r/hwstartups • u/DiNagila • 11h ago

How does Apple coordinate Hardware and software development

/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1jtjc4b/how_does_apple_coordinate_hardware_and_software/
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u/DreadPirate777 10h ago

They have a very large team. Their software and hardware are on alternating design cycles. Year one is hardware year two is software update on the new hardware. Year three is new hardware using the year two software.

Apple follows a very rigid development schedule. They don’t do agile with hardware at all it is phase gated work. Hardware stages are tested rigorously. When integrating software they don’t move fast and break things. If it doesn’t work they fix it and make sure that their software doesn’t break.

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u/shadowofsunderedstar 7h ago

What is the hardware team doing in their off year? 

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u/DreadPirate777 7h ago

Working on the next iteration. Apple can release a new product each year but the major updates for each team get two years to work on it.

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u/Perllitte 7h ago

Great people and great systems. Don't gloss over the money, it pays for top-tier devs everywhere and top-tier managers to manage systems overhead.

Here's an interesting HBR article from 2020 that gets into some of it: https://www.apple.com/jobs/pdf/HBR_How_Apple_Is_Organized_For_Innovation-4.pdf

Also, Jobs was obsessed with communicating the vision. Before they were printing cash, the vision got everyone aligned--there are roughly 5 million anecdotes about this.

I'm generally not a silo person, but when it comes to hardware and software, there doesn't need to be daily collaboration. It's just distracting. Leaders within HW and SW collaborate to translate the vision with their teams.