So, if you're given the choice between writing something that takes advantage of your latest and greatest hardware vs writing something that's optimized for hardware that's several years old, what would you do?
We had that problem all the time in telecom. We wrote for both and deprecated features on the older gear while not abandoning it. The customer’s investment was respected and they still got all updates for the software but the software knew not to run new features that would tax the old hardware or the old hardware simply couldn’t do.
It really wasn’t that hard. Because we had a culture of NOT disrespecting yesterday’s customers.
If you think your answers will be any different than Tim Cook's, maybe you should go to Apple's board and tell them how much better you'd do. If your answers are correct, they're sure to hire you!
LOL. First Apple’s Board is full of people running companies with nearly identical culture and values as Apple. BoDs are more about patting each other on the back these days than actual corporate governance, and that’s not a sentiment I only hold. That’s coming from all sides. Not just technical leaders.
I haven't had time to even pay attention to much of what's in it. I upgraded as of 13.1.2 and it's worked just fine. It's got automatic dark mode, but other than that I haven't had a chance to notice much difference. Shortcuts sounds like it could be really cool but I literally have not opened it once yet.
There’s many lists online but ironically you’ve hit on one of the only two actual useful ones. Dark Mode. Hahaha. That’s the second best feature. Blocking calls from anyone not in Contacts is the number one. That’s it. The release is really feature poor.
No, it's not. Apple has done more to make backup simple and effective than any other company, so that its users shouldn't have to work with data recovery services. You have to try hard to not back up your Apple gear these days. If you need a data recovery service, that's your own fault.
Complete ********. It’s really easy for Apple backups to go wrong, or someone to say, spill something on a mobile device after a long day or month of work offline. Data recovery will always be required. And Louis and others wouldn’t be in the business of doing it, if it wasn’t.
The easiest example of this is simply unplug a USB external drive from a Mac doing a backup. Oh sure I’ll warn you that the disk was ejected improperly but it will NOT warn you that your backup is incomplete. Sounds innocuous enough for a savvy user who knows the two are connected, but all the backup software does is go into standby and waits to try again. I’ve seen this behavior combined with a less than savvy user and a dodgy USB drive keep tossing the drive eject error and user never once made the connection that their backups they set to “automatic” weren’t working for months. They didn’t report the problem because if they unplugged the USB drive and plugged it back in, it would work for about half a backup. They didn’t look to see “last backup date” in Time Machjne.
And that’s just one of a multiple of ways I’ve seen Apple backups fail. On laptops and iOS devices. In many cases iCloud not an option because the data on the machines was not allowed offsite. Ever. Quite common in corporate computing. Doesn’t matter how much anyone trusts Apple’s “cloud”, data not allowed in it. Period.
Point being, backups are not a replacement for data recovery. Things are going to happen. Always.
I never watched him, and I'm not aware of what you're talking about... And frankly, I don't care. He hosts entertaining, informative shows and is very good at what he does.
Most of the people who’ve worked with him say he’s an awful person, after they’ve left. But if you haven’t looked into it, he plays the nice guy role for the camera well.
Also, sorry, I don't really believe you when it comes to everyone being cross platform everywhere. IME, that's quite rare. Most companies don't give two ****s if their IT people are cross platform. They usually only use a single major platform, and if they do use multiple platforms generally have specialists in each platform and managers who are aware of what's going on on both platforms but don't have the skills to actually administer machines on both platforms. Companies that use multiple platforms and are too small to support specialists on both are pretty rare in general. Telecom may be different.
Long ago I would have said it relates to size and that big companies don’t have generalists, but we have to because we only have three staff members. But working at those larger companies I found the reality was there were a large low level group that only knew one technology or a couple, front line IT, then there were a middle range of specialists cranking away on projects in their specialty and they were REALLY really good at ONE thing. DBAs for example. And then you found the same cross platform people as at the small places at the TOP of the food chain at the really big IT shops. They had to understand all of it and how it integrated together or the whole mess would fall apart.
Usually consultants were brought in for that middle layer when a lot of work needed to be done on ONE thing.
Nowadays sometimes the big places give them titles like “Architect” but often they’re still just listed as “Senior Engineer” and get assigned to go fix things the two lower levels can’t figure out. Or like my thing at one place, I was listed as “Corporate Engineer”, and everyone knew I was tasked with a Linux specialization in a team that were all cross platform people but if your project was on Linux, you called me first. Didn’t keep me from getting dragged into Power, Cable Plant, Rooftop Chiller Troubleshooting, Generator Failures, Battery System Engineering, and of course, training and teaching. It just meant that for those items the buck stopped on the guy or gal next to me’s desk, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once. And the buck stopped at my desk for all that ran on Linux platforms. I spent as much time at my desk at HQ as I did traveling to operational sites. Even had a “buck stops with you now in Phoenix building turn up and occupancy” when the GM there had to leave town unexpectedly. Hopped a plane and got it done. Was the senior person on site over everyone there for two weeks just to cover for the GM. Just how the job works at the jack of all trades level.
Here is the statement I clipped: "In the TECH world? Hell yes. Burger flippers. They don't even know enough to be hired as a Jr. IT person at most companies, because the company IT guy or gal has to know software and hardware basics, as well as network and other basics, AND must know it cross platform."
It does not contain the word "Only".
Ahh. Okay. Only was in the wrong place. But still... generally if someone has a skill set they’re not working there. A few. For reasons you mentioned, but you can do a lot better in this town anyway, than that.
And frankly I’ve saved a few folks from wing screwed in the stores with bad Genius advice. Two anyway.
Apple really needs a corporate support path. My Dell rep doesn’t ask any of us a half hour of questions when we say a machine is broken, he dispatches a contractor in a truck to come fix it, usually same day. And it’s as cheap as AppleCare+. That’s the amazing part. We’re quite happy to pay it. Repairability. Local parts availability, laptops, desktops, servers, it doesn’t matter.
Anyway, yeah as always Apple needs to spend some of that cash they’re sitting on and get business support right. Driving a damn laptop to them or shipping it off for two or three days is junior league.
I think the SaaS trend has come about due to ...
I'm not saying I like it - But I absolutely understand it.
Yeah interesting trend. The “spreading of liability” is an interesting one. You can buy SaaS failure insurance now. Seriously. It’s a thing.
I'm having a hard time even thinking of anything Apple does in the SaaS space?
Also interesting. You’re right. They don’t do much rental of software. I’m surprised they don’t rent Final Cut monthly really. Their Office suite still kinda sucks for business. Sheets can’t compete with Excel. Adobe makes a fortune renting their stuff now.
Hey, at least they put the entire UI through a blender every so often so that they can sell a bunch of training materials for the new version!
Hahahaha. I hate that. But I avoid GUI changes on most every OS by staying at the command line, like a real computer should be used anyway. Haha. Speaking of that, Powershell is absolute crap syntax-wise but it can really do some powerful stuff and really easily.
Meanwhile I’m not so sure about this silliness of Apple going to zsh over bash.
