How Apple Employees Are Quarantined Spoiler: hard

Apple was one of the first corporations in the world to be affected by coronavirus. First, the production of its proprietary equipment stopped, then the suppliers sharply reduced the volume of supplied components, then the company, in order to avoid shortages, began to release no more than two iPhones in one hand, and now it completely forbade its employees to visit the office, transferring them to work at home. But if the first, second, and third obstacles in Cupertino seemed to have been overcome shakily, then the fourth risks a strong decrease in the efficiency of the company's employees.

Quarantine greatly changed the way Apple works

Apple, like many other corporations, never dreamed of working remotely, preferring its employees to be in direct contact with each other, as this supposedly increased their productivity. Despite the fact that so many advanced startups have criticized Apple for being conservative, it has now become clear that full-time work - at least in the case of Apple - really makes sense. First of all, for the employees themselves, who have lost the ability to perform their duties with the same efficiency.

Cons of remote work

Remote work, as it turned out, does not suit Apple employees

Apple engineers, having switched to home-based work, lost personal access to details, as well as the opportunity to examine them on their own, touch them and compare with others, not to mention the travel ban to China that is still in effect. Therefore, the decision to release even key components for new devices is made based on photographs and drawings that come by e-mail, without the opportunity to evaluate them in person. The situation is aggravated by the fact that due to the time difference between the USA and China, many employees are forced to start working on the night shift, which under normal conditions has never happened.

It is clear that homework involves many problems. Therefore, in Cupertino, they demanded that employees set up a VPN to protect access to secret drawings, and also worked out a set of rules that imply a special principle of arranging work and communication with family members in such a way that no one outsiders could not only see detail drawings for new devices , but didn’t even think that their loved one was working with something secret. True, what kind of methodology this is is not yet clear, especially since, apparently, it does not work for everyone.

New Apple devices

In Cupertino stopped work on prototypes of future products

Almost all members of the prototyping team who are working on brand-new devices that do not have exact release dates cannot continue to work in principle due to quarantine. Due to the fact that, according to Apple's rules, the creation and improvement of prototypes can be carried out strictly within the walls of the campus, projects of future new products that were to be released in a few years were frozen for an indefinite period. The problem is also that there is no guarantee that after quarantine ends, work on prototypes will continue. It is possible that due to cuts in funding, which will occur as a result of lower revenues, the company will be forced to completely abandon some of the projects.

But this is not the worst. Indeed, now Apple quality control service employees are not able to test the strength of the devices being prepared for production. If earlier new iPhones, iPads, MacBooks and other gadgets passed drop and crash tests for which special equipment was used before entering the assembly, then doing it at home and getting objective information about the degree of device reliability will be quite problematic.

How to work remotely

Some employees received the right to take prototypes of new devices from campus

Fortunately, Apple is gradually coming to understand how to set up many processes remotely. For this reason, according to sources close to the company, the company's performance has decreased slightly. This was largely due to the concessions that Apple management had to make. In particular, the authorities allowed some engineers to take prototypes of new products and parts for future devices from the campus to work with them at home. Not everyone has received this right yet, but Cupertino is studying ways to expand the list of privileged employees.

Apparently, with the launch of the iPhone 12 there will be no problems, since Apple focused specifically on preparing for the release of the smartphone. However, the rest of the company's products are not doing so well. According to Bloomberg, some devices whose release was scheduled for this year, Apple will release with a delay relative to the initial plans. Despite the fact that journalists do not disclose the exact list of such gadgets, it is obvious that the transfer will generally apply to all hardware innovations of the company, which were supposed to go on sale in the next six months or a year.