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."

Comments

Instead of asking...

[10Ghz]

"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.

Five minutes of my life back please

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

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.

one way vs. two way street

[Orp]

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.