Linked List: October 11, 2022

Tuesday, 11 October 2022

‘Ask Apple’ for Developers 

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today introduced Ask Apple, a new series of interactive Q&As and one-on-one consultations that will provide developers with even more opportunities to connect directly with Apple experts for insight, support, and feedback.

Developers participating in Ask Apple can inquire about a variety of topics, such as testing on the latest seeds; implementing new and updated frameworks from Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC); adopting new features like the Dynamic Island; moving to Swift, SwiftUI, and accessibility; and preparing their apps for new OS and hardware releases. Ask Apple is free of charge and registration is open to all members of the Apple Developer Program and the Apple Developer Enterprise Program. [...]

“We’ve been listening to feedback from developers around the world about what will be most helpful to them as they build innovative apps, and we’ve seen an increased appetite for one-on-one support and conversation with Apple experts,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing. “Our team is committed to continuously evolving our support for our diverse global developer community, and we’re excited to offer Ask Apple as another new resource.”

Sounds like a weeklong Slack Q&A, sort of like the labs during WWDC since it went remote in 2020. Anything that puts third-party developers in touch with real engineers inside Apple is good for everyone.

Design interpolation: Interesting too that the artwork for Ask Apple is in the shape of photo-realistic enamel pins. I’m just so thirsty for anything like this that isn’t blandly flat. Texture and depth are fun.

Should a CEO Be a Nerd About Their Company’s Products? 

Speaking of Ben Schlappig at One Mile at a Time, he had a post last week that I’ve been thinking a lot about. The gist:

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom appeared in court yesterday as part of the current Department of Justice case. While being questioned, the topic of JetBlue Mint came up, which is JetBlue’s business class product. Isom claimed that he has never flown JetBlue Mint, and doesn’t know if JetBlue Mint is lie-flat. He then clarified that he understands that Mint is JetBlue’s domestic first class, but “can’t speak to all the amenities they include.”

Here’s the part that I’ve been thinking about:

I’ve had the opportunity to interact with quite a few senior airline executives over the years, and I find that their knowledge about competitors is typically one extreme or the other:

  • Some airline executives literally couldn’t tell you the first thing about their competitors, and have no knowledge of their passenger experience, fleet, etc.
  • Some airline executives know literally everything about their competitors, down to being able to tell you how many seats competitors have on specific planes

I find there are very few executives who are just kind of in the middle, as it’s pretty polarizing. Either they know virtually everything about competitors, or nearly nothing. Without naming any names, I’ll say that generally speaking there’s a high correlation between airlines that have a great passenger experience, and airlines that have executives that keep very close tabs on the competition.

If you ask me, every CEO of a US airline offering a premium product should have to fly JetBlue Mint, to see how good seats, service, Wi-Fi, entertainment, food, and drinks, can be on a domestic flight.

As someone who flies business class on American a few times per year, I am zero percent surprised that Isom doesn’t know or care about the experience flying American’s competitors.

The sentiment Schlappig expressed above isn’t airline-specific. I think it comes down to the classic idea of a “businessperson”. That an executive can just have a knack for “business”. That an MBA trains a would-be executive to run any sort of company. That’s probably the sort of executives who run most companies in most industries. But I don’t think it’s how excellent companies are led. Excellent companies, in any industry, seem to be led by executives who live and breathe whatever it is their companies do, and they stay up at night and wake up in the morning thinking about how to lead their industries in quality.

If the CEO’s primary perspective on the company is via spreadsheets — if it’s all just P&L to them — that company is not going to excel at quality. Or if they do excel at quality, they won’t for long.

Layoffs at Sketch 

Sketch co-founders Pieter Omvlee and Emanuel Sá, in a post at LinkedIn:

Today is a very tough day for everyone at Sketch. In response to challenging market conditions and with a desire to keep our product-first strategy, we’ve taken the difficult decision to reduce our team by just over 80 people. This will mostly impact Operations and Marketing, who have done great work in the recent weeks and months. Our Product team remains well-equipped, with a core team continuing to drive things forward.

That’s about one-third of their headcount, from my understanding. I sure am rooting for Sketch — it’s a such a great product. But it’s obviously tough right now in an ever more Figma-dominated world.