United Airlines

"It wasn’t simply Apple dreaming up new ideas for its manufacturers to execute. Rather, it was a collaborative process between Cupertino and Shenzhen. “[[Apple products are] not designed](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor356) and sent over. That sounds like there’s no interaction,” Apple CEO Tim Cook once told an interviewer. The idea of having something designed in California and manufactured elsewhere “requires a kind of hand-in-glove partnership.” [In 2019, United Airlines made](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor357) a promotional banner about how valuable Apple was to its business. United wrote that Apple booked fifty business-class seats daily from San Francisco to Shanghai, from which the airline made $35 million each year. That’s over eighteen thousand business-class seats on one route."

"Supporters of the R&D hubs say the negative view of them reflects the insecurities of engineers in Cupertino, who were losing their power as more decision-making got done in China. Before the hubs were built, Apple had been sending so many engineers to China on temporary trips that Cupertino convinced United Airlines to begin direct flights from San Francisco to Chengdu, three times a week, arguing that Apple would regularly buy enough of the thirty-six first-class seats to make it profitable. The 6,857-mile flight became United’s longest nonstop flight. Two years later, Apple again convinced United to begin flying nonstop—to Hangzhou, a tech hub on the outskirts of Shanghai. “Hangzhou is a bit of a schlepp from Shanghai,” says a former Apple executive. “Yes, you can take a bullet train, but for all the American guys getting off the plane from Cupertino, navigating the train station is kind of complicated. So Apple basically said to United, ‘Look, you put up a flight to Hangzhou and we’ll fill it for you.’ ” Apple’s signature line had long been that its products were “designed in California,” but the hubs began to indicate otherwise. China’s influence was growing, and as the hubs performed more work, the engineers there would openly question the need for so many of their counterparts to constantly fly in from America."

"For years, Cupertino had flown engineers into China by the planeload to oversee the ramping up of new products. Prior to Covid, Apple was booking “50 business class seats daily” from San Francisco to Shanghai, according to an accidental leak from United Airlines revealing Apple as its largest corporate customer. Suddenly that wasn’t possible. But every product Apple made had an in-region support team, and they were forced to step up their game. Apple’s partners, too—from Foxconn, Luxshare, and BYD to deeper layers in the supply chain—knew what they were doing. Apple had trained their engineers and, at times, orchestrated mini-crises to let the schedule slip and see how the suppliers would react. “I intentionally let one whole build just basically crater,” says a former engineering manager, describing an event before the pandemic. “It was an example for them to learn what it takes.” It was like the old parable about teaching a man to fish. “All of these suppliers, or a lot of them, have gotten to the point where they understand what it takes to develop an Apple product,” this person says. “And so when we stepped away, there’s a machine that’s already enabled, that knows what it takes to build a product.”"

""Sounds like this guy Bloomberg is doing to financial information what American Airlines and United Airlines electronic reservations systems have done to the travel business: become influential by getting everybody hooked onto their data. ""