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Comment by qz2 | Hacker News Reader

This. The whole thing is a lie.

As a former EE, I can categorically state that absolutely no bench I have ever seen is that tidy when debugging hardware. It's usually a complete snake pit of cables, mess and hell. And half the equipment that they would actually need to support what they have out on display is not actually there. Also no one is going to sit on those god awful chairs while working.

And on top of that I guarantee that there are PCs in their real laboratories that do the CAD and debugging work. Zukon, SolidWorks, Catia and Altium don't run on Macs.

PCs design Macs. Discuss :)

Edit: in retrospect I think it felt like a Scientologist recruitment video.

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This was my immediate reaction too. Seeing those chairs, I chuckled immediately. It's basically Apple marketing's idea of a HW lab. :) Just like computer hacking, Hollywood style.

At least I hope so.

And there are calipers on it on the scale of what you would use for woodworking. I can't fathom how you would use those in that lab but they look "sciency"

Yeah I imagine that pisses off woodworkers as much as it pisses me off seeing some 1980s LED multimeter featuring as a prop in the 2100's in The Expanse.

The tables should also be covered in an appropriate amount of solder burns and flux residue.

No coffee mugs, no post-it's, not a single piece of paper with some notes, no personal stuff -> can't be a engineering office.

But the old Apple II on the shelf in the back got me to smile.

Where did you see the Apple II? I saw the original Macintosh on the left, and the original Bondi blue iMac on the right.

I thought it was a Apple II, but I can be wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spot on! Also the floor is usually littered with things that fell off the benches.

Like MELF diodes. But they are supposed to.

Ah I hate those buggers. I made the mistake of ordering just enough of them once and I'd lost three before I got the first one on the board :(

Must End up Lying on Floor.

Never heard that one before. Perfect :)

Which would require[0] a fume extractor, which they're lacking. Unless we're meant to believe they use lead free solder in their test labs.

[0] https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/otm_v/otm_v_3.html

Well, I grew up working only with lead free solder (learnt soldering in school in the EU, and RoHS applies for such purposes as well), and honestly, I can't see why they wouldn't. Lead free solder might be a bit easier to work with, but in the end not having a poison everywhere around you is gonna allow you to focus on the real issues instead.

Fume extractors are for the flux fumes, not the (nonexistent) lead fumes. You need them whatever type of solder you use.

There are ways of setting up solder fume extraction that is not intrusive, just like how casinos have HVAC systems that pull smoke upwards and out, generally avoiding the place smelling like smoke. I worked in a service center a long time ago that used such systems and if you shot video at ground level, you would never get any of that equipment in the shot.

"in retrospect I think it felt like a Scientologist recruitment video."

I made a very similar comment to my gf during the live stream. I think there is something insular, cult-like, and very broken in tech culture, and the live stream really seemed to emphasize the point.

Perhaps paradoxically, I thought this year's WWDC videos were much more natural and interesting, even though they clearly also were meticulously rehearsed and stage managed.

"Zukon, SolidWorks, Catia and Altium don't run on Macs." -- Windows does: https://support.apple.com/boot-camp.

If you do that, Zukon, SolidWorks, Catia and Altium vendors will tell you to piss off if you want support because the hardware isn't ISV certified.

No they do not. I have seen many CAD stations with Windows on Mac. They do make solid hardware.

Not sure for CATIA, but this is true for Zuken, Altium and SolidWorks at least; and Mentor Graphics and Cadence.

CATIA only supports specific workstation configurations. It can be run on unsupported workstations just fine, but you may hit a brick wall with Dassault Systèmes support, which is like half of what your paying for with the maintenance fees.

Erm, maybe they were asked to tidy it before filming? This is clearly not a studio, it's just a lab that has been tidied and all the crap hidden away (and maybe a few nice looking circuit boards scattered around).

Yes, but you could run Windows on a Intel Mac.

Its pretty obvious that if corporate is coming downstairs with cameras, they are going to make it look tidy.

It's really not. We never did :)

Do we know if they have a staged set or is it all computer generated. Let alone I am curious how many takes it was for some of the presentations.

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