Linked List: December 14, 2021

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Denied the Coalition for App Fairness’s Motion to File an Amicus Brief ★

Florian Mueller, with a detail I haven’t seen reported elsewhere:

U.S. courts — and especially appeals courts — normally have a permissive approach toward amicus briefs, above all in high-stakes high-profile cases like this one. It rarely happens that they tell stakeholders they are unwelcome to join a proceeding as “friends of the court” contributing potentially useful information. Here, however, a filing by the Coalition for App Fairness (whose three key members are Epic, Spotify, and Match Group, which is best known for Tinder) and four of its members (Match Group, Tile, Basecamp, and Knitrino) has been flatly rejected by the Ninth Circuit.

As a result, the CAF now faces a credibility issue in any other App Store cases around the globe in which it may try to support Epic or even another one of its large members. Even if other courts ultimately allowed the CAF to join other cases, Apple would point to the Ninth Circuit decision, which at a minimum would diminish the credibility of anything the CAF would say on Epic’s behalf. The CAF has now been stigmatized as part of an Epic anti-Apple initiative designed to raise issues regardless of whether those were “organic or manufactured” as the evidence shows.

Not quite sure what to make of this, but if nothing else, it’s a sign of how overwhelming Apple’s victory is in this case.

‘How Apple Is Organized for Innovation’ ★

Speaking of Joel Podolny, I somehow neglected to link to this piece he co-authored with Morten T. Hansen a year ago for Harvard Business Review, describing — with remarkable openness — how Apple is organized:

Apple is not a company where general managers oversee managers; rather, it is a company where experts lead experts. The assumption is that it’s easier to train an expert to manage well than to train a manager to be an expert. At Apple, hardware experts manage hardware, software experts software, and so on. (Deviations from this principle are rare.) This approach cascades down all levels of the organization through areas of ever-increasing specialization. Apple’s leaders believe that world-class talent wants to work for and with other world-class talent in a specialty. It’s like joining a sports team where you get to learn from and play with the best.

Apple University Dean Joel Podolny Leaves for Startup ★

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Joel Podolny, the longtime dean of the Apple University in-house management training school, left the company earlier this year to join a startup, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Podolny had run the program since early 2009, when he was hired by former Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs to create the program. He previously served as a dean of the Yale School of Management and a professor at Harvard University.

Podolny was a steward of Apple’s corporate culture as the company pushed into new markets and coped with the death of Jobs, its visionary co-founder. He had worked with Jobs to create Apple University as a way to teach executives about the company’s values — and what it had learned from decades of decision-making. Courses have included topics such as Apple’s relocation of manufacturing to China and the creation of retail stores in the early 2000s, according to the book “Inside Apple.”

It doesn’t get a lot of press, but I’ve long thought that Apple University is one of the most essential teams inside Apple. The company has had a remarkable run over the last 20–25 years. Is that sustainable? Few companies stay on top for more than a generation or so. Apple University is an attempt to change that, and one of the last major organizational initiatives spearheaded by Steve Jobs. Podolny was hired by Jobs to found Apple University.

An Exquisitely Well-Told Story of a Nightmarish Meal ★

Geraldine DeRuiter, writing at The Everywhereist, on a 27-course “meal” at Bros, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Lecce, Italy:

The servers will not explain to you what the hell is going on.

They will not do this in Italian. They will not do this in English. They will not play Pictionary with you on the blank newspaper as a means of communicating what you are eating. On the rare occasion where they did offer an explanation for a dish, it did not help.

“These are made with rancid ricotta,” the server said, a tiny fried cheese ball in front of each of us.

“I’m ... I’m sorry, did you say rancid? You mean ... fermented? Aged?”

“No. Rancid.”

“Okay,” I said in Italian. “But I think that something might be lost in translation. Because it can’t be — ”

“Rancido,” he clarified.

Another course — a citrus foam — was served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth. Absent utensils, we were told to lick it out of the chef’s mouth in a scene that I’m pretty sure was stolen from an eastern European horror film.

No nonsense like this when I open my steakhouse.

Wallpaper Goes Behind the Scenes With Apple’s Design Team at Apple Park ★

The cover feature of the latest issue of Wallpaper is truly extraordinary. The story by Jonathan Bell is good, but the photographs of the design team’s studio space are unprecedented. We’ve never seen this space. All sorts of details are revealed — including their model- and prototype-making.

There’s an overhead shot of a large table where a dozen members of the team are discussing Apple Watch. Out of 12 people at the table, all but one of them have their iPhones on the table, face-down (perhaps for privacy, aware they were being photographed). Of the 11 visible iPhones, 10 are iPhones 13 Pro, and one is an iPhone 13 (perhaps a Mini). Four iPhones are in a case; seven are un-cased. Seven of them have Apple’s MagSafe wallet attached. “Golden Brown” appears to be the most popular color for cases and wallets.

Seven people have paper notebooks in front of them, and three have iPads (including one Magic Keyboard). I just love gleaning details like this about how people work, and the tools they use.