Ex Apple Engineer. Let go for using a Galaxy device as my main driver after 17 years.

Zorachus

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I am just linking this thread I saw on AC today, but I found it very interesting what this guy had to say in regards to Apple, and how they've stopped innovating and become all about sales and marketing #1.

https://forums.androidcentral.com/t...-as-my-main-driver-after-17-years-👍😄.1059414/

As the title implies. I am an ex Apple engineer who is let go after refusing to use the iPhone as my main phone.
My project manager kept getting on me about using an iPhone. He always complained about my phone, as every time he wanted to try out I new process i never had my iPhone on me and would always complain.
One day he called me into his office and asked me why I didn’t use an iPhone like the rest of the team. I explained to him that I really didn’t like our part product that much, and I was being blunt with him and then I felt we were going in the wrong direction and not moving the software in the right direction. and that we were moving backwards.
He he decided to put me on leave as he felt I was not being a team player and would put me back on the team as soon as my attitude changed.
I said that’s OK I quit anyway. And walked out.

Some backround about Apple and why i feel they are in big trouble going foward.

Most senior engineers are being demoted to reduce pay. Apple is all about money. That is no 1. User experience is way down the list.

i was a former product manager. Who did excellent work. Made enough money over 25 years to partially retire. They decided to demote me in place of a kid who they paid half as much. Then force me out. This is happening across the company.

A few engineers are going else where like Oppo, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. But most are going to Samsung. I got an offer but turned them down as I am older and wanted to partially retire.
Right now Samsung has the best software engineers on the mobile side as well as on the hardware side.

Apple is a master at cost cutting and tricking the public into inferior products. Their marketing team basically run the company. They retained the best, kept their experienced managers and even hired more.
The opposite of what happened to me happened to their marketing managers.

This led to massive profits. So Apple figured why put so much money into the products when we can undercut the product still sell so many anyway.

One of their biggest blunders was using stainless steel in the X and pro models. Jonny Ive left the company over this. He and Tim Cook didn’t get along very well.

Stainless steel is cheap. Surgical grade is slightly more expensive but still relatively cheap. 7000 series Aluminum is more expensive and a much better substrate of metal. It was developed as an alternative to Titanium and is used in Spacecraft, Fighter jets, Satellites etc. Basically the aerospace industry.

Most high end phones on the Android side use it.
Apple thought they could cut costs, while tricking the buying public into thinking its more expensive because its heavier. And in the US it worked, and worked well.

But now its backfiring as Apple is now forced to use Titanium. A more expensive metal and are set to lose millions. They were warned SS would be too heavy as the more features they added the heavier the phone would get.

This is just one example. There are many more.
 
He continued;

Ask yourself. What is the last mobile product from them to show real innovation?
it was the X. Facetime was a true game changer, as well as their OLED implementation with curving the panel electronics under the edges of the phone. This panel trick was duplicated by the rest of the industry.


A VR headset that cost $3500? 😄 Dynamic island? Hahahaa. I almost choked on my coffee when they announced that one. It was duplicated practically the next day in software on the Android side within 48hrs.


Samsung is innovating. Really innovating. Foldable phones are the future once they are perfected in my opinion. They seem like a beta product now. Once the figure out a screen with the same durability and clarity as gorilla glass and make them thin enough and light enough its game over.


But i feel like that is a while off. Their Galaxy tab S9 Ultra with its 14.6 inch Amoled at 5.6 thin is innovating.

Apple will announce a 14.5 inch ipad and say its the largest screen ever on a tablet and everyone will clap. 😄👍
 
And;

Innovating will come at smaller steps, but software isn't any good without innovative technologies to run it on. But you are correct that it has reached a stagnation point.

Yes i know alot of things which i cannot disclose because of an NDA. Such as a 14.1 inch ipad pro that was in the works but canceled or put on hold because of panel availability. 😉


To correct myself from earlier. The Iphone X was the last innovative product they released. But Apple really didnt do the innovating except for the panel.


Face ID was not developed by Apple. It was developed by a startup company called Primesense started by a Mr Aviad Maizels back in 2005-6. Funded by Microsoft and was a co-founder in the company. They did this as Microsoft wanted to remain anonymous To keep the technology a secret.


This development led to the Microsoft Kinect. Yes, that Kinect. The same technology is used in face ID. It is now used in Windows Hello As Microsoft has rights to the patent, just not rights to capri which was developed for smartphones.


Primesense was developing a miniature version called capri for smartphones In conjunction with Microsoft. In 2013 Samsung was well under way in developing a IR camera for face unlock to combat Apples Apple ID Fingerprint recognition.


Apple got news of this and tried to develop their own facial recognition with little success. In 2012 is when Apple replaced a good portion of their engineers with cheaper younger versions.
So what they couldn’t develop they bought. Apple bought Primesense under Microsofts nose in 2013 and four years later face ID was born.


So the last product they really innovated on was the Apple watch? Or did they buy that too? 😉
 
One mans opinion. He hardly has a birds eye view of the company. And I would say his assessment of both the engineering and software side is slanted. They could pay every engineer an absurd amount of money a year and it wouldn’t even cause a blip in the bottom line of Apple. And unless this guy has actual proof, Jony Ive quitting over “stainless steel” is a really absurd speculative statement (and why can’t they just move to aluminum as he suggests? Why “must” Apple ”lose millions to move to titanium”? Basically all of these statements beg the question). Considering Ive continued to have Apple as a ”client”, I think that minimizes Jony’s desire to simply move on and do his own thing after a post Jobs world.

Cook also doesn’t call all the shots either. Part of being a good leader is hiring people that know their divisions well. It’s not as if Cook knows every engineer. Craig Federighi as an example oversees all of the iOS software development and would have much more direct influence in the day to day and who stays and goes in terms of software engineers.

As for all the discussion about “innovation”, most of that is a smear job - in the sense that Samsung’s “innovations” are some how great but Apple’s aren’t. It’s subjective.
And no one cares where ideas come from (Samsung hasn’t done anything interesting either, so I have no idea what he’s on about). The reason why people buy Apple has remained the same. It’s because Apple streamlines everything for the end user (convenience, ergonomics, ease of use, all other forms of user experience), has powerful hardware, and great integration.

Frankly there is close to zero that gets produced either via any Android manufacturer or by Apple to make people switch either way. There are a small sub-set of people that are flip floppers sure, but I would say far greater than 90% have made their camp and stick with it. Samsung has produced precisely zero things that give me any desire to move to any of their hardware or software packages.

Frankly this guy just sounds like a cranky contrarian with a chip on his shoulder due to either real (I’ll even give him the benefit of the doubt here) or perceived slights.
 
IMO sounded like he needed to go. I can’t imagine being effective at that job without owning an iPhone, and TBH it seems like a bunch of BS because anyone sitting in that role would be provided one for free for the job anyways at Apple. Doesn’t mean you can’t use an Android for personal, but a lot of that tirade doesn’t add up.
 
On top of what others have said: if you were an engineer for Samsung's Galaxy phones or Google's Pixel line, you'd probably get into trouble if you insisted on using an iPhone as your main handset. Not just for public image, but because you'd have trouble dogfooding your work.

And a lot of what he says about Apple is unsupported, subjective or both. An engineer is unlikely to know much about material costs and design decisions; he certainly won't know why Jony Ive left (and from reports, the engineer is wrong). Assuming this guy is even being honest, it sounds like he already had one foot out the door and was looking for an excuse to leave.
 
You can see it, USB2 speeds on iPhone 15 models...pay for USB3 speeds!

"What happens on your iphone stays on your iphone" No wait, we will still collect your data even though you turned off that feature for us not too...

The amount of exploits coming out these days for iphones and rush patches Apple has pushed out....

I do get it, you should use the tools you are programming for, and to really get used to it and if it works or not, use it often while at work....They may of used it when needed for testing and such...
 
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You can see it, USB2 speeds on iPhone 15 models...pay for USB3 speeds!

"What happens on your iphone stays on your iphone" No wait, we will still collect your data even though you turned off that feature for us not too...

The amount of exploits coming out these days for iphones and rush patches Apple has pushed out....

I do get it, you should use the tools you are programming for, and to really get used to it and if it works or not, use it often while at work....They may of used it when needed for testing and such...
I can assure you there are far more zero days being utilized for Android, and the general threat landscape is massive since so many idiots will install apks without any thought. I spend almost no time ever doing RE for iOS. Just no point.
 
I can assure you there are far more zero days being utilized for Android, and the general threat landscape is massive since so many idiots will install apks without any thought. I spend almost no time ever doing RE for iOS. Just no point.
Not comparing Android vs Apple in this case. I am solely pointing out the increased amount of vulnerabilities / exploits coming out for iOS and other Apple devices vs years previous. (Note, I own an iPhone 11 because i got sick of all the bloat Samsung puts on their phones that you can not uninstall)
 
I worked at Dell for many years. Always built my own PC
I worked at AMD for a few years. Ran intel/nvidia

You dontt have to eat the dog food.
 
I worked at Dell for many years. Always built my own PC
I worked at AMD for a few years. Ran intel/nvidia

You dontt have to eat the dog food.
You don't - But comparing working for Dell and building your own PC is not the same situation. If you work for Apple all of their business practices are likely designed for iOS/MacOS. So if you aren't capable of joining meetings on FaceTime, or making presentations in Pages, etc. - You're the problem. And again, a high level product manager would be given free Apple devices anyways. So it's not like they'd force him to buy an Apple device to do work shit.
 
You don't - But comparing working for Dell and building your own PC is not the same situation. If you work for Apple all of their business practices are likely designed for iOS/MacOS. So if you aren't capable of joining meetings on FaceTime, or making presentations in Pages, etc. - You're the problem. And again, a high level product manager would be given free Apple devices anyways. So it's not like they'd force him to buy an Apple device to do work shit.
Yea the guy admitted to his boss asking him to do something and he couldn’t because he refused to have an iPhone with him. That’s literally a job performance issue, as well as insubordination and if they fired him and he fought it for unemployment benefits he would lose. He quit because he knew. He’s not even able to fully retire just semi retire. He publicized this too, not sure he got a new job yet but he screwed up.
 
Yea the guy admitted to his boss asking him to do something and he couldn’t because he refused to have an iPhone with him. That’s literally a job performance issue, as well as insubordination and if they fired him and he fought it for unemployment benefits he would lose. He quit because he knew. He’s not even able to fully retire just semi retire. He publicized this too, not sure he got a new job yet but he screwed up.

I mean, maybe if you don't like the product that much, you shouldn't work there anyway... But when you get to work, put your android in the glove box and take out the iPhone and vice versa. It's not that hard, and separate work vs home is best practice anyway. Or carry both at work if you need to have reference to competitors which is valuable.

Some amount of preference towards competitors is ok, if you think you can make your product better, but refusing to use your product is bad for the product. WM10 clearly got no internal use before release and it shows; Apple probably doesn't have that problem, but it's not a great path to walk.
 
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