Apple is trying to lure in struggling ex-partner's talent

[CoolMarquis97]

It's apple. What more did we expect ?

[79wjd]

20 minutes ago, CoolMarquis97 said:

It's apple. What more did we expect ?

Implying that literally any other company wouldn't and hasn't done something similar. 

[CoolMarquis97]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Implying that literally any other company wouldn't and hasn't done something similar. 

Of course but Apple is by far one of the most shadiest companies to date. 

[sazrocks]

3 minutes ago, CoolMarquis97 said:

Of course but Apple is by far one of the most shadiest companies to date. 

How so?

[Zodiark1593]

In the corporate world, a company always needs a stock of daggers in hand for the backs of other companies and key employees. This is just Monopoly 101 at work. 

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, CoolMarquis97 said:

Of course but Apple is by far one of the most shadiest companies to date. 

They're really not any worse than any other company. They just have a lot more money.

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

They're really not any worse than any other company. They just have a lot more money.

And the air of hate around apple means these stories will get more traction

[NumLock21]

Some tech company should build their hq right next to apple'a and use a banana with a bite mark as their logo. 

[MoonlightSylv]

3 hours ago, nerdslayer1 said:

reminds me of this

 

Is that a phone that you plug in to a laptop or a laptop that has a tiny screen?

[The Sloth]

20 minutes ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

Is that a phone that you plug in to a laptop or a laptop that has a tiny screen?

it has an 11.5-inch screen, weight 2.4 pounds. 

[vanished]

So rather than just buying them out they crippled them by leaving as their #1 customer, and now are trying to scoop up all the people jumping off the sinking ship?  I've heard of a hostile takeover, but that looks civilized compared to this.

[mrchow19910319]

5 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

So rather than just buying them out they crippled them by leaving as their #1 customer, and now are trying to scoop up all the people jumping off the sinking ship?  I've heard of a hostile takeover, but that looks civilized compared to this.

Why are you surprised? 

 

Any small company that work with apple already know what they are getting themselves into. 

I think the full scenario is something like this: 

1. Small companies doing their business as usual, and of course they can make money but just barely making profit. A LOT of small companies are going like this before they hit it big (or get acquired).
2. Then one day they won an opportunity working with apple, producing a certain part of hardware for them, (for example, a chip that next gen iphone uses). 
3. Then they made bank for doing business with apple. 
4. One day apple leaves. Cos their contracts are ending.
5. Then this company needs to decide what are they gonna do now. Finding another partner (a.k.a just like usual), or selling themselves. 

Apple is not the only company who did this. 

[Qwertious]

5 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

So rather than just buying them out they crippled them by leaving as their #1 customer, and now are trying to scoop up all the people jumping off the sinking ship?  I've heard of a hostile takeover, but that looks civilized compared to this.

 

According to apple's words. They had pre-existing knowledge of the incoming break up. So I would not say they were "crippled"

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-imagntn-tchnlgs-idUSKBN19S2TW

[LAwLz]

13 hours ago, nerdslayer1 said:

to be honest power VR makes decent GPUs, nothing special, Apple software is what makes it shine, i phones are not powerhouses, optimization is what makes them tick faster than other phones. 

[Citation Needed]

 

The reason why I want a citation is because I believe (and know) that iPhones are in fact extremely powerful hardware wise, and I would in fact attribute very little to this magical "software optimization" people like to throw around. 

Considering things like how iOS can't even render 1080x1920 natively but has to do internal up scaling and downscaling, or not their CPU uses cluster migration rather than a global scheduler I'd even go as far as to say iOS is rather unoptimized for the hardware it runs on. 

[Ildiesalot]

Apple putting profits before "ethics?" Never thought I'd see the day.

 

/s

 

Honestly, I don't really like apple. Haven't since I bought an iPhone (must.... switch.... dying....). But, to be fair, they are VERY good at making money. And this just goes to prove it.

 

It doesn't really matter who invents an idea, it's all about who gets others to invest in that idea. And apple is second-to-none at that.

[Juanitology]

17 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

What's so wrong about this again? Every business would do in-house if they can but most don't because its more profitable otherwise.

 

So you expect a company to worry about the livelihood of another company, yaaa good luck.

 

And no, this is not called pouching, this is called giving their exployees to jump ship because i would if i were in their shoes.

The thing is, most companies have a talent strata. There's the superstars that have the vision and innovation and the "average" worker that grinds away at bringing to life the star's vision.

When another company poaches all the stars from your company, you're kinda left with no clear path forward. Apple basically wants to poach the top 10% of the talent and then let the other 90% to wither and die as their company is hollowed out. 

 

Not to mention the reason Imagination is struggling in the first place is that they lost 50% of their revenue overnight... fucking apple cripples the company by terminating their partnership and then lures away its star talent to finish sinking it. It's so unscrupulous, really makes me mad how vastly different their business practices are compared to how they're portrayed in their marketing. Glad I'm glad I never bought anything made by Apple.

[Bcat00]

Thats how real life business are, i dont understand why you are even trying to make surprising.

[Sniperfox47]

On the one hand, it seems kinda of an anticompetitive move. Like @Ryan_Vickers mentioned, they basically crippled Imagination and are now taking advantage of that situation by using their dominant market position over Imagination. It really doesn't matter if they were given advance notice by Apple, their hardware is significantly different from the rest of the GPU market to scare off a lot of other potential clients, even if it's potentially far more efficient than traditional GPUs.

 

On the other hand, it's not like Apple is the only one who does this. This is just the kind of bullshit we get with the free market of capitalism at work, no different from patent trolling, illegitimate copyright strikes, frivolent lawsuits over API call design, and all the other bullshit ways companies try to fuck over each other.

[TroubleKlef]

It's not Apple's fault that Imagination did not diversify their clientele and they are now left scrambling because greedy management gambled on having Apple as a source of revenue forever. This sounds eerily similar to some countries who depended on oil money (I believe Argentina) and then when they found out their oil was shitty and nobody wanted it, their entire economy tanked and millions of citizens suffered due to poor decision making.

 

If anything, Apple is doing these employees a favor by allowing them to escape such a poorly managed company.

 

 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

4 hours ago, Terodius said:

The thing is, most companies have a talent strata. There's the superstars that have the vision and innovation and the "average" worker that grinds away at bringing to life the star's vision.

When another company poaches all the stars from your company, you're kinda left with no clear path forward. Apple basically wants to poach the top 10% of the talent and then let the other 90% to wither and die as their company is hollowed out. 

The other 90% will only be left out to the extent that they don't add anything. If Apple can do the same with the talented 10% and the personnel they already have, then Imagination was simply extremely bloated. If Apple can't just do the same with their current staff, then they will need to hire less-talented workers as well - for example, (some of) the remaining 90% of the company.

What you can't say is that 90% of Imagination is unnecessary to produce Apple's GPUs, and yet somehow keeping such an abomination alive is a good thing.

 

4 hours ago, Terodius said:

Not to mention the reason Imagination is struggling in the first place is that they lost 50% of their revenue overnight... fucking apple cripples the company by terminating their partnership and then lures away its star talent to finish sinking it. It's so unscrupulous, really makes me mad how vastly different their business practices are compared to how they're portrayed in their marketing. Glad I'm glad I never bought anything made by Apple.

It is called free market: you are allowed to, say, stop buying from Newegg and start buying from Amazon, or stop ordering food delivery and start cooking at home. There is no good reason to deem it unethical when Apple exercises the same freedom you have.

You don't go out of business because Apple wants, you go out of business because you stop being useful / making sense to your customers. Business aren't people, their only reason to exist is to satisfy a demand on the market, to the extent that demand exist.

 

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

On the one hand, it seems kinda of an anticompetitive move.

On the contrary, it looks like competition to me: competition for workers.

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Like @Ryan_Vickers mentioned, they basically crippled Imagination and are now taking advantage of that situation by using their dominant market position over Imagination.

There is no such thing as "dominant market position" (or any market position for that matter) with respect to individual companies. Companies aren't markets, unless they are monopolies/monopsonies, and, I doubt Imagination is in such position.

Apple isn't a monpsonist in the GPU market, it even isn't the largest GPU "buyer" (you need to consider in-house GPU producers as well, since that's what Apple decided to do). Imagination signed a deal with Apple, and it lived and died by the terms of said agreement.

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

On the other hand, it's not like Apple is the only one who does this. This is just the kind of bullshit we get with the free market of capitalism at work, no different from patent trolling, illegitimate copyright strikes, frivolent lawsuits over API call design, and all the other bullshit ways companies try to fuck over each other.

Actually, it is exactly the opposite of everything you mentioned: this is the free market being the free market, while all the other things are firms trying to prevent the market from being free  

 

15 minutes ago, TroubleKlef said:

It's not Apple's fault that Imagination did not diversify their clientele and they are now left scrambling because greedy management gambled on having Apple as a source of revenue forever.

You started OK   But...

15 minutes ago, TroubleKlef said:

This sounds eerily similar to some countries who depended on oil money (I believe Argentina) and then when they found out their oil was shitty and nobody wanted it, their entire economy tanked and millions of citizens suffered due to poor decision making.

This, on the other hand, is plain ignorance, please stop it while you still can save some face 

To begin with, Argentina is a net oil importer and... well, it doesn't matter, let's just leave it at "it's better to discuss the actual subject of the thread"  

 

[Juanitology]

8 hours ago, TroubleKlef said:

It's not Apple's fault that Imagination did not diversify their clientele and they are now left scrambling because greedy management gambled on having Apple as a source of revenue forever. This sounds eerily similar to some countries who depended on oil money (I believe Argentina) and then when they found out their oil was shitty and nobody wanted it, their entire economy tanked and millions of citizens suffered due to poor decision making.

 

If anything, Apple is doing these employees a favor by allowing them to escape such a poorly managed company.

 

 

Pretty sure you mean Venezuela. 

[Drak3]

10 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

This is just the kind of bullshit we get with the free market of  Venture capitalism at work

FTFY

[bomerr]

On 7/13/2017 at 5:22 PM, Ryan_Vickers said:

So rather than just buying them out they crippled them by leaving as their #1 customer, and now are trying to scoop up all the people jumping off the sinking ship?  I've heard of a hostile takeover, but that looks civilized compared to this.

The possibility that Apple could poach their top talent should have been a consideration in the acquisition pricing. It's likely Imagination didn't consider Apple's threat credible and chose not sell at the price Apple was asking. 

14 hours ago, Terodius said:

The thing is, most companies have a talent strata. There's the superstars that have the vision and innovation and the "average" worker that grinds away at bringing to life the star's vision.

When another company poaches all the stars from your company, you're kinda left with no clear path forward. Apple basically wants to poach the top 10% of the talent and then let the other 90% to wither and die as their company is hollowed out. 

 

Not to mention the reason Imagination is struggling in the first place is that they lost 50% of their revenue overnight... fucking apple cripples the company by terminating their partnership and then lures away its star talent to finish sinking it. It's so unscrupulous, really makes me mad how vastly different their business practices are compared to how they're portrayed in their marketing. Glad I'm glad I never bought anything made by Apple.

This is the reason so many companies build their HQ in the same areas as their competitions because it gives them access to the best talent. Great example is Hollywood or Silicon Valley. 

22 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Why are you surprised? 

 

Any small company that work with apple already know what they are getting themselves into. 

I think the full scenario is something like this: 

1. Small companies doing their business as usual, and of course they can make money but just barely making profit. A LOT of small companies are going like this before they hit it big (or get acquired).
2. Then one day they won an opportunity working with apple, producing a certain part of hardware for them, (for example, a chip that next gen iphone uses). 
3. Then they made bank for doing business with apple. 
4. One day apple leaves. Cos their contracts are ending.
5. Then this company needs to decide what are they gonna do now. Finding another partner (a.k.a just like usual), or selling themselves. 

Apple is not the only company who did this. 

 

This is the reality of any small or medium sized business. They often times find themselves in a situation where it's best to sell out to an industry giant rather then try and complete. Once Apple decided they wanted an in house team for GPU design, it was the end of the road for Imagination. The market they were in shifted and it appears they failed to adapt. Unfortunately in this case that would be to sell out. 

[mrchow19910319]

1 hour ago, bomerr said:

This is the reality of any small or medium sized business. They often times find themselves in a situation where it's best to sell out to an industry giant rather then try and complete. Once Apple decided they wanted an in house team for GPU design, it was the end of the road for Imagination. The market they were in shifted and it appears they failed to adapt. Unfortunately in this case that would be to sell out. 

Indeed. I just find that some people failed to acknowledge it. 

[bomerr]

12 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Indeed. I just find that some people failed to acknowledge it. 

Most people aren't business (or maybe economics) majors. It's sad because business gets a bad reptuation as a "dumb" major but it seems a lot of people on the internet could benefit from an education in business.