Apple Lays Off Around 100 Services Staff Across Apple Books and News

[Neil J. Squillante]

This probably means Apple Books and Apple News don’t perform as well as Apple hoped, otherwise why cut workforce?
With that being said, time to branch out even more areas?

Apple News+ should have been a software tool for curating your own personal news feed from the entire web, including from websites without an RSS feed. Basically, Apple Podcasts for articles. Apple should also (slightly) democratize Apple TV+ for proven indie/YouTube talent.

 

[Analog Kid]

Yes, I realize that 100 people is a minute spec in Apple's headcount. However...

Speaking as someone who has years of experience as a senior VP and who has sat in many meetings talking about headcount and what it does to the bottom line, I can assure you it regularly happens that upper management (and particularly C level executives) worry about that bottom line and how it impacts their hefty bonuses.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching people attempt to flex in public as much as anyone, but I have to assume whatever company you served was at least two orders of magnitude smaller than Apple if a shift of 100 people caught your attention at all. If you think moving employees from one position to another position elsewhere in the company somehow affected the bottom line then I further conclude you were not VP of Finance.

 

[MacFarmer]

So Apple Books app is doomed. It is such an oversight, earlier versions were so much better. I guess that fine for Apple books killed the project?

any recommendations on another app to use?

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Apple Books and News has 100 staff? What do they do?

 

[Vastolorde97]

Apple Books and News has 100 staff? What do they do?

Apparently, nothing since both are lagging behind the competition.

 

[mansplains]

I've been looking at building a partition for my drm-free books and hosting them on my server. No more audible, no iBooks, just the raw files in a better or open source alternative. Kinda sick of lacking control over what I own.

 

[iDento]

Or it’s established 'well enough' and they don’t need the moderation because of tech/AI advances.

The original iBooks was okay, but pretty disgusting looking (Thanks Forstall for the vomit inducing design) and I find it works pretty much as expected. Themes, fonts are all really easy to find (bottom right for me) and there are so many more settings to tweak the way I like it. The only thing I miss is the page turning style.

I’m aware of that, the floating bottom right menu that used to be where it should. Also, we got our page turning style back a couple of years ago, right?

I still can’t export or email my highlights in bulk. Which is weird.

 

[richpjr]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching people attempt to flex in public as much as anyone, but I have to assume whatever company you served was at least two orders of magnitude smaller than Apple if a shift of 100 people caught your attention at all. If you think moving employees from one position to another position elsewhere in the company somehow affected the bottom line then I further conclude you were not VP of Finance.

My post had nothing to do with the size of Apple but the very real situation that I have run into numerous times where head count is related to the bottom line and the bottom line affects bonuses. It's not particularly complicated.

 

[CoMoMacUser]

Looks like there was recently a U-turn by The Guardian.

The landscape is constantly changing and I notice some U.K. news websites are going behind a paywall that were not previously behind a paywall. It’s also been mentioned in this thread about people not paying for their news.

It’s not really progressive given the current state of the world as journalists etc all need to be paid and can’t continue to give away their work for free.

Agreed. I started my journalism career in the mid '90s, when newspapers and magazines just started putting their content online for free. Unfortunately that conditioned generations of people to expect news to be free. That will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to overcome.

 

[picpicmac]

After a decade of explosive growth in tech, a slowdown feels weird. They say things should get better in 2025 though, so hopefully just a few more months?

The goal of every CEO is to eliminate as many expenses as possible. I'm sure many CEOs think all a company needs is themselves, a lawyer, and an accountant.

 

[wilhoitm]

I am not saying it's AI. But it's AI.

 

[sublunar]

Agreed. I started my journalism career in the mid '90s, when newspapers and magazines just started putting their content online for free. Unfortunately that conditioned generations of people to expect news to be free. That will be somewhere between difficult and impossible to overcome.

what’s worse is credible news costs more to double verify, whereas lies can be disseminated with ease on social media at no cost, not to mention piracy of paid for content. The mention in this thread alone of pirated ebooks is saddening.

 

[Analog Kid]

My post had nothing to do with the size of Apple but the very real situation that I have run into numerous times where head count is related to the bottom line and the bottom line affects bonuses. It's not particularly complicated.

Was your original comment a non sequitur then?

It sounded to me like you were implying this decision to move 100 people was driven by executive bonuses. I challenge that idea. I think they are reallocating resources after terminating a project or reducing its scope. I'm not a fan of make-work. If there isn't anything to be done, let those people be productive elsewhere.

 

[maxoakland]

Hopefully Apple higher ups don't all get big raises because these poor folks lost their jobs .

No one should get raises or bonuses if anyone was laid off. It’s a failure

 

[maxoakland]

The goal of every CEO is to eliminate as many expenses as possible. I'm sure many CEOs think all a company needs is themselves, a lawyer, and an accountant.

That’s why they like AI so much.

The end goal is an Apple where only one person works there and they get all the money

Is that the world we want to live in?

 

[richpjr]

Was your original comment a non sequitur then?

It sounded to me like you were implying this decision to move 100 people was driven by executive bonuses. I challenge that idea. I think they are reallocating resources after terminating a project or reducing its scope. I'm not a fan of make-work. If there isn't anything to be done, let those people be productive elsewhere.

I made a general comment replying to someone who posted they hope higher ups don't get raises because people lost their jobs, nothing more.

 

[Analog Kid]

I made a general comment replying to someone who posted they hope higher ups don't get raises because people lost their jobs, nothing more.

And your conclusion is that they would? Perhaps not raises, but bonuses, because they shuffled 100 of 161,000 people?

If they're following your law of lower head count = higher profit margins = bigger executive bonuses, then why do they have over 1000 open positions in Cupertino alone? You'd think they'd stop hiring which increases head count and thus supposedly lowers profit margins...

Alternatively, would it not make more sense that profits are maximized if you have as many people as your cash flow can support producing work that yields returns greater than their compensation (adjusted to net present value and measured against an appropriate discount rate, cost of capital, yadda yadda)?

If you have 1000 jobs to fill and some of those jobs are expected to bring more value to the company than the projects 100 people are currently working on, then wouldn't it make more sense to move the employees you've already vetted and hired from less productive work to more productive work?

"layoffs = profits = bonuses" is lazy, cynical, logic... Next time you're hobnobbing in your C-suite, you might consider telling them so.

 

[richpjr]

And your conclusion is that they would? Perhaps not raises, but bonuses, because they shuffled 100 of 161,000 people?

If they're following your law of lower head count = higher profit margins = bigger executive bonuses, then why do they have over 1000 open positions in Cupertino alone? You'd think they'd stop hiring which increases head count and thus supposedly lowers profit margins...

Alternatively, would it not make more sense that profits are maximized if you have as many people as your cash flow can support producing work that yields returns greater than their compensation (adjusted to net present value and measured against an appropriate discount rate, cost of capital, yadda yadda)?

If you have 1000 jobs to fill and some of those jobs are expected to bring more value to the company than the projects 100 people are currently working on, then wouldn't it make more sense to move the employees you've already vetted and hired from less productive work to more productive work?

"layoffs = profits = bonuses" is lazy, cynical, logic... Next time you're hobnobbing in your C-suite, you might consider telling them so.

Companies hire based on needs and eliminate positions for a variety of reasons, including a better bottom line. If you ever have the opportunity to sit in a meeting with upper management, it can be quite jarring - and not in a good way. The only thing worse is a board meeting. Your idealistic view of what companies should do, doesn't reflect reality in how an awful lot of companies operate.

 

[Analog Kid]

Companies hire based on needs and eliminate positions for a variety of reasons, including a better bottom line. If you ever have the opportunity to sit in a meeting with upper management, it can be quite jarring - and not in a good way. The only thing worse is a board meeting. Your idealistic view of what companies should do, doesn't reflect reality in how an awful lot of companies operate.

It's always fun when people try to guess the experience and background of anonymous strangers...

You've yet to say anything that suggests your cynical response reflects the reality of what drove this particular realignment. You're carefully avoided addressing my comments beyond repeating endlessly that you're merely transcribing what you've overheard in executive level meetings at other companies. I suspect the conversation around you is far more nuanced than that though, and you maybe think the "soulless execs feast on the blood of redundancies" pitch sounds worldly?

I'll say it again: Apple is recruiting for well over 1000 open positions that will surely take them months to fill if not longer. Apple has told 100 of their 161,000 employees that they have 2 full months to either find one of those open positions or look elsewhere. Many or most will likely just move to a different floor and continue doing essentially what they've been doing for a new boss on a new project. Even if they didn't, you wouldn't notice the blip among the ongoing churn of a company that size and it absolutely wouldn't move the needle on an executive bonus. The executive in this case is Eddy Cue-- you think his pocket got fatter because they shrunk the Books team?

The comments I replied to, including yours, caught my attention just because of their extreme over-simplicity and lack of insight. They just contribute to this droning hum of knee-jerk cynicism that exists in these forum completely detached from and undifferentiated by the lead articles. The correct response to the person you replied to would have been "they almost certainly did not, this is just what happens when products mature or lose priority and Apple seems to be making an effort to retain and transition the affected team members so it's likely fewer jobs were actually lost".

 

[steve09090]

No one should get raises or bonuses if anyone was laid off. It’s a failure

I didn’t realise Apple was a public service. I always thought it was a part of a business. Who knew?

 

[richpjr]

It's always fun when people try to guess the experience and background of anonymous strangers...

You've yet to say anything that suggests your cynical response reflects the reality of what drove this particular realignment. You're carefully avoided addressing my comments beyond repeating endlessly that you're merely transcribing what you've overheard in executive level meetings at other companies. I suspect the conversation around you is far more nuanced than that though, and you maybe think the "soulless execs feast on the blood of redundancies" pitch sounds worldly?

I'll say it again: Apple is recruiting for well over 1000 open positions that will surely take them months to fill if not longer. Apple has told 100 of their 161,000 employees that they have 2 full months to either find one of those open positions or look elsewhere. Many or most will likely just move to a different floor and continue doing essentially what they've been doing for a new boss on a new project. Even if they didn't, you wouldn't notice the blip among the ongoing churn of a company that size and it absolutely wouldn't move the needle on an executive bonus. The executive in this case is Eddy Cue-- you think his pocket got fatter because they shrunk the Books team?

The comments I replied to, including yours, caught my attention just because of their extreme over-simplicity and lack of insight. They just contribute to this droning hum of knee-jerk cynicism that exists in these forum completely detached from and undifferentiated by the lead articles. The correct response to the person you replied to would have been "they almost certainly did not, this is just what happens when products mature or lose priority and Apple seems to be making an effort to retain and transition the affected team members so it's likely fewer jobs were actually lost".

You are spending a large amount of time trying to argue about something that I never said or implied from a simple post about the way upper management in a lot of companies think about headcount. Even funnier is the thought that you feel the need to tell other posters how to "correctly" respond.

 

[VisceralRealist]

Two services that no one was using, cool.

I don't care about News, but I'd like to see them maybe spend a few billion less on expensive, overwrought TV+ programming and invest in making a good, competitive eBooks app.

 

[Analog Kid]

You are spending a large amount of time trying to argue about something that I never said or implied from a simple post about the way upper management in a lot of companies think about headcount.

What you said, in response to a comment about whether management would get raises from this, was pretty cut and dried: lower headcount = bigger executive bonuses.

I think it's pretty clear what you said, but if you think I'm misunderstanding then clear it up: do you think an executive got a bonus from shuffling 0.06% of their workforce to other roles over the course of 2 months?

 

[richpjr]

What you said, in response to a comment about whether management would get raises from this, was pretty cut and dried: lower headcount = bigger executive bonuses.

I think it's pretty clear what you said, but if you think I'm misunderstanding then clear it up: do you think an executive got a bonus from shuffling 0.06% of their workforce to other roles over the course of 2 months?

It was pretty clear what I posted. Only you, seemingly, are having trouble understanding it. No, in this case it will have no effect on anyone's bonus at Apple. Of course, nothing in my post referred to Apple.

 

[Analog Kid]

It was pretty clear what I posted. Only you, seemingly, are having trouble understanding it. No, in this case it will have no effect on anyone's bonus at Apple. Of course, nothing in my post referred to Apple.

Nothing but the thread you posted it in and the comment about Apple higher-ups getting raises that you were replying to.

You could have saved us both a lot of typing if, rather than reinforce its connection with the Apple directed comment, you'd simply answered 'yes' when I asked if your post was just a non sequitur.