, there's
an open question as to whether we should reserve them for medical care
providers or not. What people are saying is that masks are not enough. And
they're right.

------
gorkish
I love that they hate eating their own dog food. Remember when FaceTime was
promised to be open because it was just SIP? Remember when iMessage let you
connect to every service under the sun? Remember when MacOS had awesome remote
access built in? Remember when the mail client didn’t wait an hour to tell you
that a new email arrived? Remember when they built a server? They deserve to
suffer a little here.

------
Wowfunhappy
For reference, the original story is
[https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-apple-is-
working...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-apple-is-working-from-
home), but it's hard-paywalled.

~~~
dang
The Information has unlocked it for HN readers now (thanks!), so we've changed
the URL from [https://www.macrumors.com/2020/03/30/apple-work-from-home-
ch...](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/03/30/apple-work-from-home-challenges/).

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22the%20information%22%20unlock&sort=byDate&type=comment)

------
dzhiurgis
Lack of screenshare on macos/ios is big one. It would be so nice to help
parents to setup certain things.

Weird enough Apple support has that access tho. Just let me them know your
Apple Id and pop-up appears...

~~~
Qerub
macOS has great support for screen sharing:
[https://support.apple.com/guide/messages/screen-sharing-
icht...](https://support.apple.com/guide/messages/screen-sharing-
icht11883/mac)

------
huffmsa
Now would be a great time to engender some global good will by putting some of
that $250b in cash to work.

Tim Apple is starting to look a bit like Smaug atop his literal pile of money.

