No. Nobody said that. It's an example of how Apple works. Rather than having large teams with hordes of managers, Apple has a bunch of engineers who are trusted to be competent and work on whatever's needed. This way of working is more akin to a startup than a typical BigCo.
I've worked at several BigCo's and they all basically worked like that. Now admittedly non of these companies where pure software or computer companies, but still in my experience the whole "large teams with hordes of managers" seems to be very much the exception rather than the rule once you actually take a look at most companies from the inside. The only "hordes of managers" company I've actually worked at was a smallish company (around 50 employees)
This article does suggest Apple works this way with everything. Of course Apple isn't a startup; they're a multi-billion dollar 35-year-old company, but they do take a similar approach to organizing their teams.
No, that's just an interesting fact from the article. I assumed they assembled a crack-team of iPhone engineers to bang this out. I was surprised that one person put together such a high-quality app, especially in a company that could afford to throw lots of money/developers/teams to solve this problem.
That reminds me of an old story about the Texas Rangers. In 1896, Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald was sent to prevent an illegal prizefight in Dallas. Upon his arrival, the mayor of Dallas was confused why they only sent one Ranger, to which McDonald responded, "Ain't I enough? There's only one prize-fight!"
The story isn't true (there were several Texas Rangers on hand to prevent the prizefight) but I'm not surprised there's one, really talented guy working part time on the Remote app, as "there's only one app!".
Then a headline á "The Remote App Was Made by One Guy" would serve the article better than the sensationalist one defining all of Apple after this one project.
