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Why Apple Doesn't Blog - Vaporware
DECS writes "If anyone is still wondering why Apple does not encourage its internal developers to maintain blogs, Roughly Drafted is carrying an example of how the good intentions behind sharing information can result in unpleasant, unintended consequences." From the article: "As customers, we all want to know what's going to happen in the future, but we will also turn around and beat developers with the very information they share with us. One of the terms we hit them with is, of course, vaporware. The other thing about blogs is that written text fails to capture the full range of rich human communication. It's easy to take more offense than is necessary to the wrong choice of words. Minor and casual criticism can quickly ferment into a difficult stink, and attempts to burry it can often just make it worse. Blog entries are like emails that cc: to the entire world."
Apple may not have an official corporate blogging outlet like some enterprises, but some Apple employees do in fact blog in a (sometimes quasi-)official capacity.
Dave Hyatt's (now WebKit's) Surfin' Safari is one notable example of success, with Apple engineers being able to directly blog and communicate with end customers. It has now become a blog for all of WebKit, where other WebKit contributors - some within Apple and some not - can post as well.
Mac OS forge (and the hosted sites within it) is another recent example: Apple engineers, blogging, on servers owned and hosted by Apple. This wouldn't have happened a few years ago, and was a result of responses to community concerns about Apple's interaction with the open source community. (And no, it's still far from perfect, but the interaction is increasing, and that's a good thing.)
Both of these examples of Apple blogs are also open for comments, something some corporate "blogs" don't allow.
So are these "official Apple blogs" in every sense of the phrase, or in the vein that the article is intending to discuss? Maybe not, but it represents a lot more openness than Apple ever used to exhibit in this context. And anything greater than zero is "more open". Will Apple ever open up blogging to just anyone or blog about futures and abstract ideas? Unlikely. But there are notable exceptions to the blanket statement that "Apple doesn't blog".
Or, more to the point, Apple doesn't want their customers waiting for the new versions that may have the features that their customers really want. Apple wants their customers buying every release; not just the realeases that have the features that the customers want.
Apple, the World's greatest marketer run by the World's greatest salesman: Steve jobs.
"Why Apple doesn't blog?", why not ask "Why should Apple blog?". Why is it that everyone takes corporate blogs for granted these days?
So what would be the answer? "Because everybody is doing it!". "because I want to know what they are up to!". "I love Apple and I want to get constant news and articles about Apple!". Well, none of those are a valid reason for blogs, really.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Hey look! Someone who can define Apple as uber sneaky/cool by be being secretive and not blogging more BS for him to drool over. Not forgetting the side swipe that Microsoft sells you a future they don't have, and that's vapourware.
Enough with links to blogs of people who - in Wikipedia terms - are not notable.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
forgive me if I'm wrong, but as of yet, what features/functions has Apple promised us and not delivered? Aside from the whole 1984, change the world that we live in commercial, I have yet to be disappointed by Apple's products. Lawyer-vetted? Definitely. I think it's better this way so we don't have a million cooks telling them how to cook their soup.
I don't know if I agree with the reasoning. I have never read the SA agreement, but I'm sure it's full of legalese that absolves MS of any liability should they not deliver a new upgrade within 3 years.
i.e. "Seller (Microsoft) will offer buyer (you) a discount on new upgrades should they become available within three years and buyer wishes to purchase said upgrade."
After all, the first SA licenses were back in 2001 when XP was released. Vista is well past the 3 year window. I'm sure if some companies were very upset, there would have been a lawsuit by now.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
At the 1996 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, the newly-appointed head of developer relations--details of the painful 1996 WWDC are mercifully fading and her name escapes me--said that she had been talking to developers and one thing had emerged as the most important single issue in developer relations.
Developers, she said, had been begging Apple for one thing: "Tell us what you're going to do. Then do it."
Avoiding all talk of the future is a seemingly risk-averse strategy, but it carries risks of its own. If a company wants developers to be ready consistently on day one of new-product introductions, they need to have a reliable roadmap.
Accusations of vaporware are a real problem, but I at least suspect that one of the reaons why companies hate discussions of futures by technical people is that it provides a public record of changes in internal direction, inconsistent decisions by executives, etc. which can be embarrassing to the company.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Quoth the article:
"...written text fails to capture the full range of rich human communication. It's easy to take more offense than is necessary to the wrong choice of words. Minor and casual criticism can quickly ferment into a difficult stink, and attempts to burry it can often just make it worse."
I'm glad that never happens here at Slashdot!
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I assume that Apple have always been very keen to keep new products under wraps, because that (and getting as close as possible to 'build to order') means they can sell the last few of a product that's about to be superceded, not to remove accusations of vapourware.
I'm not sure this is still a wise thing to do when they are entering new markets, as the much rumoured iPhone would do (if it exists). I need a new phone, but I'm holding off until Macworld San Franciso because of the rumours, rather than being tied in to a 12 or 18 month deal on a cometitor's product - which must be good for Apple if the rumours are true, and better if they publically said "we will ship an iPhone soon", as more people would wait.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Dictionaries are wrong.
Or more to the point, Dictionaries whose definitions aren't what I think they should be are wrong.
What a Moron.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's an interesting assertion. A company can be "closed" in a number of different ways, and I think being somewhat secretive about product development plans is not at all unusual. Apple just gets a lot more attention in this area.
I think it's more interesting to ask how "closed" a company is with respect to information its customers or partners actually need to know. For example, ar there APIs that the Apple reserves for itself to give itself a competitive advantage? Are they open about product defects and problems? In the last case, I don't think Apple is particularly good, but it's not worse than average.
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Blogs are to fanboys what tabloids are to housewives.
What do you call vaporware that has been so vaporous over the years it becomes a joke?
... DukeNukemForever
I mean there are a very few that reach this lofty goal, most notably
Not exactly "Vaporware" anymore, more of a running joke
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I keep blog (what I used to call an online journal before that stupid term came about) but I disable comments. I think this would solve a lot of the problem. If developers simply want to do a brain dump every once in a while and share it with the world they should not feel obliged to turn on comments and subsequently respond to them. As a journaller from way back (junior high school) I have found journalling to be a very valuable process for collecting my thoughts and forcing myself to take stock of where I am currently at. The process itself is rewarding. But I feel no obligation to share my journalling with others (although I do in one venue, but in a self-censored way) or enable responses. I certainly see how enabling feedback/comments adds a whole new dimension to the process, but it's certainly not a necessary quality of a blog.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Apple gets too much attention from their current way of doing things to want to change. They probably get more blog attention from outsiders guessing what is coming out at the next conference than they would letting employees blog or pre-announcing products. Apple's policy of secrecy and Job's showmanship have been a winning combination.
Perhaps we need to clarify the various flavors of vaporware, distinguished by intents and causes: (1) Deceit-o-ware: Marketing announces a "product" in order to discourage competitors, stake out mindshare, commit the partners and developers, and other dishonorable reasons. ( Taligent, others ) (2) Wish-o-ware: Developers promise to enhance a product, not realizing the current code isnt extendable. ( Copeland ) (3) Bloat-o-ware: Soo many promised features, the resulting code is too embarrasingly complex or slow to ever be released. ( Cairo, SQL file system, .NET code in the OS )
Now #1 is totally indefensible, but #2 and 3 are more likely unintended consequences of good intentions.
Chuq Von Rospach, 17.5 year veteran of Apple, well known for his insights into email / usenet / web issues, did a series of blog entries on how Apple communicates. He went into, from his former privilaged position inside Apple, about how & why it communicates how it does, and what it is like being a communicator for Apple, officially & unofficially.
The postings about Apple & blogging start at Why Apple doesn't have a blogging policy (it ain't what you think....) and then goes for a few days, with responses to/from other bloggers.
Interesting stuff, insightful, and first-person from someone who was on the inside.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Agree... I think most of it is due to Steve Jobs and his vision. Steve Jobs is generally very closed and attempts to have strong control. This isn't necessarily bad per se but that's Apple's corporate culture. Steve Jobs has done a great jobs as an executive but his style is rough.. Do note that I have never worked at Apple so I am not sure how rigid they really are. All I know is that their executives are very rigid and secretive (they rarely talk about future visions or potential products unless they know they are going to do something for sure)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
"...Blog entries are like emails that cc: to the entire world."
No they are not because an email is sent proactively to a limited audience whereas a blog
you know the audience are people who are seeking out that communication and you the sender
do not necessarily know who the audience is.
You say informal, I say professional. They believe in letting their products speak for themselves and not letting company personalities or marketing messages get in the way. Contrast to Microsoft, which is all about marketing slogans like "Welcome to the social," stock-photo-ridden ads, and goofy quotes from Ballmer.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Apple gives me gas.
Plasmaware? Vaporware that's so diffuse, it's basic structure breaks down into a cloud of subatomic particles...
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
Hey Schroeder, don't try to be a smart ass. I did extensive research before I wrote my article and the last thing I want is some nobody to tell me that I am wrong.
s -Stop-Talking" department.
Just STFU already!
Daniel Eran, RDM | Homepage | 12.08.06 - 8:48 am | #
This in response to a lengthy comment posted with plenty of meat to it as a counterpoint. This is the author's way of defending his article?
This should be filed under "Stick-Your-Tongue-Out-And-Scream-Until-The-Other
I think you are mistaking two things. Apple does not like to publicly discuss its upcoming products to create an air of mystique. It has nothing to do with how formal or informal the company is. It just so happens that some of the methods used to create the mystique are the same as those used by old school corporations.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Perhaps they are too busy working, and don't have time to tell all you douchebags what they are up to.
Now, that was a real waste of time (reading the article), in essence what you (the author) say is that (appart of the blog an vaporware) you can simple deny anything based on what a dictionary say, Well Mr. there are a LOT of definitions and you can always find a way to explain it your way, based on a definittion in a book or dictionary, and definitions always change, as time pass.
C'mon even 0/0 now makes Nulity!!!
Well, this is what i say: Vaporware IS Vaporware, sometimes FEEL like vaporware, and if someone THINK this is vaporware then IS vaporware, at least for him,
Don't respond to this, is just my point of view, and as MY POINT OF VIEW it is correct, for me, and for many people that may think alike.
Maybe what you should write was:
Apple dont use blogs as a tool, or a tactic to gain press space,
Apple doesn't stop their employees to blog,
Apple try to keep secret their work, just until they consider is gonna make a lot of publicity and be a good thing for business,
Any thing that move, delay, change, or doesn't give or doesn't comply with a release day IS vaporware, at least during the time it fails to get released,
There is planned vaporware and not planned vaporware.
Just my opinion. Nobody cares
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than me. Thanks!
First, if your product developers blog, they may be giving your competition advanced notice of what you are up to much sooner than you otherwise might.
Second, the bloggers do not necessarily represent the average user. In fact, in my experience those that read and respond to blogs often have widely divergent needs from the targeted customer. If your responders are largely hard-core geeks, say, they may be pushing for more advanced features instead of what the other 90% of your customers most want (e.g., usability). Advanced feature requests are rarely appropriate for a product at an early stage of development and that time is generally better spent on more fundamental issues.
Third, what someone asks for and what they actually most need as a real world customer are often very different. Having been involved in product development, it has been my experience that most people can't articulate what they most want. They often do not understand, for instance, that the current products out there are horendously and unnecessarily hard to use. Even if they "feel" frustrated with usability, they can rarely identify what frustrates them exactly, let alone propose a better way to solve it. Often times their requests actually hamper what they need (e.g., add this feature as the expense of greatly increasing UI complexity).
Lastly, I believe you can actually increase negative publicity about your product by blogging. If your blog readers are heavily exposed to your product and expect that their suggestions will be taken seriously, you have to also remember that they may represent the bulk of the first users when you launch. They may take for granted what you have already accomplished and their expectations may be out of line with what you can or will deliver. Instead what you may get for your troubles is negative publicity coming from a bunch of people that really don't represent your target base and yet these same people might serve to steer a good number of your target customers away.
I'll admit that I didn't RTFA. However, I would argue that Apple and companies like them are perhaps the best arguments not to blog. I would assert that their products are far more focused on usability (and ultimately their customers) and have tended to be far better recieved on a marginal basis than any of their competitors. If you were to read many of the modern blogs on, say, the ipod and other portable players you would get the impression that customers prefer anything but and that they really want a ton more features. In practice, most people still prefer the latest iterations of the ipod and I would argue that apple's marginal efforts are still better directed than most...
Blogging probably makes sense sometimes (depending on: the stage of development, user base, type of product, etc) but I also think there are many where it is very much counter-productive. You might argue that management might simply, say, ignore certain input, but this kind of input can also serve as a distraction for your developers and may be bad for morale.
GUY makes some good pointz
Apple also has a tendency to release "closed" un-hackable hardware without room for third-party extensions, it is also "closed" in that it does not license it's software to run on other hardware... and I haven't been following the story, but are they releasing any patches upstream to BSD developers, and so on?
As you point out, companies can be "closed" in a number of ways, and Apple manages to hit most of them.
Apple stock went down almost $3 yesterday. Do you know why?
Because some dumbass analyst said that the iPhone-- a product that does not officially exist, has not been acknowledged as in development or even under consideration for development by anyone in Apple's employ with the authority to do so-- was going to be delayed.
How exactly does a third party announce a delay for a nonexistent product that didn't even have an ETA to begin with, and have it affect the stock price that drastically? And if that's what can happen, do you really want to encourage your employees to divulge any information beyond what's okayed by PR?
OK, when I saw the mention that this was a RoughlyDrafted article, I figured I'd do something fun: Without looking at the article, I'm going to try guessing how many paragraphs it is until the first Microsoft bash.
My guess is 5.
Now to count... Wow, I was way off. The first one (veiled insult) doesn't appear until paragraph 11.
However, I did correctly predict that it would bash Microsoft, so I was right in one respect.
I can summarize this article in one sentence: Apple doesn't blog because Microsoft sucks.
Seriously, why do you continue linking to this guy's articles? Every single one, whether it has to do with Microsoft or not, eventually devolves into an extended bash on Microsoft. Even if the information in it is incorrect. Even if it means applying double standards (one for Apple, one for Microsoft). I mean, I don't exactly love Microsoft either, but they should at least convey correct information. There's a reason why Digg users bury his stories (well, maybe not since his 60+ shill accounts came about).
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I guess the folks at Apple have never read Shakespeare or Coleridge, or Sartre, or Neitze, or Kant, or Shin-eqi-unninni, or... (etc. etc. - you get the idea).
This from the folks who brought you the iPod. I guess they're as juvenile and illiterate as their target market.
Everyone here is talking as if Apple would be excoriated for vaporware. Vaporware is usually software, not hardware, though some hardware can be vapor -- just not usually.
The real reason why Apple doesn't promote blogging and also the real reason why Jobs is so careful to go after websites that predict (accurately sometimes) what Apple will be releasing is because Steve Jobs met and knew Adam Osbourne. While the effect that is named after his is urban legend, Jobs is very interested in not making a suicidal marketing mistake.
Apple is primarily a hardware company. they do not want to cannibalize present sales with announcements about future developments. And hardware development takes a lot of cash.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
You know I want to keep reading Slashdot... but seriosuly, what the hell.
This post was moderated "(Score:1, Flamebait)"?
Nothing about that post was flamebait. Just he doesn't have his had up Steve Jobs A** like the rest of the fanboys in the Slashdot Apple section.
Any old Apple salt knows that Apple used to be VERY KEEN on personal publishing; and letting the world know what was going on through their Advanced Technology Group. One of the ultra cool things about ATG for years was seeing the cool stuff at WWDC...
... Microsoft. There was an uncanny parallel between what was shown by the ATG at WWDC and Microsoft marketting press releases in the subsequent weeks. Microsoft won a lot of mindshare based on skunkworks stuff not developed there! And Apple management realized it.
And here is where Apple got burned.
Showing the cool stuff often meant exposing research and development to
Now before I get flagged as a troll and Apple fanboy; I'm not. I can site many examples of this from 90 to 95 - before ATG stopped presenting and was for the most part disolved. I got totally burned by OpenDoc and the phoenix of Steve.
As a side note, Microsoft still actively supports its think tank (though you rarely see anything commercial come of it), and Google lets you work on your own skunkworks 20% of your time (and get paid for it, but it belongs to Google.)
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Really? How are Apple's tower form factor computers from the last decade been less hackable than a PC? They've got PCI slots and open bays just like any desktop. You basically have a choice, go tower if you want internal expansion, or go compact form factor and don't have room. This seems reasonable to me. There's no room for expansion in the Mini because that defeats the purpose.
Apple has been a major supporter of standards based connectivity. For years every computer they sold had SCSI. The serial ports on the early macs were RS-422, which made a lot of serial based applications more interesting. They brought us FireWire, and when the world went USB they went along with it.
Because they are not a software company. They are a hardware company; that kind of vertical integration is anachronistic but they have no choice. They can't possibly make a living competing with Microsoft in the desktop OS market. They don't have access to the channels to do that. Dell or Gateway is not going to piss of Microsoft by selling MacOS desktops. What happened when they licensed Umax to make MacOS computers is that Umax had to sell the computers in the same channel as Apple. In other words, they have no means to expand their user base by sellig the operating system for non-Apple hardware.
I don't know what you are talking about. Are you talking about the sucky way they handled their wi-fi patches a few months ago? Or some other changes to the BSD parts of the system that haven't been released to the Darwin community?
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The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Preannouncements can ding current sales, but the Osborne Effect article you linked to in Wikipedia actually shows the opposite: that the OE is mostly a myth, and that plenty of examples prove that it is more often wrong than a reliable law of marketing.
I actually wrote about the Osborne Effect back when the Register was announcing how Intel Macs would kill Apple's sales before it could ever deliver them.
Why Apple won't suffer the Osborne Effect
I also added notes from the article I wrote into that Wikipedia article, but they were removed to make it look like the Register itself dispelled the myth, rather than creating it.
The notes are in the Wiki history of the page you linked.
The world doesn't want the truth.
Really? How are Apple's tower form factor computers from the last decade been less hackable than a PC? They've got PCI slots and open bays just like any desktop.
Providing PCI slots means nothing if there is not an open process that promotes driver development. And Linux and the BSD projects have proven that third party developers can incorporate support for peripherals based on PCI when there is an open interface to code to.
Plenty of us have 'dead end' Power Mac hardware with plenty of PCI slots in them. Some of us even have big boxes of PCI cards that can be plugged into these slots, if you simply want your Power Mac to consume more power.
Sure, I can run Darwin on my Beige G3 Tower if I want. Probably I can even plug in and use a few PCI cards that otherwise are completely unsupported on that hardware. That yet again shows that Apple closes out the 'hackers.'
You are making my point. If the hardware was closed, then there would be no way to get those devices to work. The hardware is completely standard so fars as the PCI interface is concerned. YOu could argue that this means that the hardware is open but the software is closed. But that would be wrong too. MacOS has always been very well documented. What is missing is the desire to target MacOS. The commercial people don't think the added costs are worth the marginal sales. The non-comercial people are more interested in BSD and Linux.
In any case you can't compare BSD and Linux driver development to MacOS development, unless your argument that the only acceptable level of "openness" is to be completely open source.
The only two ways you can really argue Apple is particularly closed are (1) disclosure of product plans, (2) standing in the way of runing MacOS running on third party hardware and (3) integrating itunes with 3rd party MP3 players and (4) dealing with security issues. Of these, (1) is perfectly reasonable; (2) is maybe not ideal, but is understandable. (3) is annoying, but if you realize that Apple (contrary to the famous razor blade theory), makes nearly all its money from iPods and very little from sales in the iTunes store, it's understandable too. The only thing that they can be seriously faulted for is their handling of security issues.
I've been a severe Apple critic over the years. Their treatment of their enterprise custoemrs in the late 80s and early 90s was execrable. Their treatment of their development partners in the Copeland and OpenDoc fiascos was so callous it defines belief. Their failure to do more with HyperCard was a lost opportunity -- imagine what would have happened if they kept it up to date and provided a Flash type plug-in early on in the browser wars.
The upshot is, I've stopped thinking of them as a software company. They're a hardware company that uses software to add value to their hardware. I would never, ever invest a dollar of money or a minute in time on a project that was dependent on Apple software. I'm happy to buy their music players and use their music store.
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He's member of Apple's AppKit team (i.e. he develops both the AppKit and Foundation frameworks).
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...