News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit. Parent comment

Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by chipotle_coyote on Thursday January 24, 2019 @02:51AM (#18986775)
I suppose they're getting downvoted because "why are you working on X when Y has problems" is kind of a silly argument. The problems with the butterfly keyboard design are almost certainly not a result of all the keyswitch engineers having been foolishly reassigned to work in the automotive group.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by reindeerer on Thursday January 24, 2019 @03:05AM (#18986826)
It's very much a focus and resource allocation problem. Double the number of engineers working on the keyboard and it doesn't happen
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by matthewmacleod on Thursday January 24, 2019 @03:16AM (#18986880)
I can almost guarantee that doubling the number of engineers working on the keyboard would make the problem worse, rather than better.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by statictype on Thursday January 24, 2019 @05:02AM (#18987348)
It would seem to me the issue is because of bad product design decisions. Apple decided having user serviceable reliable keys was less important than making the thinnest laptop they possibly could.

It's left for the market to validate whether it was the correct decision or not.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by setquk on Thursday January 24, 2019 @05:12AM (#18987387)
Having returned my 2018 "improved butterfly keyboard" MBA because the keyboard died after 3 weeks, I suspect that the issue isn't being taken seriously. A minor design revision that didn't pick up or resolve a recurring issue is a death march for a product.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by matthewmacleod on Thursday January 24, 2019 @05:45AM (#18987537)
Okay, but on the flip side I used the 2017 MBP for a year with no problems whatsoever. It's hard to figure out realistically how much of a problem this is for them.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by setquk on Thursday January 24, 2019 @05:56AM (#18987589)
Take the dead ones to bits and do a post mortem. There's enough of them.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by zaphirplane on Thursday January 24, 2019 @04:41AM (#18987255)
Well there has to be a reason, people are assuming it’s resources, because incompetence which isn’t noticed and fixed by management is hard to understand
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by antepodius on Thursday January 24, 2019 @08:14AM (#18988313)
If management isn't competent, they won't be able to discern competence from non-competence.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by setquk on Thursday January 24, 2019 @04:01AM (#18987077)
Replacing the current ones would work.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by nerdbeere on Thursday January 24, 2019 @03:11AM (#18986861)
…and 9 women are known to bear a child in one month
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by rightbyte on Thursday January 24, 2019 @04:39AM (#18987236)
Adding people to a department actually helps if it's understaffed.

But I guess the keyboard design is a managment problem not a engineer problem.

"The mythical man month" should not be interpreted dogmatically.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by TheOtherHobbes on Thursday January 24, 2019 @04:51AM (#18987295)
The existence of the Autonomous Car Unit was also a management problem.

The unstated truth in the "mythical man month" is that you can't rescue a project by throwing people at it if the project is out of control because of poor management.

Stellar management can do almost anything.

Mediocre management bumbles around creating failures.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by swish_bob on Thursday January 24, 2019 @06:27AM (#18987748)
> Adding people to a department actually helps if it's understaffed

Eventually. At first it makes matters worth. And that's assuming your predicate is correct, that the department is understaffed.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by oblio on Thursday January 24, 2019 @05:37AM (#18987487)
Besides what the commenters are saying, physical keyboards have been a solved problem for what, 2 decades now? Even slim ones. There's no new basic research needed and even the engineering should be quite obvious by now...

Maybe I'm missing something.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by neuronic on Thursday January 24, 2019 @03:28AM (#18986938)
By this logic we should just triple the cancer researchers and then it doesn't happen
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit by vardump on Thursday January 24, 2019 @03:09AM (#18986853)
Doubling the number of engineers can also make progress slower, once communication costs dominate.

(Or did you mean the keyboard doesn't happen if number of engineers is doubled? I don't think it can be that bad.)

[ Parent | on HN ]