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Correction: Apple's studio. People are praising Apple's production value but I just see people awkwardly standing while talking because the director told them to make sure that their feet are exactly as apart as their shoulders. No one stands like in real life. The whole thing feels so extremely polished, scripted and manicured; I much prefer the candid style Steve Jobs did and may be they can take some questions from the crowd (although during the pandemic, its understandable). Genuine connection with people is what the high production studios do not understand. They create shiny pieces, not art. But shiny things sell, so all bets are off.



This. The whole thing is a lie.

As a former EE, I can categorically state that absolutely no bench I have ever seen is that tidy when debugging hardware. It's usually a complete snake pit of cables, mess and hell. And half the equipment that they would actually need to support what they have out on display is not actually there. Also no one is going to sit on those god awful chairs while working.

And on top of that I guarantee that there are PCs in their real laboratories that do the CAD and debugging work. Zukon, SolidWorks, Catia and Altium don't run on Macs.

PCs design Macs. Discuss :)

Edit: in retrospect I think it felt like a Scientologist recruitment video.


This was my immediate reaction too. Seeing those chairs, I chuckled immediately. It's basically Apple marketing's idea of a HW lab. :) Just like computer hacking, Hollywood style.

At least I hope so.


And there are calipers on it on the scale of what you would use for woodworking. I can't fathom how you would use those in that lab but they look "sciency"


Yeah I imagine that pisses off woodworkers as much as it pisses me off seeing some 1980s LED multimeter featuring as a prop in the 2100's in The Expanse.


The tables should also be covered in an appropriate amount of solder burns and flux residue.


No coffee mugs, no post-it's, not a single piece of paper with some notes, no personal stuff -> can't be a engineering office.

But the old Apple II on the shelf in the back got me to smile.


Where did you see the Apple II? I saw the original Macintosh on the left, and the original Bondi blue iMac on the right.


I thought it was a Apple II, but I can be wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Spot on! Also the floor is usually littered with things that fell off the benches.


Like MELF diodes. But they are supposed to.


Ah I hate those buggers. I made the mistake of ordering just enough of them once and I'd lost three before I got the first one on the board :(


Must End up Lying on Floor.


Never heard that one before. Perfect :)


Which would require[0] a fume extractor, which they're lacking. Unless we're meant to believe they use lead free solder in their test labs.

[0] https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/otm_v/otm_v_3.html


Well, I grew up working only with lead free solder (learnt soldering in school in the EU, and RoHS applies for such purposes as well), and honestly, I can't see why they wouldn't. Lead free solder might be a bit easier to work with, but in the end not having a poison everywhere around you is gonna allow you to focus on the real issues instead.


Fume extractors are for the flux fumes, not the (nonexistent) lead fumes. You need them whatever type of solder you use.


There are ways of setting up solder fume extraction that is not intrusive, just like how casinos have HVAC systems that pull smoke upwards and out, generally avoiding the place smelling like smoke. I worked in a service center a long time ago that used such systems and if you shot video at ground level, you would never get any of that equipment in the shot.


"in retrospect I think it felt like a Scientologist recruitment video."

I made a very similar comment to my gf during the live stream. I think there is something insular, cult-like, and very broken in tech culture, and the live stream really seemed to emphasize the point.

Perhaps paradoxically, I thought this year's WWDC videos were much more natural and interesting, even though they clearly also were meticulously rehearsed and stage managed.


"Zukon, SolidWorks, Catia and Altium don't run on Macs." -- Windows does: https://support.apple.com/boot-camp.


If you do that, Zukon, SolidWorks, Catia and Altium vendors will tell you to piss off if you want support because the hardware isn't ISV certified.


No they do not. I have seen many CAD stations with Windows on Mac. They do make solid hardware.

Not sure for CATIA, but this is true for Zuken, Altium and SolidWorks at least; and Mentor Graphics and Cadence.


CATIA only supports specific workstation configurations. It can be run on unsupported workstations just fine, but you may hit a brick wall with Dassault Systèmes support, which is like half of what your paying for with the maintenance fees.


Erm, maybe they were asked to tidy it before filming? This is clearly not a studio, it's just a lab that has been tidied and all the crap hidden away (and maybe a few nice looking circuit boards scattered around).


Yes, but you could run Windows on a Intel Mac.


Its pretty obvious that if corporate is coming downstairs with cameras, they are going to make it look tidy.


It's really not. We never did :)


Do we know if they have a staged set or is it all computer generated. Let alone I am curious how many takes it was for some of the presentations.


100% agree, not a human touch in sight (although the guy who did the processor design and the product managers for the mac pro / air were more human than the others). Tim Cook was probably the worst, considering he is supposed to be their enigmatic leader.

I would much prefer people bumbling over their words but speaking off-the-cuff than people who sound like they are reading something scripted by the PR department off a teleprompter.


“There’s lots of ways to be as a person, and some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there."

“But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something is transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation.

"So, we need to be true to who we are and remember what’s really important to us. That’s what’s going to keep Apple, Apple, is if we keep us, us"

- Steve Jobs.


That's not what most people like considering the flak Elon Musk gets for doing exactly that.


You are talking about a guy who shoots off stuff like the "pedo guy" tweet. Acting like a petulant child will catch flak.


I don't get how those two things are related. Besides people were hating on Musks public speaking skills before that whole debacle.


No one was hating on Musk's public speaking skills before that. People were saying he is hard to follow but that's different.

Besides that, yes not having planned speeches and speaking your mind unfiltered are traits that I would absolutely expect to see in the same person. They are different expressions of the same thinking process. I'm sure a lot of us have read that Thailand is were pedos go etc. But most people would have the restrain to not call someone attacking them a pedo.


What? That is totally false. Musk has been criticized for his bad public speaking for years. Here is an example: https://smallbusiness.com/selling/elon-musk-in-an-awful-pres...

Musk tweeting some guy is a pedo has NOTHING to do with his public speaking skills. It wasn't in a public speaking setting.


I agree with you, they're orthogonal. Looks like you were downvoted because people mixed up his character from the way he presents. I quite like his presentation style, it is genuine and unscripted.


I like to think Craig enjoys that sort of thing and it makes him feel like an actor or someone doing show biz. What bothers me is rather Tim Cook and his super coordinated and carefully planned movements, camera angles, facial expressions, etc. It's not natural - although maybe he is in fact an android? I am not sure I would like to work with that guy. He seems extremely tense and probably would freak out at someone having a bad day or even making a bad joke in the same room.


> What bothers me is rather Tim Cook and his super coordinated and carefully planned movements

I'd also prefer a more casual approach.

> He seems extremely tense and probably would freak out at someone having a bad day or even making a bad joke in the same room

This statement seems unfair to me. Not everyone who looks tense would lash out at innocent people.


Yeah I guess you are right. I have heard that he pushes teams to work ungodly hours but I don't work for Apple and I don't know Cook, so yes it was unfair.


> What bothers me is rather Tim Cook and his super coordinated and carefully planned movements, camera angles, facial expressions, etc

I swear every presentation he spends a greater and greater portion of his speaking time doing prayer hands.


Maybe he's just tense on camera. Lots of people lock up when reading from a script, for a video that's going to be seen by millions of people.


They're doing one of the single most important things for the company's performance in the next year or years; the Apple events alone can make Apple's market value jump or fall by hundreds of billions. If you had that influenced, you too would have a serious team behind these presentations, and you would spend weeks rehearsing and polishing your presentation.


I hear you. I guess they are making extra effort these days to try to gain market share. I mean in terms or revenue and profits they've already won, but it's always in the nature of a company to want more, keep expanding, keep growing.


> the Apple events alone can make Apple's market value jump or fall by hundreds of billions

The stock price is down since Monday, so I guess they screwed up?


Are you talking about this picture? All I see is a person on a photo op trying really hard to look good. It is extremely hard to make posed pictures that look good and are in the moment at the same time.

On the sidenote it is kind of ironic that you label this a studio, which is generally an artist term, and then claim that apple creates shiny pieces and not art. That would make it precisely a lab...


I believe by studio they meant production studio, and not an actual place Apple works on their devices.


What were you expecting? Dennis Nedry mumbling about CPUs through a half-eaten cheeseburger, knee deep in soda cans and empty pizza boxes?


That would be amazing. :-)


Yeah, I am always curious to know if those meticulously designed workplace background was the real hardware lab or a TV studio. It makes more sense to be a studio for shooting videos.


No way it was a real lab. Too much risk to reveal something just from the tools or devices present. The viewers would analyze every pixel visible and it’s too much effort to clean up a real lab of what secrets it could reveal and a lot easier to build a real-looking lab out of things you can safely display.

Not sure if such a lab would be even open to all employees at Apple from what I hear.


Everything at Apple is need-to-know and compartmentalized.


Case in point, try looking up Linus Torvalds' workspace video on youtube. :) There's quite a bunch of stuff in there, incl. home owner's association paperwork, addresses, etc.


It’s just instagram dysmorphia is making its way in to everything.

Soon engineers will be staging their workstations and benches so they look like the Kardashian I mean Apple selfies.


It would be a pain, literally, to work in such lab. No ergonomics. Just imagine doing a full working day with those stools, debugging circuits and all.


Completely agree. Everything you see in that video was carefully choreographed and purposefully put into view for a reason. With the marketing resources Apple has, I don't think it's too conspiratorial to think that they put the iFixit tools and old Apple II computers there for the sole purpose of them to be talked about on social media.

The sleek, clean, uncomfortable workspace is just convincing enough for the average user to seem like a real lab. It's perfectly on brand with how Apple wants to be perceived.


In case someone else is wondering what this comment is referring to, it's apparently this staged video that was part of the Apple announcement: https://youtu.be/XRb_VAp_6B0?t=519


Probably not even a studio. That looks a lot like CGI to me.

Check the transition at 13:10 "back to Johny"


It may look like CGI but the amount of effort it takes to do good CGI vs just setting up some computers and tables is a few orders of magnitude off.

You can't just do CGI and call it a day at 90% close-enough levels. You gotta do it well or not do it at all.


Agreed, but remember this is Apple releasing a product platform that is costing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in technical investment and marketing - they'll have put the effort in.


The video is 10:47 long.


I was referring to the Apple Event:

https://www.apple.com/apple-events/november-2020/


It starts to get really painful once they cut to Craig Federighi. Those are Zuckerberg levels of uncanny valley.


Well they couldn't have this because of the human malware that is going around. I guess they could have a big facetime call and answer questions or something?




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