For hardware companies there is a _vast_ amount of work which cannot be done under these circumstances.
A lot of people here are sounding off on Apple's reluctance to enable remote working (reasonably enough), but the fact is that a large amount of the work Apple does is reliant on 1) sophisticated engineering and manufacturing processes which are not possible in-home/remote, and 2) a pantheon of national and international ISO requirements for safety and other compliance areas which are not possible in-home/remote.
Final, mass, production happens in China, but it's a useful generalisation to think of most hardware products as being prototyped to a high polished standard within a hardware company's internal supply chain prior to testing and mass manufacture.
Testing is also a process which is made extremely difficult with an entirely remote workforce. A good example, from a decade ago: Apple deployed $100m USD into building its own anechoic chambers and radio testing facilities.[1] These things are closer to science experiments than the CNC milling machines the article mentions: multiple persons operating them in-person, etc.
The challenges are not unique to Apple, but they are significantly deeper than the article suggests. There are also some affordances which Apple has made in the last 6-7 years which lend themselves to remote working. For example, their own team of secure couriers who ferry prototypes around various sites in CA.
They will need to think about this out of the box. One way is to select, say 500 employees, test them and have them live as well as work from the office building. The building is empty anyway so plenty of space to make some living quarters. In other words, they get quarantined in Apple’s space ship building instead of at their home. For a company with $100B in bank, very few things are impossible.
Sorry if that wasn't clear: I meant that for every company making hardware ("hardware companies"), there are a series of deep challenges presented by shelter-in-place which the article ignores. Or, put another way: a series of challenges which would not be present if Apple was solely a software company :)
A lot of people here are sounding off on Apple's reluctance to enable remote working (reasonably enough), but the fact is that a large amount of the work Apple does is reliant on 1) sophisticated engineering and manufacturing processes which are not possible in-home/remote, and 2) a pantheon of national and international ISO requirements for safety and other compliance areas which are not possible in-home/remote.
Final, mass, production happens in China, but it's a useful generalisation to think of most hardware products as being prototyped to a high polished standard within a hardware company's internal supply chain prior to testing and mass manufacture.
Testing is also a process which is made extremely difficult with an entirely remote workforce. A good example, from a decade ago: Apple deployed $100m USD into building its own anechoic chambers and radio testing facilities.[1] These things are closer to science experiments than the CNC milling machines the article mentions: multiple persons operating them in-person, etc.
The challenges are not unique to Apple, but they are significantly deeper than the article suggests. There are also some affordances which Apple has made in the last 6-7 years which lend themselves to remote working. For example, their own team of secure couriers who ferry prototypes around various sites in CA.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/1671022/chambers-super-silence-w...