I think this acquisition makes a lot of sense and it's good business. Finding good MacOS developers who know the system level APIs more so than the docs is a tough go. It would make a lot of sense that OpenAI would just go ahead and hire out this expertise as they try to get their Mac app and their iOS app to get closer and closer to the system.
Author here, not my intent! My deepest apologies. English is my first language but people do joke that they say I write English like I learned it as a second language.
I have fixed the sentence fragment and connected the two thoughts together. Thank you for keeping me honest.
I am more than happy to add color here, I am sorry, I try my best to write everything but my editor cuts as much as I add. We also tend to hire really autonomous engineers who tend to like just going off on their own to try to solve the issue.
There have been a few times where we would commit to the problem, assign a DRI, and then find out midway that... no we have to hire/consult our way out of the issue. I think that's okay, we then look back at the retro to see what we missed.
If interested, I think we can blog about what happens when a problem gets converted to an RFC and then we have more engineering discussions with the stakeholders but the piece was pushing a 10 min read time as it was...
This is interesting to me, too! My team is in the midst of opening new reqs. A leader wants to hire based on skillset. The team wants to hire based on upcoming work. We had a decent employee churn recently because the work wasn’t what they thought they were hired for.
I can see both sides. We don’t have work planned more than a quarter out (a good thing IMO). Generalist SWEs make a good fit. But we think we need someone specialized in AI/ML. Unclear to me if that’s the case… and how to plan for it if we don’t want to explore concrete features we _might_ build.
"Try to solve the issue" is the key phrase there. In my experience you're generally wrong about how long it will take to solve any nontrivial software problem, and that's exactly what's hard about results-based planning.
If this is a process to decide what to commit to start working on, not to finish, then that makes sense, and I congratulate you on having an environment that acknowledges and accepts the impossibility of planning results rather than planning activities.
Hello there! Author there, and surprised/delighted with the response. I don't think we had the issue with the cadence, the quarter is arbitrary, but we think it gives us the ability to just go heads down to focus.
With that said, one thing we did and I don't why we did it was that we would "re-justify" why we would want to work on something every three months which isn't great. There is a world where if we had more eng. resources we could have more people than problems and we could take stuff on board as it arrives, but for us deciding on what to work on is a hard decision.
I also agree that market fit is a key factor. I think Railway was lucky that we didn't have to pivot the product 3 to 5 times to get some latch.
What would be the post-quarterty planning process that you would like to see?
> There is a world where if we had more eng. resources we could have more people than problems and we could take stuff on board as it arrives
I don't think this is a realistic world. The cavitation surface area that spawns new bubbles of unvetted fresh ideas grows as things are added. Adding eng resources to get more done makes it grow faster and I don't think there is ever such a thing as catching up.
tl;dr - deciding what to build (and what it looks like in detail) will always be a critical and fundamental function of product teams.
Deciding what to work on is critical as you say, every startup I see have at least 10x the things they want to do compared to the number of people.
But you're working in a pretty well known area. You don't really need planning for all 1000ish people as you could take this well known area and divide it into pieces that are largely independent. These pieces are either just table stakes where you need to be good enough but not innovate, or they're part of your vision for how to differentiate from other PaaS companies. You can budget accordingly and let these pieces do their own planning with their importance for the overall vision as context. (If you don't have a vision, your company is probably a mistake. Why are you even there?)
If there's an area where you don't need to innovate much, but you need to catch up, they might actually do a 3 month plan. If there's an area vital for your vision, they are probably trying new things, learning and re-targeting. Three months is far too long to plan for them on a tactical level, and probably too short to actually deliver on the vision.
You can certainly have a quarterly checkup or something to see that all parts are working from an upper management level, but the useful planning horizon varies by problem area, and they don't really need to plan in the same way.
Slight tangent brought up by the article, but usually the greats aren't good at just one thing but have a combination of eccentricities that form the person. I find it heartening that Cormac had these in spades.
It brings me no joy to say that now that I am on the maintainer side of some OSS, Hacktoberfest is a fear inducing event where people would just submit junk PRs just so they could get a T-Shirt...
We're so far from the original spirit of the event.
If someone had money to burn (come on cryptobros..), they could make a t-shirt that says "This T-Shirt earned by not participating in Hacktoberfest 2025"...
I suppose people who are familiar with the t-shirt fiasco might not want to avoid association with any further fests, I can't imagine someone wearing the t-shirt proudly, and if they bragged about it in a job interview it might even be a negative..
Edit to add: the prospectus PDF says sponsorship applications were in previous months, and August 2025 is the launch of the site. Sponsorship earns you a mention on their site.. so, since the site doesn't mention any other brand than DigitalOcean, were there no takers? Why is there still a form to enquire about being a sponsor?
And yes they're still going to have t-shirts... So will clothing made in Bangladesh go halfway around the world to end up in their neighbour country?
Yea, I found the article to be overly reductive. I work on a shared ownership codebase, which at times, I am not going to be able to pull the original author at all times when I work on my branch.
At least having a partner explain some aspects is a huge unlock for me. Maybe the OP shadowboxing a world with no humans, but no humans is already a status quo issue that my team and I face sometimes.
He’ll, have they never had to maintain applications where the source code was lost? I haven’t had to do it too often, and I wouldn’t claim I’m very good at it, but on more than a handful of occasions I have had to decompile binaries to figure out what the fuck it was doing before I could write a wrapper around it to try and mitigate its unfixeable issues
The author was just saying that this will become the norm, not the exception. Ok, not this bad -- we can at least expect to have access to the AI-generated code for at least a little while longer. (I can imagine a future where AI programming gets just robust enough that some early adopter types will take their whiteboard sketches and prompts and prose test case descriptions, generate the code, compile it to a binary, then throw out the code. It's more agile! You can tweak the spec slightly and just turn the crank again!)
My day job includes moderation. I think I am more empathetic to the issues that moderators deal with on a day to day basis given that they are underpaid, under-appreciated, and overworked.
It's very difficult to scale a community to be both welcoming and productive. New users don't have the same context as existing ones. You find that norms and manners aren't transferred from one group to the next. So although that I noticed that SO started getting more strict from 2014 onward, I wouldn't know immediately what to do about the content quality issue.
My take is that, like most things, the medium of the old will be appreciated the way it wasn't in 2014. As the Brian Eno quote goes: "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature." People will yearn for the human forums the same way they did years past when people tire of the LLM slop. (If they do.)
I'm not very sympathetic to moderators. Their job is to make some forum contain only what they want to hear from the (unpaid) people providing the content. If that's what you want, start a blog.
In any sort of IRL community, if some person decided they had the authority to prevent people from answering others' questions, unilaterally decide people aren't welcome, etc. everyone would think they had gone insane.
However there is the problem where any unmoderated public forum will eventually contain only scam artists and Nazis. Moderators address the Nazi spam problem, but now you have the moderator problem. It's been a mental side project of mine lately to find ways to solve the moderator problem, which I can't talk too much about as there is money to be made by doing so.
What happens when the forum gets overrun by Nazi spam?
We'll install a set of moderators who remove it.
But what happens when the moderators start removing useful information?
We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the moderators.
But aren't the snakes even worse?
Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Then we're stuck with gorillas!
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Yes this is the really hard problem of human organization on the internet. You need mods to keep the quality gate up. But eventually mods feed off their own power and alienate the community. Maybe some combination of human and algorithmic moderation can help.
The number one issue I have with Android is that while this looks cool, because of the fragmentation of the OS delivery between vendors- I have no idea which phone or timeframe when I could see the rollout of Material 3 Expressive.
More than 10 years later, shopping for an Android phone with the latest OS is a nightmare. Android leadership keeps on getting shuffled around, Google changes priorities every 6 months it seems. Despite Apple flubbing the ball on AI, at least I know that the phone will be supported for at least 4 years.
They will need to improve on their ecosystem commitments if they'd like people like me to switch back.
Google doesn't control what other vendors do; that's the beauty of open source. (You can argue how open Android really is these days but it's still more open than iOS.)
Pixel have other issue, quality control and run on Samsung exynos hardware with bad performance and connectivity.
I'd argue that Android is technically more open than iOS but in practice it isn't. Google have dark pattern and elaborated ways to get Android user to stay in the 'walled Google play service garden'.
Like when you install a third party store and Google play protect warns you it may be insecure.
Or having to press install for every app installed outside of the store, over and over.
The fact you can't get push notification without enabling the Google play services, which is the core framework of the Google data collection happening on every Android.
I have fdroid installed on a pixel and I didn't hit any warnings beyond needing to enable side loading. As for push notifications, if you are developing an app, you can build your own infrastructure for that or rent it from someone else. If you are concerned about google software you can, with effort, reflash with another OS.
All of the above either don't exist on iOS or only exists in the EU.
Personally I've never had issues with Samsung modems and I am honestly confused what people are doing with their phones that require high power CPUs.
The issue with push notification isn't for the app you build yourself but all the other like your bank app, it won't be able to send you a message when you got to validate something or when my Xiaomi cleaning robot is done cleaning for instance. They all require Google play services.
Reflashing another os ? What issue does it solves ? It's less secure, they still need the Google play services to push notifications.
Grapheneos may be a bit better but it locks you to only one Android device : pixel. They are overpriced, have quality control issue and run poorly.
900€ for a pixel 9 that use Samsung hardware, overheat when I can get a s25 for the same price, that funnily enough don't use Samsung hardware but Qualcomm :)
I believe 900€ is enough even for an iphone that will run much better than pixel.
> Personally I've never had issues with Samsung modems and I am honestly confused what people are doing with their phones that require high power CPUs.
I couldn't care less too about CPU power, but cpu energy usage and the phone being able to make and receive call is what's been the issue with pixel since the 6.
Every product is going to have issues in one form or another. The question is which issues affect your personal use of the product. I'm too new to Pixel to comment on whether switching to it is a good or a bad thing in my case, but I have been happy with the trade-offs so far. Ironically, one of the reasons why I went with a Pixel was to avoid much of the Google software ecosystem.
People have been very positive about the Pixel 9's modem. The Tensor G4 is fast enough for most people. Maybe not for heavy gaming, but it's great for all daily use.
Hate to say it, but everyone does this. My dad replaced his iPhone back in December when an update killed it. No acknowledgment of the problem from Apple.
Hell, my car has a stupid system that shakes motor mounts apart and burns through ignition coils and spark plugs. Honda won't admit fault because, among other things, it was a fuel-saving boondoggle and they won't back down from lying to customers if it means stepping into the path of an oncoming EPA train.
Last time Apple pushed a battery-related software update that avoided shutdowns (good), people had to sue them to get a compensation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate
You had to pick battery or strings attached cash, before the update arrived. And the battery replacement required you to send your phone off for repair leaving you without one, and Google didn't offer an sla for turn around.
And let's be honest, inconveniencing me is hardly acceptable, even if the company makes a token effort to put things back to before they inconvenienced me.
My problem was that all the modern Samsung watches have a battery life that wont get you through the day without removing half it's features, and charging solutions that are unreliable. If half the time you want to use the watch it's dead, it stops being a product you place value on or even rely on. I found myself checking time on my phone, despite the watch being on the same hand I'd grab the phone with, because I could rely on my phone to show my something other than a dark mirror.
I used to have a gear sport, it was fine, held charge for 2-3 days, had more sensors, and was all around a good device, but all watches after were a massive step down, even if they moved from tizen to wear os.
I'll give wearables one more try if someone has a good device to recommend, but as it stands I'd prefer to just spend the extra second to pull out my phone, and for health metrics, wear a more discrete and longer battery life device.
That's odd. I have a Watch 6 Classic (I think?), it's my first smart watch, I have just about everything enabled, and on the rare occasion that I forget to charge it overnight it still just about gets through the next day too. In that situation, if I know I'll be sitting for a little while I can always top it up using my phone too (which, admittedly, is extremely fussy with charging placement). Initially I had a lot of frustration getting it to wake up to show me the time (rather than that "dark mirror") but I suppose I must have learned how to twist my wrist more recognisably for it now because it's very rare that I have that issue any more. I really like it.
Same experience with the Watch 6 Classic. No issue of getting through the day with all features enabled. I stopped using it because I don't really like One UI (the Pixel Watch is so much cleaner).
A headphone jack is unfortunately a problem with a pixel. Otherwise I would still own one. I had a Pixel 1, then a pixel 3a, then Google decided to get rid of a basic feature that every phone should have. So I stopped buying them.
For everyday use, wireless headphones offer a superior experience simply due to the lack of a cable, and for the cases where an audio output is desired, it should be easy to connect the phone to an audio interface. Is any of this a problem in the Android ecosystem?
> For everyday use, wireless headphones offer a superior experience simply due to the lack of a cable
Surely this is offset by a) having to charge it and b) not being able to replace the battery when it dies
Not to mention a cable can be debugged easily; i don't even know which device my bluetooth headphones is connected to let alone why it's not working as expected.
So? Get the 10 Euro/Dollar Apple USB-C to stereo connector? Works with other phones as well and supposedly has an acceptable DAC. If you really want to charge at the same time and wireless charging is not acceptable, there are also some companies that make small connectors with USB-C power in and stereo out.
The reason the jack is gone is that the vast majority of people use wireless buds or headphones. It's the smartphone equivalent of complaining that MacBooks do not have DVD drives anymore.
(I like the stereo jack, but I have accepted that I'm a small minority.)
Nah, I've broken like three of those things and I just resent having another thing to carry around. I've just given up on using wired headphones for the most part with my phone. I just don't know why they thought it was desired to remove in the first place; I've had other waterproof headphones with a jack.
But, I also don't generally expect apple to make consumer-friendly decisions. The headphone jack invokes about 1/100th the rage that using the app store does.
Being able to pull it from a dead phone seems like a huge security issue? Shouldn't storage be encrypted using private material from a secure element? I understand that people here are tech-savvy enough to only store music, etc. on an SD card. But I think a lot of less technically-inclined users would set themselves up for losing private data.
Depends on your threat model and priorities. Historically the biggest thing I wanted to pull off the SD card was encrypted backups, which were in fact encrypted enough that an attacker getting them wouldn't be a serious problem, but which were rather handy to have. (And yes, I can completely push those off-device, but an SD card is a handy middle ground of local, fast, easy, safe from the things I tend to be worried about (mostly, bricking the device), and big enough that dumping 10s of GB on there is fine.)
I can’t believe, after so many YEARS, that people are still so hurt about the damn headphone jack. Even given the existence of adapters, some just won’t let it go and are willing to die on such a ridiculous hill. It’s like still being upset about computers not coming with CDROM drives anymore.
If so many people are still complaining about it after all this time, perhaps it's not because they're luddites but because many still use it despite you thinking it's obsolete.
And no, it's not comparable with CD drives at all, those are obsolete and gone even from desktops where space is not really a concern. It's more like complaining about the Macbook Pro 2016 not having USB-A ports. And Apple actually put those back, and I don't need to explain why they are incentivized to not do the same for headphones.
Can I buy headphones without headphone jacks that cost $5, can be transferred between devices near instantly with no registration, and allow me to charge my phone at the same time?
If not, then that is why I'm not shifting off of them.
It's not my hill to die on but I will say use wireless in-ear monitors myself to avoid ever having to deal with adapters because... Adapters are terrible, often wonky in one way or another, incredibly inconvenient for anything but having them lie on a desk. It's also something you easily forget to carry around, or you lose or break because of shoddy build quality.
It's a bad alternative to something that wasn't a problem except it took up space and people still talk about it because there's still a need for something better
I've gone through like 3 of those for one of my other devices. They're way too easy to lose and sometimes they outright don't work. It's a product that should not have to exist in 2025.
I use my built-in headphone jack daily and would buy another phone if it went out.
I understand your frustration but I think the reality is that the vast majority of people simply do not use wired headphones, so it doesn't make financial sense for them to keep it.
Then why do they keep it in Macbooks if it makes no sense? To repeat excuses in this thread, people could just use an external DAC if they like cables so much.
Comparisons with CD drives I see here are absurd, those drives actually take up a massive amount of space, are obsolete and used by almost no one anymore. Meanwhile headphone jacks are still very widely used. To the people saying "just use an adapter" I would suggest trying your own advice every day for a month, you'll see why it's not comparable.
And saying the vast majority of people don't use wired headphones when wired headphones are actively made inconvenient and incompatible is not a very convincing argument.
The removal was simply unnecessary, comes with no noticeable upside in return and is suspiciously convenient for those companies considering they also sell wireless headphones as the solution.
If so many people are still complaining about it, perhaps it's not because they're dumb but because there is still a real need for it.
Macbooks get used for pro audio and video things that phones generally don't, and the much larger form factor means that the 3.5mm jack is far less of a design tradeoff.
I was referring to phones not having headphone jacks, there are still other uses for it on laptop/desktop that I think are more widely used.
> not a very convincing argument
I still believe it either way, but you don't have to.
> If so many people are still complaining about it
I don't think they are, at least not so many relative to the majority of phone users in the world. Tech savvy users are a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
The problem with a Pixel is the hardware is always a step or two behind what other vendors are doing at the same price point, and they tend to be weirdly buggy for a first-party device. For example the bug where Pixel phones are randomly unable to call emergency services has been happening for years and keeps regressing again and again.
I've been using Pixel 8 for nearly a year now and I agree that it's surprisingly buggy. Also, the chip is excessively power-hungry, especially for the performance it offers. In addition: the modem is bad and very power-hungry as well. And the cherry on top for me was the subpar fingerprint scanner. Can't recommend.
Agree with Pixel < 9. Pixel 9 has an ultrasonic fingerprint reader. The modem is also upgraded to an Exynos 5400, which is much better. Even Pixel fans were complaining about the modems in Pixels, but pretty much everyone is positive about the modem in the Pixel 9.
Beware though that the Pixel 9a still uses the old modem and an optical fingerprint reader.
Until the 9a prices drop it probably doesn't make sense to get a 9a anyway, since the 9 is barely more expensive on a discount.
Buy a phone with an unlocked/unlockable bootloader, and use custom ROMs to stay up to date long after the manufacturer has stopped caring about support. Unlocked phones seem few and far between nowadays, but there's still some. Here's another not-so-subtle recommendation for the Google Pixel line.
I've been using a Moto X4 (8 years old!) with LineageOS for 6-7 years. I'll probably get an open box (for a discount) Pixel soon, and probably put GrapheneOS on it.
If you buy something from some other random manufacturer that is using the open source android code then yes you are going to have a different experience since they want to add their "special touch" which invariably is shite.
