Apple Is Currently Losing Out On Talent and In Need of a Killer New Device

The Guardian on the state of Apple:

  "Despite its huge value, Silicon Valley developers are turned off by [Apple's] 'secretive, controlling' culture and its engineering is no longer seen as cutting edge."

Steve's Gone. Apple is done?

"Tellingly, Apple is no longer seen as the best place for engineers to work, according to several Silicon Valley talent recruiters. 

It's a trend that has been happening slowly for years – and now, in this latest tech boom, has become more acute. ... 

Or as Elon Musk recently put the hiring situation a little more harshly: 

Apple is the "Tesla graveyard."

 "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple," Musk recently told a German newspaper. 

The biggest issue for programmers seems to be a high-stress culture and cult of secrecy, which contrasts sharply with office trends toward gentler management and more playful workdays."

There is strong competition arising with incredibly affordable price points!

 
ASUS recently revamped their ZenBook UX305 family of ultralight notebooks with Intel's 6th generation Skylake Core m series, which brings with it not only improved graphics performance but also native support for PCI Express NVMe M.2 Solid State Drives. 

The platform is turning out to be fairly strong for this category of notebooks and the low cost ZenBook ($699 as tested) is a good example of what a Skylake Core M is capable of in a balanced configuration. 

Tested here, the machine is configured with a 256GB M.2 SSD, 8GB of RAM and a 2.2GHz Core m3-6Y30 dual-core CPU. 

Along with a 13.3-inch 1080p FHD display and 802.11ac wireless connectivity, the ZenBook UX305 is setup nicely and it puts up solid performance numbers in both standard compute tasks and graphics.

 It also offers some of the best battery life numbers in an ultralight yet, lasting over 10 hours on a charge in real world connected web testing.

Apple stock might slip if this trend continues...