[m0zg]

It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I'm on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent answers, doesn't require rigid commands, etc. Whereas Siri is so bad I use it only to set alarms and timers. Not even setting of reminders is reliable.

[e1ven]

They can't just throw more random people at the problem - Adding too many developers can slow projects down and make them less likely to work. (9 women can't make a baby in a month, and all that..)

The guy this post is about just came from Google, where he lead on the stuff you're praising. He can push these efforts in the right direction, and help make other strategic hires..

Isn't this exactly what you want?

[starshadowx2]

9 women can't make a baby in a month but 9 women can make 9 babies in 9 months instead of 1 woman making 1 in 9 months.

More people can work on more/different things in the same period of time, thereby increasing total work done. (Parallel vs sequential and all that..)

[smileysteve]

Sure, but then you try to make the children be playmates, and only 3 might work for a while, 1 might be a jerk that hurts the others; and 5 years down the road, you move anyway, so you only have 1 baby.

^ Sticking to the analogy when it comes to integrating into business; competing products, and which one actually maintains adoption.

9 babies in 9 months is basically what Google has done with its messaging apps.

[Dwolb]

Off topic question: is there a word or phrase for this conversation?

Something to describe arguing about the issue at hand completely through the metaphor and not directly referring to the issue at hand.

[gxs]

The word is pretty much analogy and counter analogy.

See this wikipedia article that discusses it in the context of logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy

[luckydata]

"Hackernewsing"

[peterclary]

Darmoking?

[danso]

Sorry, but is there some kind evidence that Giannandeea is incabale of the strategy and logistics needed to manage multiple projects in parallel?

[eecc]

But those 9 women don’t need to coordinate, each one will merrily go along with her task alone. So let’s keep the metaphor as used originally, it doesn’t extend further

[todipa]

This example took a life of its own.

Just wanted to clarify an irrelevant point to this discussion - Length of the pregnancy isn't 9 months.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777570/

[commonsense1234]

9 women cannot make 9 babies in 1 month nor 1 women can make 1 baby in 1 month. no concurrency in baby making for sure.

[gumby]

There is some potential concurrency: a woman can produce two or more babies in 9 months, although it is uncommon.

[commonsense1234]

the process is not concurrent. it is still parallel.

[gumby]

Unless the child processes have different fathers, which can and does occasionally happen.

[starshadowx2]

Let's say you have a project with 9 parts. Each part will take ~9 months to complete.

If you take 9 people and give them each one part it will take ~9 months to complete.

If you take one person it will take ~81 months as they need to finish each part before they can go onto the next one.

[jswizzy]

Someone read The Mythical Man Month. :)

[dilyevsky]

Lol beat me to it. Number of ppl in our industry who don’t seem to be aware of the Brooks’ Law never siezes to amaze me.

[talkingtab]

I've always found the mythical-man-month thing to be completely at odds with reality. Cities and ant colonies work because they use sophisticated collaboration technologies instead of top down rigid hierarchies. But maybe I'm wrong and there is a better explanation for NYC.

[giobox]

The "Mythical Man Month" was specifically about challenges in software development with humans, so comparisons to cities and ant colonies aren't all that helpful. It is not a general purpose rule to be applied to any task that can be performed by n+1 people or ants, purely an observation on the nature of software development. I think many of us can likely attest to its frequent validity in that domain, even if it doesn't ring true in others.

[matwood]

> sophisticated collaboration technologies instead of top down rigid hierarchies

Let me know when you find sophisticated collaboration technologies working beyond a team of say, 5-10.

[Despegar]

I'll take that bet. The iPhone is going to keep printing money for the next 15-20 years at least.

Apple is a 40 year old company, and they're still raking in the dough from their original product category.

[seunosewa]

> The iPhone is going to keep printing money for the next 15-20 years at least.

How? The improvements to the iPhone are less compelling every year, while the prices are going up. The company recently stopped reporting iPhone sales numbers.

> Apple is a 40 year old company, and they're still raking in the dough from their original product category.

Are they, though? Aren't Mac sales insignificant compared to iPhone sales? Haven't the latest Macbooks suffered from significant feature regressions?

[reaperducer]

Aren't Mac sales insignificant compared to iPhone sales?

You're saying that having two successful products is only good when they have equal sales figures?

I don't know of a single company on the planet that would turn its nose up at a product doing $25 BILLION in sales.

[setr]

Tbf macbooks/imacs still make good money... just completely overblown by iphone sales. Apparently ~25b for macs in general for the last 3 years at least: www.statista.com/chart/amp/13710/apple-revenue-by-product-group/

[jen20]

> improvements to the iPhone are less compelling every year

[citation needed]

> Haven't the latest Macbooks suffered from significant feature regressions?

No.

[symfoniq]

I beg to differ.

Unreliable keyboards and security chips that frequently crash the computer are feature regressions.

[threeseed]

The keyboard issues were fixed in the 2018 MacBook Pros.

And there is no systemic issues with the security chips. We have entire floors of developers using MacBook Pros and no one has had “frequent crashes” from the T2 chip.

[UseStrict]

I know it tends to be more preference, but even on the 2018 MacBook Pros I find the keyboards terrible. Dust and spill resistant sure, slightly improved tactile response yes, but unlike my 2015 MacBook Pro my fingers seem to get strained and sore from the butterfly keyboards. I like travel in my keys.

[donaldknuth123]

So dongle mania and crap keyboards aren't an issue for you?

[jen20]

I vastly prefer the keyboard in the 2016 series even to a Lenovo X220, and don't possess a single dongle - other than a (desktop) USB-C dock which connects everything in one hit.

So no, both were significant improvements from my perspective.

[chipotle_coyote]

Crap keyboards are an issue (they may have fixed them, but I think we need another ~9 mnoths to really say that for sure), but I really don't get the complaints about dongles.

Well, let me rephrase that: sure, I get that dongles are annoying, and there are capital-I Issues with USB-C that need to be worked out. But the alternative to dongles is "never change hardware connectors." Unless you make the leap to USB-C by replacing every single peripheral and cable you own, you will probably need an adapter. And you may say that now is not the right time, and you might be right, but again: unless the entire market shifts virtually overnight, there is going to be a period where using a new connector is annoying, and is going to require dongles.

tl;dr: I'm happy to be a homesteader in Dongletown, baby.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

15-20 years? How are you SURE that smartphones will still be a thing in 20 years? Let alone that Apple will still be the hip premium brand? 20 years is a LONG time. The average lifespan for an S&P 500 company is less than that these days.

[Despegar]

Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare. The smartphone is unlikely to be replaced for a long time to come. There will be plenty of head fakes along the way no doubt (smart speakers and voice bots come to mind), but the smartphone is simply too good and has too much utility to be easily challenged.

And you also have to make a bet that Apple won't come to dominate that area as well (even if they aren't first to it). AR glasses have some promise to be a new general purpose computing platform, but even then I'm skeptical that it will be able to mount a serious challenge to the smartphone.

[rabidrat]

> Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare.

They've only happened every decade so far: 1960 (IC), 1970 (DARPA), 1980 (PC), 1990 (GUI), 2000 (Internet), 2010 (smartphone).

[runako]

Point of order: the last 3 transitions have been layering versus actual shifts.

Text-based computing -> GUIs was a shift. Broadly speaking, there is no market today for consumer-facing computers where text is the only input capability.

The most profitable company in the PC era also has the most profitable PC unit today. The Internet runs on top of the GUI layer. The smartphone is (in much of the world) an "also" not an "instead."

(One could argue that the original MSFT goal of being on every desktop was centered on work. By that metric, most smartphone usage falls into a separate category of consumer computing that largely is distinct from business computing, where desktops & laptops still rule.)

A grandparent(-ish) post compares the iPhone to the Google Home. Much like the iPhone did not replace my laptop (which did not replace the server in the datacenter), voice-driven devices will not replace mobile phones. All Excel (ahem) at different use cases.

[zjaffee]

Tacking on to your comment, one could argue that voice alongside increasing number of sensors and inputs available on smartphones are very similar paradigm shifts to that of the text-based computing to GUI shift.

We're replacing the keyboard and GUI to one that is far more ubiquitous and backgrounded, and computing experiences are based on all data that is available and economical to process rather than having things be the more traditional user giving an input and then getting an output.

[Swizec]

From a hardware perspective: servers, personal computers, smartphones

That’s 3 computing paradigm shifts in 60 years.

[jen20]

Are you calling out the time these became mainstream? I'd argue if the PC can be slotted in at 1980 (the IBM PC didn't come out until 1981), the GUI should be listed as 1984, not 1990. Alternatively, the PC should be listed a lot later.

[rabidrat]

I was not going for exact years but some semblance of "around then" which conveniently rounded up to the nearest decade. The Apple II was 1978 and the PC was 1981. I agree that the GUI should be listed as 1984 in some official capacity (or is it 1978 with PARC?), but most of the world and I were using text mode by default in the 80s; it wasn't until Windows 3.1 (1990) that the GUI became the default. Similarly the internet was around before 2000 but became The Thing with the dotcom bubble (maybe this one should be called Google instead of Internet since I already put DARPA at 1970. Maybe 1970 should be UNIX instead?). Anyway I don't think this detracts from the larger point, which was that these huge shifts do seem to come along about once a decade in the computing sphere. Oh and we forgot to mention virtualization/cloud, is that more or less of a paradigm shift than Google and the smartphone?

[Despegar]

The GUI is not something I'd break out separately from the PC. And the internet is something that massively improved the utility of PCs and increased demand for them, it wasn't something that was going to replace it.

[philwelch]

> And the internet is something that massively improved the utility of PCs and increased demand for them, it wasn't something that was going to replace it.

No, it just devastated the market for native PC applications.

[iainmerrick]

The GUI is not something I'd break out separately from the PC.

Why not? The PC (and I’d include things like the Apple ][ and C64) was a legitimate success before GUIs took off. The GUI was a separate step, also hugely important.

And ~1980 and ~1990 are reasonable dates for when personal computers and Windows took off, give or take a few years.

[samatman]

and Apple is still profitable on a product line they introduced in 1984.

[phaus]

All its going to take for the next paradigm shift will be for voice assistants and batteries to get better, and for google glass-like devices get so good that they match the feature set of smartphones and standalone VR systems and also become so small that they fit in a regular looking pair of sunglasses.

I'm not sure how long it will take, but it honestly seems inevitable.

Maybe it won't be glasses, but it will almost certainly be something we wear instead of a thing that we carry around forever.

[cft]

A smartphone with a connection to a monitor, keyboard and mouse could replace a desktop. If I were the CEO of MSFT, I'd put serious R&D funds into this.

[pazimzadeh]

Think about all of the things that you don't have to carry with you if your smartphone is good enough: camera, wallet, keys, pieces of paper (containing printed maps/directions, emails etc).

It's notable that a combination of Apple Watch + Airpods can fulfill most of these needs, with the exception of being a high quality camera and a few other things that require a larger screen. But that just shows you that if anyone is going to disrupt Apple, it's going to be Apple.

[icanhackit]

> How are you SURE that smartphones will still be a thing in 20 years?

I'm sure someone asked a similar question about personal computers in the early 80's. They didn't go away when smartphones became prevalent, they became computational work-horses and in the same way an AR system will never be able to pack the computing punch and battery life of a smartphone.

But similar to how a smart-phone complements a PC, AR tech will simplify how we interact with specific parts of the world around us like navigation, notifications, and merge with existing tech like wireless earphones with noise cancellation and conversation/audio-enhancement to provide minimum necessary utility.

More features will bleed down the chain from PC to phone to AR, but with size comes certain advantages and disadvantages, and a large object can always hold more juice and computational power.

I think the biggest disruption will come from global low latency wireless internet - suddenly computational power can be uncoupled from the device and AR would be able to offload the power-hungry CPU/GPU's and large batteries needed for fluid and powerful interaction. But I'm not sure Elon Musk's satellite internet project will be that disruptor - so it might be another long wait until that next big thing happens.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

It seems pretty obvious that personal computers (not workstations) are going the way of the typewriter right now. Most people just don't need a computer when they have a smartphone.

The PC can be dated back 1975. But even in 2000, only 51% of US households had a personal computer. Not even 20 years later, it sure looks like the PC is going the way of the calculator and typewriter.

The first modern smartphone can be dated back to 1996, but it wasn't until 2013 that 50% of US adults had one.

Two year later, in late 2015, mobile web traffic had already overtaken desktop.

By 2033, I would be surprised if we don't have something challenging the smartphone. And the technology is probably around already.

These technologies seem to have about a 40-50 year life cycle. The first half of the life-cycle is the stage it takes to get to 50% saturation. Then the next third of the stage they dominate. The final third of the stage, they phase out to a niche market.

Sure, the smartphone is the bees knees today. But, really, is it? You've got to carry it with you everywhere you go. What if you just had a contact you kept over your eye at all times? What if you just had something you kept tucked behind your ear at all times?

How often do you REALLY need that screen? Remember, when the iPhone came out -- most people were thinking -- who's going to buy a smartphone without a freaking keyboard? Within literally 2 years, Blackberry's stock had dropped like 70%. Within 5 years, it was on the brink of bankruptcy.

And before that, when the first Palm came out in 1996 -- how many people do you think REALLY envisioned the smartphones we have today dominating web traffic and starting to encroach on the work station?

[zjaffee]

Why should I believe that AR will even be it's own unique product platform rather than just a part of every single smartphone app. Smartphones were much easier for people to adapt too since virtually everyone had already carried around wallets and keys, and I'd be hard pressed to believe that wearing glasses will ever be something that the majority of people do voluntarily, in the same way smart watches never became completely ubiquitous, short of maybe within professions where you both need your hands to be free and where visual computing would be useful.

[threeseed]

Apple is only hip and premium because they make quality products.

And that comes down to the culture and mindset of the company. Which given that they have Apple University and have an executive team which very much encapsulates the “Apple Way” isn’t going to change.

Yes there are plenty of failed companies but very few aggressively defend their culture like Apple does. And culture rot for me is such a big part of failure.

[cft]

Because Moore's law has ended.

[goatherders]

Any amount you want to bet...ill take the side that there will not be an "iPhone 25."

[saagarjha]

They might just rename it before that point to just “iPhone”.

[tqkxzugoaupvwqr]

Or use the iMac naming scheme, e.g. iPhone (Late 2027).

[wpietri]

If you two would actually like to bet, I'm happy to shepherd that bet through the process here: http://longbets.org/

We've been going 16 years at this point, and we have bets out to 2150: http://longbets.org/11/

[wdr1]

> they're still raking in the dough from their original product category.

I'm not sure which you mean The Apple II product line, or desktop computing in general?

Either way, pretty sure neither would be considered their cash cow.

[1024core]

> The iPhone is going to keep printing money for the next 15-20 years at least.

iPhone sales are down, which is why Apple stock is down about 30% from its highs.

[donaldknuth123]

Sales have already tapered off and Apple stock fell off a cliff when they announced their most recent production numbers.

[scrollaway]

> $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future

Is it? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking)

It doesn't understand followup commands, the Hue integration is rotten bad, and the commands definitely have to be rigid. Things like "What were my meetings on the 12th of December" aren't understood.

Also having to say "OK google" and not being able to change that is so bad. At least "Hey Siri" is natural.

[madlynormal]

> Is it? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking)

Absolutely it is. In general, my Siri usage is limited to opening Google Assistant, that's how bad it is. Also, "Hey Google" works as a command on most devices.

[tshannon]

I'm pretty sure you can say "Hey Google" as well.

[mcast]

"Hey [huge corporation here]" is not a great user experience for a device meant to be at home.

[bagacrap]

It's exceptionally good in my experience in English. It helps when you train it on your voice. Also, it wants me to say "hey Google" these days, if you like that any better than ok Google.

[kissickas]

I'm with you. I was severely unimpressed - I can't say "go to sleep in a half hour," but must say "go to sleep in 30 minutes." If I accidentally say "go to bed" I've got to start up a whole new "Hey Google" cycle again.

At least I know it's not listening to me all the time.

[miles]

> At least I know it's not listening to me all the time.

Do you really though?

Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/google-home-mini...

And while Google responded quickly:

Google just permanently killed the feature that made some Home Minis eavesdrop https://www.the-ambient.com/news/google-home-mini-spy-proble...

who is to say what the next update brings?

[Karunamon]

Let's keep some perspective here. By "eavesdropping", you mean a small handful (~4000 devices) of first gen devices that were never sold to actual customers with defective touch sensors causing the recording to be activated.

The software fix pushed out simply disables the "push-to-talk" feature entirely.

Unless you think Google has some kind of motive to listen to completely randomly-triggered recording (and they don't; the data would be garbage from almost any standpoint I can imagine), your post is incredibly misleading at best and malicious fearmongering at worst.

[dhruvarora013]

Can't you say Hey Google now?

[scrollaway]

No in French, from what I can tell. (Pronounced the same)

[dboreham]

Um...you know JG was formerly at Google doing all that magic you love and is now at Apple, right?

[pier25]

Google is a lot more than one guy

[macleodnine]

For the rest of us, who is JG?

[macleodnine]

Haha nvm made the connection... r/whoosh

[m0zg]

JG was _managing people_ doing the magic. There's a difference. By himself, he can't really do much. He's not even a ML/DL guy per se.

[geofft]

Magic is about management. The most talented ICs can't do much unless management supports them in it. (And I say this as an IC.)

[oh_sigh]

Management is a necessary but insufficient condition for magic.

[m0zg]

Not in research.

[Aloha]

Even in Research.

Xerox PARC is a great example - PARC invented everything, but very little of it was immediately commercially applicable - Good management, is what turns "people producing great things", to "people producing great things regular people can use"

[geofft]

Anyone with a successful research lab is a manager: they're spending a good chunk of their time herding grad students, writing grant proposals, hiring junior faculty, etc. This model works.

[threeseed]

Managers decide on the culture, composition and priorities of a team.

They are just as significant as individuals in the team.

[gumby]

JG is the reason Google has all that ML effort. He joined google via the MetaWeb acquisition; when he'd finished his earn-out he wanted to leave but was asked to look around for something useful to do and consolidated a bunch of dispersed ML efforts. He also bought Deep Mind on behalf of Google.

I don't know why you would say he's "not a DL/ML guy per se" -- he's a programmer, not an MBA type. You consider MetaWeb and TellMe inadequate?

[danso]

So you concede that there was “magic” being done at Google, but you want to argue that Giannandrea’s leadership of the search and AI teams had nothing to do with it?

[danso]

If there’s one company that’s proved how successful non-technical leaders can be, it would seemingly be Apple.

[greglindahl]

jg isn't non-technical.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Don't you think it's likely that JG will convince other top AI/ML talent to join Apple? That's usually a senior exec's main job, to recruit, retain and grow people who are building the products.

[hellofunk]

Uh, Jobs was not an engineer either, just a simple ol' manager, right? Managers don't have any power and capabilities, right?

[dboreham]

ffs jg is an Engineer.

[djtriptych]

what is it you think executives do?

[jowiar]

The issue is not personnel — it is data privacy/ethics. Apple has come down heavily on the side of “we aren’t going to do creepy shit with your data”. Google, Amazon, and FB can all pull ahead because they have no such scruples.

[dwighttk]

Who is this best of the best that they didn't hire?

[m0zg]

Everyone who cares even a little about their academic career. Apple doesn't really let you publish. Even pop-sci articles they do publish on their website don't have any names. I know no sane researcher who would agree to end their academic participation so abruptly, particularly in order to work for an organization widely perceived as a perennial laggard.

[rrdharan]

Actually they fixed that 2 years ago:

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/12/6/13858354/app...

https://machinelearning.apple.com/

[m0zg]

But... they didn't. In the very page you linked, try to find a single name of a concrete researcher who wrote/contributed to the article. If there's no name on the paper it's not "publishing".

[Q6T46nT668w6i3m]

They won the Best Paper CVPR prize in 2017.

Learning from Simulated and Unsupervised Images through Adversarial Training by Ashish Shrivastava, Tomas Pfister, Oncel Tuzel, Joshua Susskind, Wenda Wang, & Russell Webb.

[kenferry]

https://9to5mac.com/2017/08/25/apple-wins-best-paper-prestig...

Names are there. Check the arxiv link.

[dwighttk]

so is it "they won't open their wallet!" or "they won't let you publish!"

[m0zg]

How about both. Google, Microsoft, and Facebook both pay their researchers very well and let them publish extensively. That's why they have world-leading research organizations, and Apple does not.

[psychometry]

Do you have evidence that Apple pays AI researchers less than those other companies? Honestly I'm not sure that you even understand the argument you're trying to make. The rest of us here certainly don't.

[woolvalley]

In my experience, the offers that google, fb & netflix give are better than the offers that amazon, msft & apple give on a consistent basis. 'Special' people will get special offers, but we would have to compare their offers of what they would get elsewhere, and if their special skill would be equally valued at other companies.

Apple has an institutional memory of almost dying, so they can be a very 'cheap' company under the hood when they can get away with it. It reflects in their pay.

[bad_good_guy]

Just because you aren't understanding doesn't mean most others aren't. He clearly said the other companies have an AND situation in regards to pay and publishing. He is saying Apple does not, as it does not allow proper publishing.

I.e. {'Pay' AND 'Publishing' > 'Pay'} not {Apple 'Pay' < Other 'Pay'}

[danso]

If Google’s strategy is to be emulated, then why is hiring someone who was part of that strategy a bad move on Apple’s part?

[m0zg]

I'm not saying it's a _bad_ move. It's just insufficient. And until they unclench wrt publishing nothing is going to change for them. And even after they do that, it will take a lot of convincing (and large wads of cash) to hire the best talent that can not only get Siri to catch up to Google, but overtake it.

My problem is not with Giannandrea's new position, it's with the lack of urgency on Apple's part. My patience has been wearing thin as of late.

[pier25]

The fundamental problem is that Apple has been focused on making end user products for a very long time, but Google has been dealing with data and the cloud for 20 years.

Apple could probably become as good as Google at its own game, but it would take a lot of effort and I don't think Tim Cook et al have the vision to move in that direction like Microsoft did.

I feel Apple will become more and more irrelevant as years pass. With a bandwidth singularity end user hardware will be irrelevant in 10-20 years from now and other companies like Google and Microsoft are slowly catching up in making great end user experiences.

[trhway]

>It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best

Their current B people do hire the best of the best ... of B people. It like my current BigCo (we are straight C people) feels no talent shortage even right now in the Bay Area while also supposedly hiring only the best people - there is no shortage of C people. We enjoy our work/life balance while of course we can't even dream of producing anything even just slightly resembling Siri.

[hackermeows]

From what I've heard it is much harder at Apple to use your user data non-anonymized i.e they focus more on Privacy vs Google, Amazon etc where any team can use your data to do experiments and run A/B tests, ultimately what this means is that the quality of AI will be poorer. Developers of the $30 Google Home puck uses your data without thinking of the privacy consequences (internal bad actor), and hence is way better. This is what I've heard from developers/spokespeople of Apple. Has anyone else heard the same excuse ?

[ksec]

For some reason Apple is extremely stringent with their Servers / Cloud Investment. They were late to building their DC, late to owning their CDN ( despite being huge in volume ) Basically Tim Cook has a model that they should not own any "asset". the Asset Light Strategy. Compared to Google which is beating any AI , Deep Learning problems with brute force, and optimise later.

Even their Maps are late, 7 years later since the first apology of Apple Maps they still aren't anywhere close to Google Map.

[mav3rick]

It's quite good at accents as well.

[jondubois]

Apple cannot hire 'the best of the best'; those people are freaks and are probably not publicly presentable. The shareholders would not approve.

[todd3834]

I used to work for Apple. Pretty diverse. Plenty of normal people and plenty of freaks.