Chuqui 3.0: Thoughts on Apple’s “Brain Drain”:

So, Apple loses another long-term senior employee. Actually, more than one, since Red Sweater notes that Peter Bierman left, too. These are significant losses for Apple — Guys like Jens and Pete were not only significant contributors to Apple’s products, but historical glue that tied Apple together and helped bring the young, new talent up to speed and innoculated them with “the Apple way”.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. Jen’s piece (go read all of it) could have been written by me.

Interesting and unexpected response about this piece, especially from inside the six-color curtain. Nobody wrote to dispute it — but I heard from a number of Apple people thanking me for writing it.

No reason to listen to me about this, Apple, but maybe you’ll listen to THEM. but I doubt it…

I gave today’s keynote an A-. No, it didn’t have the “oh my god it’s even better than we imagined” aspect of the iPhone last year, but damn, that just can’t happen too often, or we’d all die of strokes. Anyone disappointed by the keynote for that reason, reset your expectations back to something close to reality.

How’d I do as amateur pundit?

The Guardian seems satisfied…

Apple offers you MacBook Air, Time Capsule, but not movies (here) | Technology | Guardian Unlimited:

So if memory serves this suggests to me that Chuq von Rospach was pretty much on the money with his predictions for what was coming up in last week’s article. And how did you all do?

My guesses:

10.5.2 — nope. but not important enough. Steve’s very careful these days to keep it short and keep it focussed. Lots of stuff “doesn’t make the cut” any more like it did back in the “we’re not going to die” days of Apple. Hence last week’s Mac Pro refresh, and we should see 10.5.2 soon. but not today. And for all I know, they just didn’t want to stress the network pipes any more than they already have today.

Laptop refreshes — nope. But Macbook Air makes us forget that. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see these sneak out in the next few weeks, perhaps at PMA or maybe just a press release.

Dockable macs — nope (but not really expected); and perhaps not the direction Apple’s going in. more later. Mini — nothing, which doesn’t prove it’s done, but nothing to prove it’s not. No mini tower; still don’t expect to see one. Dead market segment.

“One new piece of software coming out nobody knows about yet”. The ability to (Mac AND PC) use a device on another computer over the network as a virtual device seems to qualify, and was more or less an “oh, yeah, by the way…”. Stop and think about what it means and the technology/software behind it… Nice deal.

Itunes — yes, pretty much spot on.

time capsule — not in that exact format, but pretty darn close. and I like it.

not bad.

So, my thoughts on today’s announcements:

Time Capsule: A very nice, aggressively packaged and priced network backup solution. Like so many Apple things, it doesn’t do every damn thing every damn geek wants, but it does what people need done without a lot of complexity. One of these WILL end up in my mother’s house sometime this year, it’s exactly what she and my dad need, in spades. Love it for what it is.

Now, what’s NOT there is the ability to add disks to my airport extreme and back up to them. Conspiracy theorists are bitching about apple gutting that feature to force people to buy this product. Nope — it was pulled for one reason: it was too buggy to use, and they couldn’t fix it before shipping (I know that from three different sources, including a non-Apple person doing detailed work with Time Machine data sets, who warned me early on to avoid any hack that enabled that feature, because it would, guaranteed, corrupt my data). I’m hoping that feature appears in 10.5.2; if not, it’ll show up at some point. given the choice of shipping Leopard on time or waiting for the fix, Apple chose to ship. Right choice.

iPhone update and iPod Touch updates: nice. Doesn’t afffect me directly (yet), since I don’t own either — I am the last person in the universe without an iPhone, I think, but I’m happy with what I have and have one more year on my contract. After that, watch out. I am now lusting for an iPod touch, not that I need one, but having something like that with wifi and internet access in my pocket would be — useful. yeah, useful. that’s the word.

What people are bitching about: the $20 fee for existing users. Basically, that’s becaues of how the feds force companies to account for revenues on these beasts. And yes, the Apple TV update is free — but that is, I think, because Apple feels it’s necessary to keep the early adopters happy here, and they’re eating the fee (update: I was reminded that Apple is booking revenue for the Apple TV over 2 years, so there’s no tax implication for free updates. They book revenue for iPods immediately, so there would be). The Apple TV upgrade is a mandatory one, the iPod Touch tools are new features (and optional), so I think they made the right call both places.

iTunes, movie rentals, Apple TV, etc; for how completely people thought this had leaked, there were still surprises — having all of the studios on board, and the HD aspect, and the pricing. The “24 hour watch it” limit isn’t as bad as I worried, since you have more than enough time to start the clock — but 24 hours isn’t enough. I want this at 72 hours, but it needs to be at least 36, so you have the ability to start something one evening and finish it the next.

You can bet — buy the person who proves me wrong a beverage — that this is a restriction imposed by the studios, not Apple. (ditto the HD only on the Apple TV, which seems to be the studios trying to wall in the HD data from piracy. it won’t work). Expect this to be relaxed sometime, once the studios hear all of the complaining and Steve goes and twists arms. (hint: I’ve already expressed my opinion to people who might listen).

Apple TV “take 2″ is pretty much what the device needs and deserves to be. I’ll admit to being one of those people who saw the intro of Apple TV, started drooling uncontrollably, and then didn’t buy it. Now I PROBABLY will, but to me, the determining factor is going to be whether i can replace Netflix with iTunes and Apple TV. That boils down to how deep the library is, because Laurie and I use NetFlix at least as much for older (and sometimes brutally obscure things) as we do current hits. Fact is, if we get to a “new release” in six months, it’s amazing, but that’s just us. If we can get most of what we want from iTunes, it’ll be cheaper to rent from iTunes than pay the monthly to Netflix. It’ll probably take a few months for us to figure this out for a final decision.

I also want to be able to retire the DVD, and play a DVD by stuffing it in a computer and streaming it over — without geeking or hacks. we’ll see. (see: the software that allows you to use a device remotely, above. An obvious use of this, if not day 1).

Not only satisfied with the whole iTunes ecosphere today, I’m rather pleased, and was somewhat surprised (happily) despite all of the leaking.

Finally, the Macbook air. I’m not sure it’s the MacBook for *me*, but I love the thing. It’s an awesome piece of engineering. Listening to some of the bloggers and commenters, it seems what they really wanted was a 1 pound (preferably weightless) unit that measured about 4″ x 6″ with a 22 inch monitor, 18 hour battery and a full-sized keyboard. Those of us who live in the real world realize this unit is all Apple, and all about understanding a market segment (“road warrior”) and solving that need without making compromises that hurt the model within that segment.

Just like Apple realized most phone geeks don’t carry 2 or 3 batteries, most road warriors don’t, either. they use the battery and then plug in at every opportunity. Expect third party external battery things to pop up, similar to the phone market, allowing you to plug in a recharging battery or an add-on for the hard-core here, but that’s a niche aspect of this market — most users don’t care.

Screen size? For every road warrior whining about the screen being too large, there are dozens of us going “thank god…” — because we’ll actually be able to see and use the screen. Screen size is one key productivity determiner, and while some folks can live on a tiny screen (most likely because they only do email and read web stuff), as soon as you start onto any kind of serious gui-app — Final Cut, Photoshop, Excel, Word, etc — that small screen impacts productivity, either by limiting your ability to see everything in context, or by causing such severe eyestrain you give up… So the screen is as small as I think you can reasonably still get the kind of work people need to do in a remote office, as opposed to people who live and browse in a cafe or airport.

For the amount of new technology going into it, it’s reasonably priced. And it’s not “these things are on the MacBook Pro but not on this, so why isn’t it cheaper?” — it’s “it’s a different set of tradeoffs and engineering to make it all work”. Taking out the superdrive doesn’t make it cheaper, it makes a bunch of things more complicated, like remote installs…

The unit is clearly designed around “what is the functionality I need on the road?” — which is why the superdirve is a plug-in option. To keep weight down, anyhting you don’t need on the road, you leave home. Since wifi is increasingly endemic, ethernet is now optional. More on that in a bit.

this box seems to be almost a dream box for photographers — trivial to wedge into a camera bag to travel with. I’m just not sure the screen has enough real estate to use Aperture well; we’ll have to see. Maybe the next Aperture will be less rigid about this stuff.

Me? The Macbook Air isn’t something I’ll run out to own — but it may be my next unit.

A few last thoughts

Before I go, a few more general thoughts that have popped up since the keynote that I haven’t seen talked about much.

First, a biggie: Apple has declared the end to wires. It’ll take a while to get there, but the macbook air is a WIFI *assuming* device, rather than WIFI *capable*. Firewire is gone, hello, USB 2.0 uber alles. USB is down to one connector — because Apple is now starting to assume that when you dock you’ll “connect” to your backups via Time Capsule, to your disks via an Airport or server, to your keyboard and mouse via bluetooth — and USB for random things like card readers and your iPod. At least until a bluetooth iPod arrives… Nobody seems to be noticing this paradigm shift. And that’s why above I asked whether the “imac dock” is going to happen; it now seems Apple’s future isn’t about docking, but about wireless connectivity — software/virtual docks. All we’re missing, really, is a wireless monitor connector. Not bluetooth, not fast enough, but… There were wireless video standards (WiHD) at CES. Maybe next Macworld?

Also, if you shift to the external superdrive, it’s easy to add to the product line with an external Blu-Ray, notably missing from this entire discussion so far. And once you have an external Blu-Ray, wouldn’t it make sense to have one that also connects to your Apple TV as an add-on? Hmm. Just pondering here.

One accessory that would — hands down — convince me to buy an MacBook Air is a good, large, portable LCD screen. Think about this: it’s now possible to take two LCD screens the size of a MacBook, hinge it in the middle so they fold together, and when unfolded, you could have a screen about 22 x 17. Yes, with a seam in the middle (and I don’t care if it’s one screen or two side by side screens to the OS! honest). Fold it up, and it can fit in a sleeve with a MacBook and only be an inch thick. If you’re someone who works in remote offices or in hotel rooms a lot, something like that would be killer, especially for grpahics artists and photographers. (add in a way to attach for movement a keyboard of some sort for bonus points). So in a package roughly twice the thickness of my current laptop, I could have a laptop — AND a 17″ monitor and keyboard I can carry around easily and use in remote office situations. monitor technology now makes that possible. And you could do all of that in under 10 pounds, and can leave 7 of that in your hotel room…

Hey, one can dream no?

This keynote’s going to cost me some shekels. One, posssibly two Time Capsules, an iPhone sometime around christmas when my contract is ready to expire, I’ll bet I get an iPod touch before then — and who knows? Maybe a Macbook AIR, although the current box is probably still good for a while, and I don’t get on many airplanes these days, so I’ll trade off the weight for the larger 15″ screen. But still, more reasons to spend money at the iTunes store. How terrible.

oh, hey, one more thing…

Some folks are kvetching that Steve didn’t play the “one more thing” card today. Haven’t you folks figured out that those things only continue until they become mundane. Now that everyone expects it, it’s nothing special. Steve updates himself as often as Apple updates its product line. when surprise and novelty shift into cliche, that’s when Steve does something else. And so he did. To expect Steve to stay in the same place is to not understand Steve.

Gone Indie — Thought Palace:

Here’s a career update, for those of you who care: I’ve left Apple, and I’m now working on my own, from home, as an indie software developer. I have plans for at least two kick-ass Mac apps, I’ll probably contribute to a few open source projects, and I may dabble in some web stuff.

(At least, that’s the plan for now! Everything is subject to change without prior notice. This document contains forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ.)

This is kind of a big change for me. I’ve been continuously employed for 19 years, 16 of those at Apple. I clearly like being part of a team, part of a company, and specifically part of Apple. But there comes a time when a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

So, Apple loses another long-term senior employee. Actually, more than one, since Red Sweater notes that Peter Bierman left, too. These are significant losses for Apple — Guys like Jens and Pete were not only significant contributors to Apple’s products, but historical glue that tied Apple together and helped bring the young, new talent up to speed and innoculated them with “the Apple way”.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. Jen’s piece (go read all of it) could have been written by me.

After I gave notice, I was a walking corpse for almost two months — everyone knew I was leaving, but it was a long, slow goodbye. One of the things that surprised me, though, was once my departure was made public, how many other Apple people caught up with me not just to say goodbye, but to talk about what I was doing and how they were either wishing they could, or planning to. The amount of pent-up “if things don’t change, I’m outta here”, especially among some of the key senior people I talked to, actually scared me a bit.

I ended up bringing this up with various senior management, trying to get them to see the red flag. Most of the people I talked to about it were some combination of sympathetic, worried and understanding (and in a couple of cases, planning, too!), but the word I kept getting back from people who broached this at the exec level was “look at our turnover rate. There’s no problem!” — which at the point was true, but was ignoring the real point. By the time the turnover rate starts ticking, IT’S TOO LATE. And it’s looking to me like Apple missed the boat here. Beyond sheer numbers, it doesn’t matter how low the rate is if you’re losing key people.

Problem is, Apple seems to not worry about that too much. After I left StrongMail, I spent some time chatting with folks at Apple about options on coming back. Basically, got nothing. One senior manager over in Engineering put it best to me: “all we’re hiring now are kids right out of college and people who’ve already done the job for a while”. For what I wanted to do — not an option, which is fine. But the whole “we’ll hire kids who are dying to work for Apple, work their asses off for three years, and when they burn out, hire another college kid” is a philosophy that only works for a while, and only while you maintain a core of senior folks who can oversee and direct the young studs who love sleeping under their desk.

Just doing a quick glance at my LinkedIn connections, I can count four OTHER ten-year-plus Apple folks who’ve moved on either about the time I left, or since, on top of Peter and Jens. And about half a dozen 5-year-plus, too. Now, my LinkedIn is littered with dozens of people in those categories STILL at Apple, but that’s a braintrust Apple really ought to be encouraging to stay.

But it doesn’t. When I decided it was time to move on from my last project, I made it clear I wanted to stay at Apple, but move into a new role and new challenge. The response, from pretty much everyone in the universe was “hey, keep an eye on the job board, if you see something you like….”

That’s pretty much what Jens ran into, too. I know some of what Jens did at Apple, and someone should have been tripping over people finding a place to let him go and do stuff FOR APPLE. In my case, my last project was lauded by my VP on a number of occasions as having the best ROI to ever come out of Apple IT — it impacted revenues and margins noticably, and it laid foundations for a number of things that allowed Apple to rethink parts of its business and do new things.

Without going into many details, I will say that one SMALL side project we did allowed Apple to save about a few million dollars a year on printing costs involving the retail stores. I also got involved in the Fedex recycling program when they needed some work done that other groups were quoting months to implement — I did it in about 10 days.

My last real project before I left was the code that allowed Apple to implement the ticket code access for the Red Hot Chili Peppers album; the revenue from that one promo probably paid my salary that year… I remember sitting in a conference room with about 15 people from all over Apple talking this over with a “this is what Steve wants done”, and group after group going “my folks don’t know how….”, and suddenly I realize everyone’s stopped talking and are looking at me. So I mapped out how I thought we could do it, went back to my office and wrote about 200 lines of Perl to glue the various pieces together, and there we were. And after the followup meeting where we demonstrated the working solution, a couple of folks came up to me and asked how they’d get these things done after I left. My answer: “not my problem, someone should have thought about that” — a lot of what I did the last year around running my main project were these special hacks that needed to be done on Steve-timeframe; that was, in some ways, my group’s specialty. We were set up to move quickly and change gears on short notice, not things IT is necessarily good at.

It made other folks in IT nuts at times, too, and just as happy that the crazy guy who wouldn’t keep his mouth shut was gone… So, having nurtured a project that impacted the company by tens of millions of dollars a year and working insane hours (happily) in doing so said I was ready for a new challenge at Apple, the response was, well “hey, thanks for everything. good luck”.

Yeah, I was bitter for a while. but in reality, that’s the way Apple is, and I knew it. And to be blunt about it, it sure doesn’t look like Apple’s missed me since I left (which is good, and which means those eight weeks we spent in my long goodbye worked — stuff transitioned with minimal hitches and moved forward in really good ways, as I wanted. The new teams are doing some really great stuff with the project….)

But now, the brain drain I was worried about is happening. It was happening at some level before I left, but it seems to be accelerating. It’s something Apple could have avoided — and I think it puts them at risk down the road. Not because the kids they’re hiring aren’t good (they are!), but because they don’t have the depth of experience to design the kind of products Apple users demand out of Apple. The senior people are the ones who understand how to take a great idea into a good product, or to a great product – and for every Jonathan Ives who we all know about, there are a couple of dozen guys like Jens handling the details and sweating the problems. And when they go? It worries me.

Now that I’ve been out a while, while part of me misses the buzz that working there gives you, I’m really happy to be out. I’m doing fun stuff, good people, interesting product, and I can still have a life, or at least part of one.

So all I can really say is “welcome, Jens, to the real world. There is a life out here”. And I can’t wait to see what he has up his sleeve. It’s going to be great — and it’s too bad it won’t be part of Apple.

update here: