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Apple's Secrecy Extends to Putting New Employees on Fake Projects

The bigger mistake is maintaining a closed mind.

allpar said:
I tried Lion. It's not a Leopard II. You want fundamental mistakes? Screwing around unnecessarily with the user interface counts to me.
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The rational mind would realize that the changes made in Lion are corrections of past mistakes. If a 50+ year old guy like myself can adapt and realize the UI improvement you can too.
Hiding the part of the file dialogue that lets you see the list of hard drives counts.

Yeah, a few bugs always sneak through. These are not bugs, they're fundamental design errors. Macintouch has a huge discussion with both sides chiming in, and I really don't think the "get over it" side has much to go on.
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Every single Mac OS release since 2008 has corrected more bugs than it created. 2008 being when I got with the program again. That is a lot to go on in my book.

Is Lion perfect, of course not, but no operating system is. With Lion though Apple continues its incremental approach to improving Mac OS. If you don't see it as an improvement then I think you are dwelling on the weak points a sign of a negative personality if you ask me.
Just because Microsoft makes mistakes, doesn't mean Apple doesn't. That's like claiming I should love Adobe customer service because it's slightly better than Intuit's.
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No body is claiming that Apple doesn't make mistakes, they do that all the time. What we are now claiming is that you are not objective in looking at Lion. Lion is a vast improvement overall, it is the sum of the parts that makes or breaks a release.
 
Trying to get a retail position was pretty rigorous (compared to other tech retail).. I can only imagine how rigorous the interviewing process would be for a corporate spot.
 
AppleScruff1 said:
Steve was one paranoid individual.
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You're not being paranoid if they really are out to get you. Or in Steve's case, copy you.

I have zero desire or patience to get into an Apple versus Everyone Else war, so I won't.

But no one can legitamately deny the market competition reaction to a successful Apple product launch.
 
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*LTD* said:
You sure you should be telling Apple how to allocate their money and resources?

http://mashable.com/2012/01/24/apple-quarter-by-the-numbers/

https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=322009&d=1327792490

Their "wasteful" strategy seems to be working. And all in little more than a decade.
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classic LTD and not getting it. Weather or not Apple is doing great does not change the fact that it is a huge waste of resources and money.

They are wasting millions on this that could be put to much better use.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
Am I surpised by Apple doing this no.
But at the same time it is a HUGE waste of money at the tune of 100k/year per employee for the cheapest one and it only goes north of there. That means Apple is spending at least 100k/year for the lowest employee on said project.
That is a huge waste of money.
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I'm sure they put them on projects that while there are no plans to release them still create useful things to be added to other future projects. So it's not as big of a waste of money as you make it sound.
 
Very smart move. That's how they can spot the spies sent by the competition, and other big mouths who tend to ruin the industry by not maintaining secrecy when it's necessary.
A company needs loyal employees in order to function properly and succeed.
 
Why?

koobcamuk said:
I wish "new employees" rather than "new hires" was used.
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Why is hiring an employee an insult where you come from? In the US that is exactly what you do you hire an employee. Maybe you don't like the idea of the word hire being used as a noun.

In any event very strange.
 
*LTD* said:
Their "wasteful" strategy seems to be working. And all in little more than a decade.
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Who is arguing that Apple isn't successful? No one. The OP wrote that the money spent was wasteful. That has nothing to do with whether or not the company is a success.

If I was a billionaire and I paid 25,000 for an iPhone on ebay instead of $650 on the Apple website - wouldn't you say that was wasteful. I could certainly afford it. It's not really going to affect my bottom line. But wasteful is wasteful.

Note: I am not commenting on whether or not I think Apple was wasteful. I am pointing out how your "rebuttal" is meaningless.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
That is a huge waste of money.
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I'll give you that it is a huge sum of money, but a waste?

Really?

How many multi-billion dollar corporations do you run?

You cannot deny how cut-throat the tech market is and how first movers (or perceived first movers) have a HUGE competitive advantage.

I don't think they are "wasting" a dime, just the simple cost of doing business in their industry.
 
I don't see why Apple can't just hire this guy. He did wonders for Willy Wonka's secrecy issues...

slugworth.jpeg
 
scotth23 said:
I was commenting more on the expectations. Macrumors is a free site that aggregates news from all over the place and posts pretty regularly throughout the week. I've seen them post on weekends if the post merits it.

I'm sure it would be wonderful if they posted 20 times over a weekend so that you and others could have something to read during work breaks.

I guess I just see things a little different. When someone gives something that's really good to me for free, I try not to complain that I'm not getting enough of it. I'd rather consider myself fortunate that I even have it to begin with.
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No expectations just wishful thinking. Like I said much smaller blogs post 7 days a week and are also free (I actually do not know/visit any paid blogs).

Still love them though. Macrumors fo life! :)
 
Not all new employees are put on fake projects...

just the ones who will be working in the fake Apple stores.
 
noisycats said:
You're not being paranoid if they really are out to get you. Or in Steve's case, copy you.

I have zero desire or patience to get into an Apple versus Everyone Else war, so I won't.

But no one can legitamately deny the market competition reaction to a successful Apple product launch.
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He was paranoid before Apple was as successful as it is today.
 
Sounds like the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works. I have a friend from college who got a job as an engineer there. For the first year, he worked in a 'portable' building in the parking lot outside - because he didn't have security clearance to enter the building yet. He was tasked with designing small individual parts. He was given only the most basic details about what was to be designed. VERY often, he would submit the designed part, only to be told a new requirement ("no, that won't work, it has to withstand xyz degrees Celsius." "No, it needs to have a cutout at this far in, this deep.")

To this day, he doesn't know what the parts were for, if they were even for real projects.
 
I have to wonder how much of this article and it's source is BS.

Let's face it Apple maybe secretive but many things described in the press are common to any company on the bleeding edge. You just can't have your employees blabbing about projects that take years to get to the manufacturing stage.

As to fake projects that may or may not be the case. It is amazing to me, working in an entirely different industry, how many projects never see the light of day. I've even seen millions invested in manufacturing lines that never produced a single product for sale.

So while some may see fake projects I'm not convinced that all are. Beyond that we see many hires where people go directly to work on technology they are well experienced with. So it is pretty obvious that not all new hires are run through this testing period.
 
Fake products from North Korea

xlii said:
North Korea could learn from these guys. Fake products... I never would have guessed it.
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Interestingly, North Korea did create a fake city, Kijŏng-dong, in the 1950s. That, the Third Tunnel of Aggression and the observational theater up the ridge at the DMZ are three of the strangest things I've ever seen. A freight train was traveling right through that point when war broke out in 1950; the locomotive is now a permanent part of the landscape.

You don't get attractions like those at Disneyland. :eek:
 
wizard said:
The rational mind would realize that the changes made in Lion are corrections of past mistakes. If a 50+ year old guy like myself can adapt and realize the UI improvement you can too.

Every single Mac OS release since 2008 has corrected more bugs than it created. 2008 being when I got with the program again. That is a lot to go on in my book.

Is Lion perfect, of course not, but no operating system is. With Lion though Apple continues its incremental approach to improving Mac OS. If you don't see it as an improvement then I think you are dwelling on the weak points a sign of a negative personality if you ask me.


No body is claiming that Apple doesn't make mistakes, they do that all the time. What we are now claiming is that you are not objective in looking at Lion. Lion is a vast improvement overall, it is the sum of the parts that makes or breaks a release.
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Every OS X release between 2002 and 2009 corrected more bugs than it created, and added useful and polished new features. Lion did no such thing; its features are not ones to which anyone should want to get used. The implementation of autosave/versions is destructive and the sudden inability to turn off spaces - in fact the inability to turn off any of the new/modified features - really is taking us down a new, dark path. I realised it within a week of use - again, never had any issue with 10.1 through 10.6 on first-day purchases. By contrast, Lion had me switch full-time to Windows 7 within a week. And gradually more and more people on these very forums have been realising the pain also, just as I proclaimed it ... but I don't think they are doing anything about it, just complaining :).

I'm still interested though, hence still reading and posting, and if things can be made right, I might reswitch.

On the topic, I'll go on the "not surprising" bandwagon - more specifically, I wouldn't be surprised if there were many examples like the "Asteroid", where things only actually gained "fake" status after being leaked and "hires" responsible taken back to "lores" ;). I'm sure some of the dodgy quality pics we've seen here over the years could be candidates ... maybe they only give those people really low quality cameras so they can tell where the leaks are coming from - lol.
 
What a worthless book. Read it in less than 2 hours and really didn't find out anything that hadn't already been published in Fortune or Business Week. Waste of money for sure.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
classic LTD and not getting it. Weather or not Apple is doing great does not change the fact that it is a huge waste of resources and money.

They are wasting millions on this that could be put to much better use.
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For all any of us know, "wasting" millions doing this sort of thing might actually contribute to Apple making back so much more.
 
samcraig said:
Who mentioned Vista or made any comparison? The OP just said that Lion is an example where mistakes were made.
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Who said anyone mentioned Vista or made any comparison? Read his post. He introduces Vista as an example of his hypothesis that any new OS has anywhere from a few bugs (Lion) to many bugs(Vista).
 
mrochester said:
For all any of us know, "wasting" millions doing this sort of thing might actually contribute to Apple making back so much more.
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Apple does everything right and then some, but THIS, yes, THIS just so happens to be waste - a complete oversight and *not* part of the overall strategy that got them to where even the best in the industry (and outside of it) can only dream of being. :confused:

Uh-huh.

I'm pretty content with thinking Apple knows wtf they're doing and why exactly they're doing it.
 
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