“Quiet quitting” doesn’t exist, at least not in any numbers that matter.

People aren’t “quiet quitting”; they’re burned out. Years of layoffs and increasing responsibilities are frying people to a crisp. Yes, people who WFH have more options to disengage for self-care, but that’s actually a good thing.

Almost every coworker I’ve met wants the company to succeed—their well-being is tied to the company’s fortune, after all. They want to do quality work. They want to brag about their products. They want to have fun. But also, almost every coworker I’ve met is stressed out with shrinking deadlines and continual layoffs, and always having to do more with less time.

Adding RTO to the mix means workers have to invest even more time in commuting to the office, and even less time to cope with ever increasing amounts of work. RTO will not cure Quiet Quitting. They’ll just reveal it for what it is: burnout, and make it worse.

• #opinion
• #FridayDevAdvice

I continue to believe that #returnToOffice is primarily based on these factors:

1. Executives (not managers—they don’t care) wanting more control over workers’ days. They want to imprison underlings in buildings so they have no choice but to attend to their commands. It strokes their ego and makes them look important. Bonus points if the executive works remotely most of the time.

2. Preserving commercial real estate values. Companies that have huge campuses and other investments in CRE are most eager to have people return to buildings. A famous fruit company would look like a fool for spending $5B on a space donut if it weren’t filled with people.

3. Municipalities are renegotiating tax breaks they offered based on employment targets. No foot traffic downtown = no tax incentives for companies.

4. It’s a hidden layoff. RTO is meant to be a hardship, so people quit. It doesn’t matter that the people who quit first are the most wealthy and in-demand workers. Numbers are numbers.

• #opinion
• #remoteWork
• #returnToOffice

Jason Snell wrote on SixColors:

Without good hardware and software, Apple’s services would be irrelevant. I hope everyone in a position of authority at Apple understands that. Services are a way to help make Apple’s hardware even more profitable than it already was. But services can never, ever take precedence over Apple’s hardware. If Apple ever begins to see its hardware as merely a vessel for selling more subscription services, the game will be over.

https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/08/existential-thoughts-about-apples-reliance-on-services-revenue/

Existential thoughts about Apple’s reliance on Services revenue

Apple Pay and Apple Card are among Apple’s growing services. Apple’s latest quarterly results were about as boring as you can get while still featuring $21.4 billion in profit and setti…

sixcolors.com

I suspect this line has already been crossed. #Apple has gone through these phases:

1. We sell hardware
2. We sell hardware and software
3. We give away software to sell hardware
4. We sell hardware and charge other people to sell software
5. We sell services to enhance our hardware
6. We sell services through our hardware

We are now between phases 5 and 6. The sheer profitability of Services will inevitably lead to a de-emphasis of (non-iPhone) hardware sales. I predict Services will very soon exceed iPhone in terms of profits because of its incredible margins.

• #apple
• #opinion

I watched the two CarPlay videos from WWDC24 and have some thoughts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLf44BXd0SE

WWDC24: Say hello to the next generation of CarPlay design system | Apple

Explore the design system at the heart of the next generation of CarPlay that allows each automaker to express your vehicle’s character and brand. Learn how ...

www.youtube.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsjw9Z4c-EQ

WWDC24: Meet the next generation of CarPlay architecture | Apple

Dive into the architecture for the next generation of CarPlay. Learn how your vehicle system works with iPhone to create a single cohesive experience that sh...

www.youtube.com

The new CarPlay design system inverts the relationship between carmaker and iPhone, and places the iPhone basically in control of the entire dashboard including the primary instrument cluster behind the steering wheel. Instead of CarPlay receiving a rectangle into which it can render images, the car creates configurations that CarPlay then uses to insert their gauges, camera feeds, and controls. But CarPlay is ultimately in charge of nearly every pixel of the display (with the exception of telltale lights). Even government-regulated displays like speedometer and fuel gauge are configured through iPhone, even though they are rendered by the car.

My first impression is that this is a tough sell. Not only is Apple telling carmakers to yield control of all their display surfaces, Apple is also dictating what gauge designs, fonts, and other UI constraints they must choose from. Any manufacturer branding must fit inside the design guidelines of CarPlay, not the other way around.

Read more…

• #opinion
• #technology
• #ios
• #apple
• #cars

Much as I dislike the theft of human labor that feeds many of the generative AI products we see today, I have to agree with Cory Doctorow that copyright law is the wrong way to address the problem.

To frame the issue concretely: think of whom copyright law has benefited in the past, and then explain how it would benefit the individual creator when it is applied to AI. (Hint: it won’t.)

Copyright law is already abused and extended to an absurd degree today. It already overreaches. It impoverishes society by putting up barriers to creation and allowing toll-collectors to exist between citizen artists and their audience.

Labor law is likely what we need to lean on. Unions and guilds protect creators in a way that copyright cannot. Inequality and unequal bargaining power that lead to exploitation of artists and workers is what we need to address head-on.

Copyright will not save us.

I would go further to say that applying copyright law to AI will take us further from the equitable future we want. If copyright is successfully applied to AI, what we will see after the dust settles is a handful of media behemoths that profit mightily from AI, without slowing down the damage that AI does to the value of creative human labor.

I always return to this pithy guide by Emily Bender when thinking about this topic: we need to think of AI as automation, albeit one that is more effective at displacing a wide variety of human labor than ever. We can’t use copyright to stop automation; it will just enrich a different set of kingpins without stopping its effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK0md9tQ1KY

How should regulators think about "AI"?

Written version available on Medium: https://bit.ly/3TdpyMgOn Thursday 9/28, I had the opportunity to speak at a virtual roundtable convened by Congressman B...

www.youtube.com

• #technology
• #opinion
• #AI