After a more than two-year “work”-from-home policy that Apple implemented in March 2020 in response to COVID-19, Apple corporate employees are finally, albeit tentatively and after many delays, beginning to return to office work.
Employees at locations like Apple Park and Infinite Loop were last month given a deadline of April 11 for returning to in-person work.
Throughout the global health crisis, Apple has made it clear that employees would eventually need to return to in-person work and collaboration.
“For all that we’ve been able to achieve while many of us have been separated, the truth is that there has been something essential missing from this past year: each other,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees back in June 2021. “Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate.”
Apple employees are currently required to work from the office at least one day per week by April 11, at least two days per week by May 2, and at least three days per week by May 23.
When the three-day in-office work policy is enacted on May 23, employees will be required to be in the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with most able to work remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays.
MacDailyNews Take: So, let’s be real, the amount of “work” that will get done on Fridays is pretty much nil. Therefore, Apple corporate employees have an implicit four-day workweek. Expect less to get done than in the pre-COVID panic days – it’s virtually guaranteed (pun intended) – until the labor market loosens and companies can once again begin requiring employees to put in a full workweek.
As we’ve written many times before throughout these endless return-to-work delays:
At some point, some Apple employee, likely someone older who unfortunately has multiple comorbidities — maybe who smokes, has asthma, is overweight, or has other risk factors — is very likely going to contract COVID-19 and die. Some lawyer will be enlisted to try to sue Apple over it. This sad scenario is virtually unavoidable. Return-to-work delays atop return-to-work delays were simply kicking the unavoidable down the road; a waste of time.
In general, human-transmissible coronaviruses do not disappear. There is no such thing as zero-COVID.
COVID-19 is here to stay. It will very likely become endemic, yet pose less danger over time. People will acquire immunity via vaccines (effectiveness TDB) and naturally as they contract and recover from variants since the partially-effective vaccines permit not only transmissibility, but also breakthrough infections. Influenza and the four human coronaviruses that cause common colds (OC43, 229E, NL63 and HKU1) are, of course, also endemic, but a combination of annual flu vaccines and acquired immunity means that sane societies tolerate the unavoidable seasonal deaths and illnesses they bring without requiring lockdowns, masks, social distancing, indefinite return-to-work delays, etc.
At which point, if ever, will some people decide that wasting away their short lives in abject fear of a bad flu (that’s now mutated into a bad cold, if that), very likely engineered by China and partially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is an hysterical self-defeating overreaction?
Adam Gopnik was writing about a different “disaster,” but, going on 2+ years worth of “two weeks to slow the spread,” his words from August 2011 are a rather interesting read here is April 2022 and something to bear in mind as you consume “news” media:
[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios — the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about — was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things…
That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preemptive paranoia. The real purpose not to get you to do anything, but to get you so scared that all you can do is keep the television, or radio, on. This is obvious, and yet there is something truly helpful, really instructive, about experiencing it again after a month of absence and silence. Two things that ought to be apparent all the time become briefly clear to you again. First, that the media, television particularly, are amplifying devices in which tiny kernels of information become vast, terrifying structures of speculation. The news business is one in which a minimum of news is really given the business.
And second, that the reasons for this are essentially non-ideological; frightened people need news for reassurance, and want to get a more heightened experience by being frightened still more, and the business the people supplying the fright are in (which we’re in too, of course) is not really that of dispensing information but of assembling enough listeners or readers, preferably still caught in that same spirit of credulous attentiveness, to offer to advertisers or keep subscribing. — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, August 28, 2011
As we wrote rather presciently back at the beginning on March 9, 2020: The real virus is the panic.
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Bout time the over pampered Apple snowflakes have to go into the office, like the rest us. My employer allowed zero employees to work from home all through the pandemic and guess what, no one died or contracted Covid at work. Bunch of sniveling overreaction pussies using the pandemic as an excuse for their own gain…
Yep!!
How many people work there? Four?
Because 1 million people died in 2 years for an average of 0.3% of the entire US population. That includes everyone, even women, children, and pussies.
Deaths from Influenza and Pneumonia cases dropped to practically null in that same two year time period. It was like those diseases were eradicated during the pandemic.
Masks.
BS, indeed.
https://twitter.com/ur1TruthDetect/status/1502140891124879360
If you were any dumber we would need to water you twice a day.
…that breathing is autonomous!
Don’t work. Says so right on the masks box.
Now, opinionated so called fact checkers from social media and elsewhere will argue against that with vague science studies but these so called fact checkers would also be the first ones to dispute as false the claim that women holding an aspirin between their knees will avoid getting pregnant thus not have to kill off the pregnancy process of reproductive life. Even though that is a true fact.
It just all depends on where your stance is on the ideological political line.
Or conservatives could choose to lead their lives as they see fit and not try to legislate everyone else’s.
“Or conservatives could choose to lead their lives as they see fit and not try to legislate everyone else’s.”
Apply this to mask and vaccine mandates, genius.
https://twitter.com/ur1TruthDetect/status/1513913470361686020
How many would have died if lock downs and other measures hadn’t been taken?
How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?
The world may never know!
Heck, no one can answer how many died from COVID with any certainty. The corrupt system of government, science, social media and the news media are to blame. Just as deaths from the vaccine are numbers that have been sullied by, again, the corrupt system of government, science, social media.and the news media. Yet I am told to trust the vary institutions which have given me ample reasons not to trust them.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY2A7WIOqCA&w=560&h=315%5D
The problem is, everything that you disagree with is explained by simply calling it corrupt all the while ignoring evidence of corruption that supports your worldview. That’s no way to live.
I suggest you turn off the TV, stay off the internet and go outside for some nice long walks. That will do you so much better. Life is way to short to be so bitter.
You do realize that they’ve subsequently said that they MASSIVELY over counted those deaths… right?
Perhaps in conservative circles they want to you believe that. The worldview, however, is that the actual death toll as been under reported by millions.
Most died on Joe’s watch and that is with vaccines and boosters.
Yep. Biden is a sad dementia-laden killer.
But 95%+ of the dying was among the unvaccinated.
Next, Apple BS will be saying Putin is to blame for Biden’s 41 year high 8.5% inflation.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10711311/Inflation-soars-new-41-year-high-8-5.html
An enlighten read to broaden Apple BS’s horizon.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10708225/The-states-FAILED-protect-people-COVID.html
The real virus is AppleBS’s endless BS. He’s a real virus, the big problem is that he’s infected himself with sheer idiocyyyyyyy
There are a few of them here, possibly the same person, who desperately want to convert everyone to their narrow minded world view. Why they think an Apple forum is the place to do it is beyond me 🙂
Well since my normal one got banned, I only keep two. One for Apple BS, the other for more political topics.
Why an Apple forum? This is where the BS is, duh!
Don’t know why any issues that companies have about working at home, couldn’t be solved
with AR technology if developed. The only thing that couldn’t be solved is walking places to meet others. But you could simply press a button to visit coworkers in their cubicle or go to a meeting.
if you stood up, it could be also the same as looking over the cubicle wall into your neighbors cubicle. When you went to a meeting, it could look same as if you were seated at a table with others.
if a boss wanted to see what you were doing, they could press a button and visit you in your cubicle.
In other words, all the things you could do in office environment could be done through AR technology.
So u mean we have to wear those VR glasses all the time?
Get your act together and when you start having normal product announcements with people and media in the auditorium and stop having virtual WWDC’s maybe then people will return to their offices, labs and work stations a lot quicker.
Take a hint from Travis Tritt in the free state of Florida…
https://media.patriots.win/post/bYfkWHrMvuRJ.jpeg
So, as a visitor – do I have to hate Apple, Tim Cook, Biden, masks, the CDC, Dems, LGBTQ issues and anything government related, spread misinformation and generally lie like a trooper in order to post comments?
Totally off the scale weird Mac website.
MDN welcomes all people, unlike Twatter and the other Apple news sites that discriminate against one side while promoting the other, skewing your expectations.
And furthermore, mask mandates are peddled by fools and followed by pawns.