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

"Apple" doesn't blog, but...

[daveschroeder]

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".

"Tell us what you're going to do. Then do it"

[dpbsmith]

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.