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iOS 7 to Ship 'On Time' as OS X Engineers Pitch In
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iOS 7 is the most hyped Apple thing since the iPad. I sure hope it doesn't disappoint. You wonder how well Ives will do now that Jobs is gone. We seem to forget Ives was around when AAPL was in the doomsday era too, and it was Jobs who really complimented him well. I am optimistic. The OS really needs some updates after 5 years of nearly the same thing.
The obvious implication here is that Jim Dalrymple does, or at least knows someone who does.
Did he? He said yep.but there are to distinct issues addressed in what he quoted. In separate sentences. Is the pulling of OSX folks to work in iOS and the other is whether the whole thing is on schedule. There's really no way to be absolutely certain which part or parts he's addressing.
And even if some OSX folks are working in iOS we have no clue of the context. Are they really behind or is this another iTunes 11 and they are trying to doubly insure quality control after the disaster that was iOS 6
One possibility: Maybe 10.9 is a very minor update and pretty much done, so they could afford to shift people to iOS 7.
Those who know don't talk, and those who talk don't know. JD says little enough, infrequently enough, that even without his five-year correct streak, he carries more weight than a typical clickbaiting wishlist pundit.
Since when was 'analysts pulling facts out of their rear-end' considered to be a 'controlled leak'?
But these aren't coming from Wall Street analysts. And the same with the earlier rumors from John Gruber and Rene Ritchie. Also notice that Jim D. didn't shoot down any of these rumors when he confirmed iOS would ship on time.
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If only apple had enough money to hire more engineers
Um, have you seen all the software job openings on their website? It has nothing to do with Apple being too stingy to hire people.
If only apple had enough money to hire more engineers
Sadly it is not that easy. No matter if they have a Computer Science degree, or even if they were a Doctor of Computer Science (though for a project like this, that wouldn't be "special" to have) and had 5+ years of industry experience you can't just hire someone off the street and the next day they can jump right into this big project that is entering crunch mode and whip off code like that
1: You interview them, and interview a lot of people. That can be a long process. I'll just skip it and pretend it was instant.
2: You agree to hire them and officially offer the job. They accept.
3: What if they already were a place and needed to give at least 2 weeks to a months notice? Well you wait longer.
4: Ok, now let's say only after a week of offering them the job they start. What now? Start work? Not quite
5: Get familiar with the code base/get setup. Every single development company has their own way of doing this. The new coder has to get familiar with their technology, their coding style, and more. Matter of fact they are still more than likely reading and studying the manual that all coders for the company most follow. This follows coding styles and guidlines to make it easier.
6: Familiar with the project. How is the design of the project? What are they expecting? Where are they currently at, working on, needing done?
I can go on on. More than likely they haven't even started any "real" coding work for the project. They haven't put them on the biggest task yet. They are getting used to the coding style, guidelines and the technology being used on the project. Even their internal libraries they have to learn.
You expect someone off the street to just jump right in and be able to implement features and fix bugs without any prior experience of the code base? Nope.
You move from within. They have experience with the style, guidelines, internal code libraries, technology and more. They know what is expected. Their is virtually zero setup time.
Every development company does this. Don't act like it's only Apple and they are being greedy or something and not hiring more people. If Apple was just hiring people left and right off the street I'd more worried about this company actually. Hiring people this fast? Needs spots filled up that fast? Not a good sign when a company is doing that and it usually shows in the finished product.
Their is a lot more to software development than just a coder typing code all day. Matter of fact a coder might not write very many lines of code all day and it could still be a productive day at the office. Maybe they figured out an internal code design problem? Maybe they figured out a memory leaking bug? Maybe they figured out this crazy bug that was crashing all their systems, who knows. Coder being productive isn't measured about how many lines or how few lines of code they write.
Alas, this is how Apple spends its mountain of cash nowadays: dividends.
In the meantime, iOS 7 on time = OS X delayed, again.
That assumes big pushes are "the norm". It makes no sense to hire folks you only need for a couple months because you found out that you bit off more than you can chew, and you need to get it out in one piece. I'd rather re-purpose folks for something like this than hire up and then wonder what to do with those folks once the project is done.
And Jobs has said on occasion that he wants Apple run like a startup.
Ive hasn't had years to push this. And this isn't exactly an ordinary situation if Ive is trying to reskin the OS in one development cycle. It's painful on so many levels, even when you have a head start.
There's a ton of overlap between the two platforms software-wise. It's just hard to see from the customer's perspective where the interface is really our only window into a sort of "code iceberg". We see the top piece of it, but there's a lot more underneath that binds everything together.
And IIRC, they have a core team that works on the bottom layers of the OS (Darwin), and they technically work for both the iOS and OS X teams already.
Too bad Apple doesn't have the cash to hire additional engineers.
(yes, I understand it takes time to get new employees up to speed and productive, so it wouldn't help right now; but they've had years to work out this particular issue)
Gah, beaten by 2 minutes.
Read Mythical Man Month...
Throwing random bodies at a problem makes the problem worse, not better.
And you don't staff based on infrequent surges in work load.
Sorry for double post, but throwing more developers from off the street (like everyone here is suggesting) onto the project would be the worst thing ever. Adding a couple more people from other areas of the company, especially an area that specializes in OS development (which is a very specialized area of software development) can be a good thing. It depends on what they are doing and what needs to be done. Apple is not just some beginner software company that doesn't know what they are doing. They know how to manage their internal resources (meaning employees/developers). Adding a couple more people from another project to a certain one is very common in software development. It happens in EVERY single company. From Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, and more. Those popular games people play? Most of the time they get people from different internal development houses to help them when they are entering crunch mode.
Though yes, just throwing a ton of people on it would end up slowing down project productivity. Though Apple isn't dumb and they do know to manage their projects. They aren't just some random development company. Sure they make mistakes and they release "bad" software. But every single company does and every developer does. I'm pretty sure Apple knows what would and would not kill productivity in a project. Sure they aren't perfect but no one or no company is. Every company makes development mistakes.
I think they better start big pushes to catch up. I still have a hard time with a hardware guy running software development. I had plenty of bad experiences with it, hopefully at Apple it will be different.
Too bad Apple doesn't have the cash to hire additional engineers.
(yes, I understand it takes time to get new employees up to speed and productive, so it wouldn't help right now; but they've had years to work out this particular issue)
Gah, beaten by 2 minutes.
Is not that easy, specially for software (increase in human workers NOT increase productivity linearly):
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law
In total contrast, have *less* people in a software project have a higher probability of make it on time and better... the problem, a BIG one, is that that people must be very talented.
You can put more testers, designers and other people in a late project (ie: You can try to speed up all the others task necesary to complete it) but still is impossible to speed up software development*... with the only exception of reduce it scope
*1: I add this myself
*2: And that assume the team is already working correctly, is enough high quality, master it domain, etc.
Software develpment is HARD HARD HARD. Is measured in months/years for tipicall projects.
Technically it was not a one word post. It was a word, an item of punctuation, and an emoticon or two.
entire message said: