Sharing the Wealth

There have been some rumbling in the past about Apple having problems hiring enough engineers, which in turn caused delays with the release of Leopard and the iPhone apps. Now it turns out Apple's inability to hire enough people may be related to how much they are willing to pay.

$89,000 doesn't seem like an awful lot when you consider all the hours the engineers work, how little public recognition they receive, and the general high cost of living in Silicon Valley. With Google and Yahoo offering almost $20k more, it's understandable how the talent could be spread thin at Apple.

When myself and other TDL members worked for Apple the pay was definitely good, and particularly for retail. But near the end of my run, I was aware that new genii were making almost $15k less than me. We also went from having multiple full time Mac Specialist to almost none. Quarterly bonuses were removed and replaced with a one time pay raise, which was great for existing personnel, but didn't do squat for new hires.

Don't get me wrong, Apple is still a great company to work for, and I just hope it stays that way, and that their ability to consistently wow us isn't affected by their purse strings.

Zune juggernaut breaks into more DRM, NBC hot to trot

How do you make the Zune better? Well, naturally you add the ability for it to police your content for anything pirated. What's so wrong with that? You shouldn't be pirating music or videos, has the RIAA not taught you anything!?!

The story goes that NBC abandoned ship because of Apples tight leash on pricing and their unwillingness to police pirated material. Apparently Microsoft is okay with NBC selling their content for the same price as Apple would have just as long as Microsoft absorbs the difference in cost between that price and the price NBC wants to sell it for. Lets look at that for a moment. If Apple was going to sell an episode of Heroes for $1.99, and NBC wanted to sell that same episode for $6.99 then Microsoft is basically paying NBC $5.00 for each download. I really can't imagine why Apple wouldn't want to do that . . . seems like a GREAT business deal.

As if that decision wasn't confusing enough, Microsoft is working on what I can only assume will be an update to it's desktop software, to detect bootleg media and disallow it from being transfered to the device.

My question: How does it know? This is the age old question of the thermos. The thermos keeps hot stuff hot and cold stuff cold . . . but how does it know? When I go out and purchase a DVD and use good old handbrake to make a legitimate backup how is the software going to recognize this as being legitimate and allow me to put it on my Zune (DISCLAIMER: I don't have a Zune, don't want a Zune, and this whole thing seems like a giant disaster)?

As you can see the move to police your library raises all kinds of concerns. I don't see how this approach really sells more of anything for Microsoft. It seems like they're going to lose money on each download AND push the Zune in a less desirable direction (as if poop brown wasn't enough). I think I'll just keep my iPod.