My Take on Leander’s Piece AKA Apple Is Evil
My reaction isn’t as angry as Jon Gruber’s over at Daring Fireball. However, when you put aside that anger one can’t help but agree with Jon’s assessment of Leander Kahney’s piece in Wired, “How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong.” Leander’s article is a curious one for him, because he is usually so spot on when it comes to Apple. But this article is just....odd, especially as the cover piece of Wired.
Google Isn’t Nice
In Leander’s piece Google comes across as this kind of lah-lah place where no one does any evil (their corporate moniker, after all, is Do No Evil, so that must be so, right?!) Wrong. Google, like Apple is a business, not a philanthropy. Not that they are evil, they aren’t, but neither is Apple for taking a different approach to product development.
In Leander’s world secrecy is somehow a bad thing. But almost every business requires some level of confidentiality in order to function. Is Wired transparent about its business plans? About what features and products it plans to release? Of course not. Indeed the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is defacto standard for any conversation in the corporate world. The reason is is because there is business value in the ideas a company has. There is for Apple, and there is for Google. This is not evil.
Think Secret Wasn’t Just a Fan Site
Leander also paints a picture of Nick Cearlo of Think Secret as victim of Apple evil empire. Not so. Sure Nick may have started out the site as a hobby but it soon grew into a serious business. Anyone with even a basic understand of online advertising knows that given his site’s popularity this wasn’t just a hobby site. He was making some serious money. And he was making it by republishing confidential secrets broken by people who had probably signed NDAs. Notice that Apple has not gone after Jon Gruber or myself. This isn’t because Apple likes the blogosphere, they very may well not. But Jon and I aren’t revealing trade secrets. We are not profiting from people breaking the rules. Nick could have chosen to express his interest in Apple in a way that didn’t breach confidentiality contracts. He chose otherwise. This doesn’t make Apple evil. Yes, we may disagree with the company, but still going after Think Secret was well within it’s rights.
One of Apple competitive advantages comes from its ability to surprise and delight the marketplace. It is a key business advantage (and not only because of all the press it gets) and Apple must fight to preserve it.
As for Leander’s issues with the cliche of Steve Jobs the micromanager, again, this is not evil. Apple is not some sort of prison-camp where people have to work. I know people who work at Apple, and they are energized and excited by what they do. I’m certain there are people who hate working their too, just like any other company. But something tells me that the teams who worked on the iPod, iPhone, and the Mac are pretty darn proud of what they did.
Probably the most unfortunate thing about Leander’s piece is that is, at best, a superficial look at Apple. A cover piece of Wired is such an opportunity. And a piece that panders to cliché’s about the firm is an unfortunate waste of such exposure.
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So what happens when Apple reaches critical mass? It becomes the new borg, same as the old borg.
Critical mass, Steve, is not the same suffocating market mass as the MS Borg of ~95%. Keep that in mind.
Critical mass in business is the market mass of equilibrium and is neither 50% nor 95% market share. It is a point in its market share where the inflection, the point at which the growth curve grows to a “sustainable” inertia.
Even when that curve no longer grows or becomes flat - a la MS Borg - the inertia is enough to keep the curve at positive growth.
A negative growth company like Palm is an aberration. Palm did obtain critical mass at one point yet absurdly mismanaged by idiots after another.
Apple’s SJ better start grooming his ideal successor now.
Apple has long had sustainable inertia, but they keep shooting themselves in the foot.
Stupid is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.
The iPhone and MacBook Air are hardly Trojans, they are elitist toys made for the elitist base.
Apple lost to Microsoft because they overcharge their customers and undervalue their vendors and developers. The proof is all around us, because you have to work really hard to have a great product and lose anyway.
All they had to do was lower their price and sell more products, instead they kept the price high and sold less. They still do it, and they still cater to elitist tastes. They are not populists at all. They put all their dealers out of business, and the high-end stores are going to crash with a huge thud eventually. It is easy to compete with a company that charges too much.
Apple will inevitably spawn more and more competition; its high overhead will make them weak, and its high margins will make them attractive to compete with. It’s a lose-lose for Apple. Fortunately for Apple, most public companies are also run incompetently, too.
The real story of Apple is that the product is so good that its users won’t let them fail, no matter how badly they manage the company, and how much they are abused. And, Steve is too big a dink to even know that. I would make a good successor though. lol I have a good handle on their strengths and weaknesses, but as you can imagine, the stockholders would hate me. Their profits would be my last priority.
fyi: you have created a straw-man in your head; Microsoft. You have “politicized” your toaster. There was a time when I made a similar mistake. The people who buy PC are simply interested in the toast, not the toaster. Only a power-user knows the difference, and as the web takes over, this becomes less and less relevant, which is why Apple is chasing the smartphone and music player market. It didn’t “innovate” anything. Apple is playing copy-cat in an attempt to survive.
he people who buy PC are simply interested in the toast, not the toaster.
Burnt toast. Where the Mac toaster spits out poptarts all the time.
Apple is chasing the smartphone and music player market. It didn’t “innovate” anything.
Ahh, but like any Apple hobby, it all leads back to the Mac mothership in one way or another. Apple engineering is too cunning not to make the Mac connection, however subtle and imperceptible to a newbie. People new to the Mac universe by going iPod, iTouch, iPhone, or ÓTV will eventually see the difference and switch to Mac. Then the circle of his/her computing life is fulfilled.
That is exactly their strategy. Make the products as transparent to the new user and he/she gets more things done. You can’t say this with Wincrap Vista where neverending nags after nags after nags. Yes, I have Vista Excruciate edition in one of my lab garage machines. Nice looks but what a pain in the [insert body part here]. Nice work, Bill.
What you’ve missed, Steve, is that the iPhone “innovation” has stirred the hornets nest called the cellphone oligopoly - remember that word? Go read up on Chris S.’ new piece on AM regarding this matter.
Robomac, you may be an infidel in the church of Microsoft, but you are a true believer in the church of Apple.
A toaster does not have to make burnt toast, but pretty much the only thing it can do is make toast. It’s a tool, not a religion.
As far as the oligopoly goes, Apple wants to be a part of many oligopolies simultaneously. Does that make them more virtuous or less virtuous than other oligopolists? It doesn’t take much to stir up a hornets nest within an oligarchy; they are already paranoid of one another.
And again, you seem to give too much credit to Apple for their strategic positioning. Without the carrier, they have no iPhone. Without the record monopoly, they have no iTunes store. Without TV and movies, they have no Apple TV. They are a bit player, and a weak player in these industries. Their real strength is in computers, and they still have not figured out how to sell them. They are constantly making claims about how it is improving (tiger to leopard, Power PC to Intel) but that is all insider talk. Even the commercials mocking the PC, while funny, do nothing but mock the person they are trying to sell to. You, like them, are thinking about Microsoft, rather than thinking about real people. You have objectified yourself and others.
Apple presents itself as confusing, elitist and overpriced, because Steve Jobs is confused, elitist and greedy. He is not unique by any means, most of America fits that description, but to understand Apple, you need to understand that. The Microsoft true believers are very much the same, and they have far more invested in their learning curve, too.
For example, I design in Illustrator, it would be practically impossible for me to switch to Corel, no matter how good Corel is. People generally don’t change their religion. Just because they bought an iPod, that runs on Windows, it doesn’t follow that they will be buying a Mac anytime soon. Apple has accommodated the Windows user, the Windows user will buy their hardware (maybe even a Mac to run Windows,) but you need to recognize that your Pope (Steve Jobs) is just chasing the money. He could care less about you or your evangelization. They dropped the word “computer” because computers are not that important anymore. They need to chase the money, wherever they can find it.
In other words, Steve Jobs blew it. Maybe things would have been different if Woz never left. And he will blow it again, based on the dominos he is constructing. It is hard to survive in one oligopoly, it is impossible to survive in many of them. While in the short term success in one area will give strength to the weaker areas, at some point he will have multiple weak spots. At this point, it seems more likely that Apple will be broken up, not Microsoft. But there is still time for Apple to come to its senses. It has a lot of strengths, it just needs to use them more wisely. Unfortunately, pride and paranoia tends to be the downfall of every titan, and Apple has shown plenty of signs of both.
Steve, I admire your convictions about Apple. But, Apple is not a subsidiary of Goodwill Industries okay?
Apple does not run a charity for the consuming public. Apple exists to make as much $$$ from its fine products the willing consumers are able to afford. Apple is a market-capitalist company not some bland government-issued monolith. It is profit-driven. No profit = people suffer. Mega profits = young people get jobs at every Ó boutiques. OK, perhaps some greed comes into play somewhere - I don’t know - but let me say here that SJ is doing a wonderful job managing Apple from your Sculley-Spindler abyss.
Apple is now 30+ years old. Back then it was solely a “computer” company. But recent CE incursions (with lots of success, mind you) that tagline no longer fits with the whole company’s image. So, the “Computer” had to go. Simple.
It isn’t a conspiracy theory that the dropping of “Computer” from their corporate name is the declaration of intent to “monopolize” every industry it enters, remorselessly extort as much $$$ from the clueless public, nor to praise the glory of “greed” for every shareholder. There is a federal entity called SEC and DoJ to watch over those public companies that crosses ethical lines.
If ever Apple crosses those lines (shamelessly as you purport) then the SEC, FTC, and DoJ will have every right to “slice” Apple in any way good for the public. But I do doubt your prophecies for Apple is too tiny to have “monopolistic” power...ever.
I have discussed this very matter at James S. interesting bit. Please read up.
Apple wouldn’t get cut up because of its monopolistic power, it would cut off its limbs so the torso could survive. It would be more like Ford selling its LandRover division. It purchased the LandRover Company so it could grow, but it ended up taking a loss. The Apple Stores will have the same effect. Like every other retailer, they will eventually hit hard times.
My apologies for not being more clear. Microsoft was going to be broken because of its monopolistic success, whereas Apple being broken up would be because of its monopolistic failure.
By any normal standard, Apple is an astounding success. But because Microsoft casts such a large shadow, everyone else pales by comparison. Your being a Microsoft infidel is an expression of that belief, but you are by no means alone in that belief.
Time will tell, but history has shown that most businesses eventually fail. It really isn’t hard to suggest Apple’s eventual misfortunes, since bust and boom are intimately related. In other words, it would be best if Apple simply tried to survive, rather than being dominate. The risks that one takes to become dominate are eventually the risks that one loses.
Apple, at one time, was a manufacturer and a designer. Now they are just a designer and a reseller. The reselling can carry the computer and designing for a while, but they are still isolating themselves and making themselves weaker and more vulnerable in the process. They can lose all these new revenue streams overnight, and still be stuck with the high overhead. Bear Stearns, WorldCom, etc., all thought the good times would last forever, too. Apple is small only compared to Microsoft, but they are in and of themselves a huge company, and Steve Jobs is an extremely wealthy individual.
Your worship of both is very akin to the adoration of royalty a few centuries ago. You love your king and hate the other country’s king. Crank it down a little. Steve and Bill are a mirror image of one another, not opposites. Nor are they very different from ourselves, just more extreme versions of who we are.