
Former Apple developer explains why the company’s software is struggling - entropy_
http://bgr.com/2018/02/13/ios-new-features-developer-apple-software/amp/
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HyperMassive
My current project is run in a similar fashion; and it shows... code quality
is terrible, technologies are stale and riddled with performance work-arounds,
bugs are fixed with the fastest possible implementation and handed off to the
testing team then consequently bounced back and forth with trivial disputes.

The worst thing is the manager/ product owner/ tyrannical architect is a
actually a nice bloke. but he is absolutely terrible at insulating devs from
his stressors, which has a massive knock-on effect on his team. Recently he
took leave for around 4 weeks and it was like night and day! we self
organised: minimised new features and maximise time spent addressing technical
debt built-up over 2 years. I was enjoying work again, and it had a almost
skunkwork-like feel to it.

then he returned, then i handed in my notice.

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mathw
Thing is, any of us who've been in the software industry for very long have
probably seen places run like this and that it is not the best way to get
quality software out of the door in a reliable fashion.

And yet it still happens.

(insert image of me banging my head on the desk)

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protoplant
It makes an interesting point about focusing on quality instead of a check
mark by someone who is not directly under the hood. (project manager in this
case) Also it cautions against seeing the trees (p1 bug) and missing the
forest (good software).

I do think project managers are needed for this large scale software though.
So I'm wondering, what is the best way a project manager should manage
development of Apple's software?

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forkLding
I was wondering if this was somewhat related to Apple trying to find a future
direction because lately they've been just adding new versions of phones or
macs or adding new updates to them but have not introduced anything except for
maybe apple watch 2 years ago which has been steadily growing but not the
immediate hit or newly introduced like Amazon echo or Google Home for right
now.

Maybe this prioritization of a lot of new features is them making up for
introducing a new product direction?

EDIT: oops, found Apple Homepod, maybe they're not marketing it well? Anyone
here that uses it? My friends are apple lovers, buying nee iphones and macbook
pro and havent heard of it either.

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wpasc
I think you raise a good point; I don't believe the HomePod even merits your
"oops". It's not being heavily marketed because it's not all that impressive.

It is definitely the best speaker around, multiple reviews say the sound
quality is amazing. However, we are in a golden age of ML and the Siri on
HomePod is a joke when compared to Alexa and Google Assistant. Apple's culture
of secrecy has left them woefully behind in the AI race (where researchers
love to publish).

I agree with you that Apple does not really know where to go next. Awesome AR
glasses that actually sell and do amazing things? An amazing smart home
assistant that can run your home, but is handleable with simple within the
Apple eco-system? I don't think Apple has done anything that bold in recent
years and will struggle like you say.

Unless Apple secretly is doing something truly "Wow" and they're just quiet
about it. Otherwise, I believe Tim Cook will earn more and more comparisons to
Steve Ballmer: Great for sales/stock price, missed out on a game changing era
of technology.

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innagadadavida
> However, we are in a golden age of ML and the Siri on HomePod is a joke when
> compared to

This has nothing to do with secrecy or lack of user data or lack of algorithms
knowledge. What is missing in Siri is lack of high quality gold data sets --
this is often curated by hoards of phds and other domain experts. It takes
time to do the curation and Google is ahead of the pack. Amazon has done a
great job opening up the eco system to third parties.

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totalZero
I'm not contesting the article, but I'd feel more comfortable taking it as
useful information if the source were something other than a Reddit comment.

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horsecaptin
This can be managed by getting the software engineer's input into whether
something really is a P0 or P1. The Product Managers should also know their
users better so they can chime in and not consider everything to be a fire.

Mature projects are also supposed to have an increasing percentage of the time
spent on them dedicated towards maintenance / upgrades / fixes / upkeep. A PMO
that can't convince upper management of this is a weak PMO.

