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How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has a look at how the good and bad of Apple, their Yin and Yang, have come together to form a company that actually works. The piece looks at Steve Jobs' unusual and abrasive management style, otherwise known as 'Management Techniques From the Dark Side'. It's essentially a list of counterintuitive, suspicious-seeming and downright evil management techniques that work - for them."
I read the first of five pages of the article, and decided it's not worth further click-throughs.
The author tries to come up with ways that Apple is evil, but really winds up taking jabs primarily at Steve Jobs. As a newfound mac user, I don't give a crap about Jobs, I care about using a computer that matches my needs and does what I want. For me that's Mac. And for most of the other 6-7% of the Mac marketshare it's a pretty similar situation.
make world, not war
Given that most managerial types are ignorant tools whose rise to power is typically fuelled by a mediocre knowledge of PowerPoint and Project, its a no brainer that to succeed, be agile, and come up with good products, you simply do everything that 'traditional' techniques says to avoid.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Jobs needs to make a few trips to the impound lot to bail out his car. He would probably create his own reserved parking place, but at least that would put an end to the myth of the egalitarian parking lot policy.
"look at how Steve Jobs' unusual and abrasive management style works. ... Wired.com compiles a list of counterintuitive, suspicious-seeming and downright evil management techniques that actually work."
So in other words, it works just like a cult.
Much of the success of Apple has nothing to do with Apple itself or Steve Jobs. Instead, Apple allows people to directly reject Microsoft. Linux satisfies this anti-Microsoft position as well, but Apple actually markets itself and has the financial backing to push this branding.
With that said, Apple helps keep Microsoft out of even more legal hot water, for example, by directly backing Apple. It's a CYA tactic on the legal front.
Bottom line: Don't just drink the Kool-Aid on the Apple story without taking 1-2 steps back to look at the marketplace, cultures, and end users.
How to Download YouTube Videos
They don't understand the problems because they are completely wrong. Microsoft Vista and Dell's Pocket DJ and the Zune may have been designed by comittee but the parts that suck were pushed from on high. Apple is only the king of cool because the commercial alternatives suck so badly.
Free software designs consistently trounce commercial offerings. Package management on free systems is nearly flawless and free systems come with everything needed. People on Mac are insulted with popups that ask for money when they run into what should be common features. Windows victims walk on eggshells around their OS, backing up binary files and terrified of installing or removing programs. Then there are things like Amarok and MythTV which simply kill iTunes and Tivo respectively. Where free software developers successfully reverse engineer hardware drivers, the result is rock solid stability that commercial makers can only achieve with drastic hardware choice limitations.
In a less evil world every hardware company would join the free software community and leave both Microsoft and Apple chains in the trash.
After reading that I felt the way people looked after watching the movie 'swordfish' in the theaters. A profound WTF? look on their faces as they left the theater. Like him or not, Steve has managed to do what others have not. In business, if you're making money they call that 'doing it right'.
Dr Spok told millions of Americans the 'right' way to raise their kids. Turns out he got rich doing it wrong too. According to the investors, Apple is doing it right, management style be damned. I don't even like Apple products but they appeal to a certain percentage of the world in a way that makes them popular. I fail to see how that is doing it wrong.
Ms Spears is doing it wrong but Steve seems to have a pretty firm grip on the clue bat.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I think the point of the article is that evil works, if evil is also very good at what it does.
The whole point in allowing many different people to tackle a problem is to eliminate single-point-of-failure. If one company's product blows, we can choose another's. This is very important, both to the consumer, and to the market as a whole.
But when one company is the best at what they do, people stop thinking about choice. If apple makes the best mp3player/music store, why go anywhere else? If their operating system is so good, who cares if it only runs on their hardware... as long as their hardware is great, too?
Unfortunately, even evil geniuses sometimes fail. For instance, the iPhone SDK... I honestly don't see that going anywhere, unless the current license agreement is modified to something less draconian.
Thomas Galvin
Read the entire article on one page... *
;-)
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=all
So much better than flipping, flipping, flipping through pages and waiting for reloads. It's the print version, so you can use it that way too -- long article so print and read offline.
* = Assumes you plan on actually reading the article.
How to Download YouTube Videos
I'd imagine that there are of course some grade-a asshole management techniques that work, I don't think there has ever been a question as to whether or not they do work. I think the real question is whether or not they work better than management techniques that don't involve the boss being a total douchebag.
No joke, I wish my mod points hadn't expired. This really is some twisted shit. This seems par for the course lately from Wired. They have been publishing absolute garbage lately. Air Force blocks blocks and other sites and suddenlty something that is an industry best practice for security becomes censorship?
I also noticed that the people bitching about Jobs were "former" employees. Well holy shit...someone who left or was fired is going to bitch about their former boss for some media facetime? This is a 5 page article?!
And maybe I didn't read enough, but "micromanaging" has nothing to do with demanding exacting detail from the output. Anyone who calls that micromanaging has NEVER been micromanaged and its an insult to anyone who has suffered through a real micromanaging boss.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The article says that Steve Job's evil ways are still useful in cranking out a product which people (like you) will buy. You as customer don't really care if people died during the process.
I think, that his way is successful as long as there are many similar bosses, but when his workforce tends to drift away, you will be left without your Mac.
And then, you might give a crap about Jobs, or just buy something else.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
The author seems blissfully unaware of Apple's free software use. GCC, Darwin, Khtml and what not punch a few large holes in their central thesis.
Google runs its servers on Linux, but with propietary tweaks. The Google search ranking algorithm is at least as secret at Apple's product roadmap, and they are no more forthcoming with their product roadmap than Apple is (remember all the random answers and stonewalling that met questions about Google's plans on a mobile phone prior to the Android announcement).
To be a large, public, consumer company you have to keep some things secret for a variety of reasons. You don't want to telegraph strategy to your competitors. You want to release things with a splash to earn unpaid media coverage. You don't want to be held legally liable for stock price movements based on R&D projects that might never get released. etc.
Apple is very closed and secretive about some things, but quite open about others. Like Google their core OS kernel is open source. Like Google they employ commonly available technologies--http, MP3, H264, AAC, Unix, USB, ATA, 802.11, etc.--but put them together in unique ways to create new products.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Where modern management philosophies are mainly about touchy-feelie crap and corporate culture is trending toward openness, Apple stands out as a company where management is aggressive and dictatorial and corporate culture is supremely secretive.
If you want to call that "Evil" I suppose you can. I think, however, that design by committee only produces piles of steaming crap. There is definitely something to be said for a guy who has vision, and the force of personality to see it through.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Microsoft is evil. Apple is just different. And it works really well, for both of them. Google, for its part, is mostly not evil. Then there is Yahoo and any other business doing things involving the free flow of information in China. All of them become evil in ways Microsoft* would blush about.
--
* at least, their non-China divisions
Homage in this usage means, "allegiance or respect for one's feudal lord."
I want the minutes back I wasted on that story.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I don't think you can call the iPod a reliable result of make'em bleed management style. Yes, it can and did happen. But I doubt as likely as under a more open system.
They may produce products that people want, but that doesn't mean working there is a good experience. I'm guessing that there's alot of voluntary Kool-Aid drinking done by the employees to coninve themselves that the hostile working environment is what it takes to succeed. Also, see "stockholm syndrome" for the workplace.
Jobs may be a dick, but he's also a natural leader, which is always more important.
I'm not a fan of Apple, nor of Mr. Jobs, but he has some serious leadership skills. The fact that he's also a dick is not a factor in his success. Apparently his leadership can outshine his dickishness.
Fortunately Mr. Jobs decided to start a computer company instead of a religious cult in Guyana. Who knows what Jim Jones' "Kool-Ade OS" might have been like had he chosen a different path.
I've worked for an Apple supplier, and it's a bit creepy to have someone take mug shot of you because "Mr. Jobs wants to know what you look like." Not as creepy as getting a phone call at home late at night because they want hand-holding, but creepy.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
None of that stuff Apple does is "evil". And it's not at all unusual among Silicon Valley companies. In fact, the two corporate giants Kahney measures Apple against, Intel and Dell, are neither Silicon Valley corporations. They're both Texan. And of course they design their leading products by strict management of extremely creative individuals, not "design by committee".
None of that is "evil". And it's not really "old fashioned", or "Industrial Revolution". It's how successful corporations manage invention.
But why should someone writing for _Wired_ magazine know that? _Wired_, since its inception, has always been wrong about everything. Its analysis is always totally wrong, and even inconsistent. All _Wired_ has ever gotten right is knowing where the cool action is happening, but never able to do anything like that itself.
That's why its reporters will whine about how hard it is to find parking at Apple after 10AM, and manifest their jealousy of Steve Jobs in whining about how Jobs will park his Mercedes wherever he wants.
And it's why those reporters can't get jobs at Apple: they're neither creative, hardworking nor right enough to do anything but write technoporn. Which, while pretending to have standing to arbitrate about Apple's management "morality", actually approaches the kind of watered-down evil that is jealousy, conceit and stubborn wrongness.
--
make install -not war
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Say what you like about Steve Jobs. But he has _taste_.
:).
;).
If CxOs are thinking of being the "the red-faced, tyrannical boss" they better not forget that important point. They're not going to do much good if they do the tyrannical part without the taste part. In fact to emulate Apple I bet the tyrannical part is optional, the taste part isn't[1]. And the taste part is _hard_ to emulate.
Jobs knows the difference between good and great. Whereas most CxOs (or people in general) can't even seem to tell the difference between good and bad
The typical committee might take weeks to tell you whether a piece of chocolate tastes good or not, much less even get around to the way it _looks_.
The Techs? Many of the good ones might come with great _technical_ architectures and designs - but when the customer looks at it and tries to use it, it IS a piece of crap from their PoV.
So even if the Techs at Apple don't like his abusive micromanagement, I bet they _respect_ it because Steve Jobs has taste.
They can be confident that even if he's deciding on the "curve of a monitor's corners":
1) The decision is based on making an "insanely great"[2] product (not a crony richer, or more powerful)
2) He is 90% likely to be right about what the market will like.
3) If he yells at you, it's not _just_ because he's an asshole, deep down you know know he is right - that what you just showed him is only suitable as "blah stuff" from Dell...
Many (not all) techs can accept assholes who are right most of the time.
Thing is I wonder whether it's a bit like abused spouse syndrome for them
[1] That said, I think a lot of people with taste AND an obsessive eye for detail tend to get very upset when stuff misses the mark.
[2] Yes I know their products aren't really insanely great.
For years I've felt that Steve Jobs is kind of like Willy Wonka. You remember what happens when you cross Willy Wonka? Next thing you know, you're a freakin' snozzberry.
In essence, this article can be summarized in a simple sentence: Steve Jobs knows what you want better than you do.
It sounds negative at first, almost damning, but it's the simple, honest truth. Apple has ignored focus groups and analysts and tech media and pressed ahead with what Jobs thinks is best. With the exception of a few minor blunders here and there (the cube is the only one readily springing to mind, but I'm sure others could provide their own examples), Apple's strategy has been paying off handsomely since 1997.
Hell, it's so well known that Slashdot even has its own recurring joke regarding our own inability to predict what we wanted in an mp3 player better than Apple.
It's a lesson that the rest of the business world might want to take to heart, but then they'd have to find their own Steve.
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Lots of tools at Steve Job's disposal these days which assist him in arriving at decisions. For example, during Apple Retail Store training, you might plant scripted actors amongst the employee-trainees to better access their authentic feelings and reactions to certain types of management styles. This goes on every where, everyday: whether joining a large church group or volunteering for jury duty.
If Big Media is the Harvester of Eyes, does that make Apple an arms dealer?
They made it pretty. They made it look clean. They made it look like a decoration, not a tool.
PC enthusiasts see their PCs as classic muscle cars. They like to work on them themselves, show power (for less cost), and use it for utility and entertainment.
Apple enthusiasts see their PCs as cute little pets. They like to show them off. They can do tasks for which the Apple was bred, but not much else-- but that's OK because Apple enthusiasts by their computers to serve specific purposes.
Corporate HQ is still there. Maybe you were thinking of AMD?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Darwin is not very open-source, and they use WebKit which was developed off of KHTML.
If thats really your thing, I mean, if you want to work for a maniacal tyrant who micromanages every product you work on, who uses you and spits you out, and insists that you should feel "lucky" to work for his company. I mean, really, if thats your thing, go for it. You probably like to be whipped in bed too.
As for me, I'm not the company I work for, and I'm not the building I work in. I demand higher standards from my employer, and, I get them. Its a two-way street, zealots.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Apple has succeeded primarily because they have some brilliant marketing folks working for them. While I personally cannot STAND Apple ads (and any ad targeted towards my age group in general, the 18-34s) they obviously have done something right.
In just a few short years, Apple has built a tremendous following of rabid fanboys/girls. While I don't subscribe to the fanboy-ish attitude, and while Apple fanboys seem to be the worst of the kind, there is no denying what the company has achieved. They have created a product line seen as being "on the cutting edge of trends", and doing so means big sales and big money.
The question I wonder about is, how long can Apple keep this up? What will they do to keep adding to their empire? They have been hugely successful with the "trendy" types, but what about people like me, the so called "social outcasts"? What about the folks that choose to be anti-trend not because they want to be different, but because they don't like the stigma that goes along with it? What about those for who advertising like what Apple does makes them want to use the products even LESS?
If Apple wants to truly expand their size and market penetration, they need to figure out how to convince folks like myself to move over to them. I hate the image that goes along with pulling a MacBook Air out of a manila folder...and I hate that being a part of the Apple community means sharing space with people who go apeshit when you make a single observation about the negative aspects that Apple's products sometimes have.
For those that wish to moderate me troll or flamebait, go right ahead. You are the exact reason why I refuse to stand next to you and instead choose to stand with my back to Apple and to it's users.
Living With a Nerd
Don't compare Apple with Dell. Compare it with Sony or Nintendo. Those companies are equally closed and secretive. Akio Morita (1921-1999) was Sony's founder and the equivalent of Steve Jobs. Sony hasn't been doing too well since Morita died.
As Eliot Spitzer found out, you can be an asshole, and you can be effective. But sooner or later you will get hung out to dry for whatever trivial reason, and no one will give a shit about your sorry ass.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
"Apple has destroyed the music business," NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker told an audience at Syracuse University.
Yes, apple destroyed the industry because they gave people what they wanted.
Apple rarely does anything first but they often do it right for the first time.
Granted, it's a bit annoying to take a handicapped space, but...
If the Boss misses a meeting for an important deal, it could be your job on the line. Would you begrudge him taking up two spots for that? Even if you're handicapped?
Don't be too quick to judge. He pays your salary. Sometimes you should let minor infractions slide.
I don't use the word "organic" because you can't explain what it means. But everyone understands SMOOTH! I use a 24" iMac in a Windows office. People come to me for tasks, and I perform them before their eyes using tools which make it look SMOOTH. It makes me look like I'm magic(al). Exposé, Spaces, Stacks, CoverFlow all make the same tasks that Windows does look SMOOTH. I also run Parallels for IE6 testing, RDC to reach my server, and if I get wicked, I BOOT CAMP into VISTA!!!
Plus I have a machine that is running the same chips and the same apps (Word, InDesign, PShop) as they are, and it's smoother, faster, quieter, larger, thermally cooler and looks great dominating my desk. Take a look at Dell's "The One" and see precisely why Apple succeeded.
Specifically: succeeds in making money through treating people badly.
Yay, greed!
...Because .
The CEO who forced Jobs out wrote an autobiography and mentioned all of the mistakes Jobs wanted to make, how they were such terrible ideas. Jobs gets back into the company years later and does those very things and now Apple is an immense success again. It amazes me how sound logic and reason can sometimes be so wrong. "Stick to the knitting" is usually good advice because businesses typically go to shit when they try to expand into markets they know nothing about and refuse to hire people who do know the market to manage those divisions. My last died doing the same kind of stuff, the boss has a dozen side projects on his plate and he's ignoring the business' main money-making division.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The lack of good head less mid-range system is bad for apple.
The only 2 head system that they have is a over priced and under powered laptop in a small desktop case or a $2200 sever / workstation. Back in the ppc days they had $1000-$2000 desktop systems.
If apple had a good $600-$2000 desktop system then business like the idea of a desktop system with easy to replace parts and easy to remove HD's. Have to ship a system off to be fixed with it's HD still in is a trun off and the built in web cam in the imacs is a trun off as well.
The mini is no that is price next to a dell, hp and others at the same price also the dells, hp and others use cheaper desktop parts makeing upgrade and replacing broken parts cost less.
Quite possibly the reason only former employees ever comment is because the current ones are terrified of their boss.
For some this approach is extremely effective. For others is intolerable.
In my opinion, any product that isn't open, isn't ethical.
You can have whatever you want, but you are paying the price.
Most managers fuel their rise to power primarily by kissing the asses of those above them. That's really all there is to it and they don't even use MS apps. They just brown-nose their way up the chain until they hit a ceiling, change companies, and start all over again.
I've personally watched one guy that I know ingratiate himself to a CEO and get promoted to IT director. He then changed jobs when it became obvious that the staff hated him because he knew nothing, but he had Director on his resume so he got another director level job. He managed to cover his ignorance long enough to suck his way up to VP and is currently knocking on CTO. I still talk with him occasionally... e-mail confuses him, IM is a mystery, and is laptop is generally a swamp of viruses and malware. But, he talks a good game and is always the first to buy a round of drinks.
- Apple has succeeded because Steve Jobs is evil;
- Apple has succeeded in spite of the fact that Steve Jobs is evil.
In fact, if Steve Jobs was a more reasonable leader - like say Larry Page - maybe Apple would be triple it's current size. Unfortunately, we'll never know.Nope. You missed the point. I'm an old school, punch card, command-line ricket scientist. Now, I've got 12 apps open, 56 windows in photoshop alone. I'm "babysitting" CMS website and the office full of workers, I'm building a .NET/SQL Server web app. Converting documents, testing on 3 platforms, plus being chatted at, emails screaming in at me.
/images folder on the website. BAM!)
When, I get an email in MS Entourage, I don't get an envelope, I get a window sliding up, with sender, subject and if I click it while it's up, I get the message... without having to find Outlook in the fray. If I download a file off the web and want to email it, I click, it lands in my Downloads, which is a Stack. It's the first icon 1 cm from my mouse, that I drag it, drop it onto my email message that I found faster by doing Exposé than Alt-Tabbing. But if I DO Command Tab, i don't have to repeat over the 12 apps, I can slide my mouse over the icon at the other end of the sequence and BAM! I'm there.
Pretty machine are nice, but this isn't water ballet. It's efficiency. It's productivity. It's making the boss who just paid for this white Monolith say "WOW" when you just did a task that they don't even know how you did it! (Grab an image off the web, drop it into an Interarchy Droplet to my
The smooth is not referring to the lines of my machine, it's referring to the lubrication of my daily tasks.
That was interesting. There's being an asshole because you're good; people will tolerate that. Then there's being an asshole just because you can get away with it; in my experience, people don't stand for that very long.
I accept that my experience may be invalid. But if I see a non-handicapped vehicle (no hang tag, no plates, no equipment inside or out, no adaptive controls, etc.) parked in a handicapped space, I don't care if it was parked there by God himself, I'm on the phone to the police. I take care of two disabled family members who live with me and I appreciate how important those spaces are. There are lots of people like me.
Am I supposed to believe that there's no one either working at or who has ever visited Apple who has sufficient personal integrity and testicular fortitude to report a crime in progress when they see it? Hell, even if you work there and reporting it gets you fired, you can probably parlay "I was the guy who stood up to Steve Jobs" into 15 minutes of blogosphere fame; these days, that's almost enough to build a career on.
And the article lets this thing go as if it were just a personality quirk?!?! I don't get it.
Not every boss is a genius, or the founder of a company like Apple Inc.
Indeed. There's a lot that just doesn't follow in the article, for example: "It's hard to see how any of this would have happened had Jobs hewed to the standard touchy-feely philosophies of Silicon Valley. Apple creates must-have products the old-fashioned way: by locking the doors and sweating and bleeding until something emerges perfectly formed. It's hard to see the Mac OS and the iPhone coming out of the same design-by-committee process that produced Microsoft Vista or Dell's Pocket DJ music player."
Microsoft is notorious for driving employees hard. There's a plethora of books like "Microserfs"... there's nothing "touchy-feely" about them. And Bill Gates was also notorious for micromanaging development... often to the final product's detriment. And don't forget, the Macintosh itself started out as an underground project that Jobs opposed at first.
Jobs has good points and bad points. Success doesn't mean that you have to assume the bad points are suddenly good.
Android isn't a product but has great potential. But until someone can buy an Android phone, the comparison isn't valid.
Err, what? I don't know what the author is referring. If he means .NET, you can program in a variety of languages, all Microsoft. Mono exists but it isn't from Microsoft. If he means Silverlight, it's got great potential but you have to use .NET.
I believe Apple was first and still offers DRM-free music. And that is controlled by the media companies, not Apple. If they don't want to release DRM-free tracks (and some haven't), no one can change that.
This is complaining for the sake of complaining. The iPod was made as a personal portable media player not as a DVR. So if you want to use as such, you have to buy an accessory from Apple or a 3rd party (Belkin, Monster, etc). And this is no different from most other portable video players. You wanna hookup your Zune or Sansa to your TV? You gotta buy a separate cable.
And how is this different in the US than all other phones. Every mobile phone maker has models on some networks that aren't available to other networks. Now some makers have gone to the trouble of making multiple versions to work on different networks but they are not interchangeable. Wanna use your Verizon Motorola RAZR on your new T-Mobile network? Nope. Can't be done. You have to use a T-Mobile Motorola RAZR because the network is different. In Europe, they all use the same network so you can switch carrier/phones quite easily.
Apple just released the iPhone less than a year ago and one of their keys to success is maintaining a small product line for simplicity. They may make multiple iPhones, but I doubt it. Their reasons could be control but manufacturing complexity is not a small obstacle.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So jobs is a douchebag, but because he succeeds, that makes it okay? No, just because you're a visionary (which I'm not even sure he is) doesn't make it okay to be a dick. Notice how they talked to a lot of former employees? No current employees? Just like talking to an abuser's former spouse, but not the current.
Everything in the article points to battered employee syndrome.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
"Forget corporate blogs -- Apple doesn't seem to like anyone blogging about the company."
Except for Dave Hyatt?
Apple's more complex than anyone seems willing to admit.
Of course, to this day, the apple bashers continue to come out and deny a few facts in their attempt to bash apple. I like apply products and I'd say I'm an apple fan, but to me there's no denying Apple isn't perfect, their products aren't perfect, and as a person, Steve Jobs is mostly an asshole. But lets get our facts straight first.
/.ers consistently do is "If the product isn't for everyone, or it isn't for me, it sucks." The marketroids cause this negative reaction in some geeks that makes them think they are saying "this phone is obviously for everyone." It's not. Would apple love it if everyone on earth eventually bought an iPhone? Yes, but lets be realistic, even Steve doesn't think that. The iPhone, iMac and iPod aren't for everyone. It's okay to not like it, but it's not logical to say the only reason people buy it is because they are sucked into the marketing and forced to use a crappy product.
Apple has succeeded primarily because they have some brilliant marketing folks working for them. While I personally cannot STAND Apple ads (and any ad targeted towards my age group in general, the 18-34s) they obviously have done something right.
There is no denying apple has good marketing. However, no amount of good marketing can turn out this good of a result in their sales. Apple has to follow up with a good product too, and they do. Their products get consistently high marks from any number of magazines and they have fewer problems, relative to most of their competitors. What
In just a few short years, Apple has built a tremendous following of rabid fanboys/girls. While I don't subscribe to the fanboy-ish attitude, and while Apple fanboys seem to be the worst of the kind, there is no denying what the company has achieved. They have created a product line seen as being "on the cutting edge of trends", and doing so means big sales and big money.
They ARE on the cutting edge of trends. That's what good business and marketing does. It's not bad to be out there either. They saw the emergence of digital music, and saw how the music companies were pooh poohing it, saw the small showing of the things like the Rio, and then said "well damn lets do one ourselves and lets do it the way we think it should be done." And they did. Before that, the market was nothing, they defined the market and then owned it. They aren't first to market, but they are first to make something that will appeal to lots of people and catch their attention, and at the same make something that did it's job well.
The question I wonder about is, how long can Apple keep this up? What will they do to keep adding to their empire? They have been hugely successful with the "trendy" types, but what about people like me, the so called "social outcasts"? What about the folks that choose to be anti-trend not because they want to be different, but because they don't like the stigma that goes along with it? What about those for who advertising like what Apple does makes them want to use the products even LESS?
It's interesting how you label yourself a social outcast as if it some how lends weight to your argument. If you are chosing to join a trend because you are trendy, you're dumb. If you are chosing to buck a trend because you are a social outcast, you're dumb. There's a third option, called sensible people. They pick the right device for the job at hand. Many times this will be apple, and many times this will be someone else. These people are smart.
If Apple wants to truly expand their size and market penetration, they need to figure out how to convince folks like myself to move over to them. I hate the image that goes along with pulling a MacBook Air out of a manila folder...and I hate that being a part of the Apple community means sharing space with people who go apeshit when you make a single observation about the negative aspects that Apple's products sometimes have.
Obviously you haven't seen Apple's financials lately.. If you don
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Look at this: Last year, Amazon.com began selling DRM-free songs that can be played on any MP3 player. [...] Not Apple. Want to hear your iTunes songs on the go? You're locked into playing them on your iPod.
Amazon's DRM-free downloads started last September.
Apple's DRM-free downloads started last April.
Did the author of this piece do ANY research?
Not just lately, who could forget the September 1998 issue of Wired, wherein they interviewed several "experts" and concluded that due to the Y2K bugs society as we know it would cease to exist? Yes, that was the very last issue I actually read, but sadly their crap still gets reproduced all over the place. Wired is the Inquirer for the semi-computer-literate crowd and has been for about a decade now. The fact that the Inquirer has the largest circulation of any publication in the world is clearly not lost on them.
Caveat Utilitor
I used to work for Acorn Computers, Cambridge, UK in the early 80's, and one of the company founders, Chris Curry, had a similar parking technique. In the early days Acorn was located at Cambridge market square, a no-parking area. Chris Curry simply ignored the no-parking stipulation and parked directly outside of the Acorn office every day, and paid the fines. I seem to recall he wore black turtlenecks (a la Steve) also, although that may be the alzheimers kicking in.
This article is grossly misleading. They uses terms like micro manage to describe jobs but then they describe behavior that is not micro managing. He is opinionated, a perfectionist and believes in HIS vision for Apple products, he is not down at the Apple gate and cubicles monitoring employees by the second, harassing them for little day to day work issues or interfering in their minutiae.
He gives briefs and if your vision does not match his expectations he is not afraid to express himself, but he is not interfering in the process after the brief. He is not a micro manager. That is highly misleading and makes a needless virtue of the harassment micro managers subject employees to due to their inadequacies. Micromanaging is not desirable in a workplace that desires to be mature, and certainly does not produce innovation. Apple's way on the other hand does. hindsight and wrong headed analysis will not make anyone innovative.
I have to disagree, I don't think Apple would be where it is if Steve weren't a royal prick. I don't know the guy, just going by reputation. Dicks don't compromise, and they don't hesitate to push people to get what they want. I'm not saying that being a dick in itself is the key to success, but having a genius for product design and PR combined with the ability to push people to deliver EXACTLY what you want is what makes him a success.
There are a variety of leadership styles to get that kind of performance from your people, it just happens that being a dick works for Steve. You can't separate being a dick from being a leader in his case, as intimidation and secrecy are key components of his leadership style.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Seriously, as far as I'm concerned, there's only one aspect of Apple that I'm concerned with ...their Products. I don't care one iota what Steve's "management style" is, or if his employees are "happy". I don't work there and I've never meet the man. Personally, by whatever method it comes to be (closed door meeting or employee adventure getaway), I just want A2DP for my iPhone (and the ability to pair with a Bluetooth GPS unit). I'm seriously considering leaving my "perfect" UI behind for some good old M$ functionality. You can flip back and forth between the Weather page on an iPhone for only so long before you get bored.
I for one was disappointed that neither Willy Wonka had a goatee. When I first read the book in 4th grade, that was the first time I had ever encountered the word goatee. And then I went to see the movie and Gene Wilder was goatee-less. In the new one, Johnny Depp is also goatee-less.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
When I first laid hands on a Apple ][, I had plenty of programming under my belt. Back in that time, Big Blue(TM) (IBM) was the very personification of Evil. IBM was no different than Darth Vader. Or Lex Luthor.
You could do all you wanted with an Apple ][. Program it, modify it, make special hardware interface boards (Apple even sold a breadboard prototyping card you could plug into an expansion slot).
With IBM, you were stuck with IBM hardware, you had to use IBM software, and everything was meticulously engineered to be as incompatible with the real world as possible. Remember EBCDIC? IBM harware was truly fabulous and looked great, yes, but it still wasn't ASCII, nor would talk to otherwise standard components.
And with IBM, you were stuck with the high-priesthood. Heaven forbid users could write their own software, because IBM operating systems were meticulously crafted to be obscure as possible. It took years to learn to program on a big iron dinosaur.
Then, Apple brought out the Macintrash. The computer for the rest of them.
No expansion slots. No way to write software (the SDK initially ran on the grossly overpriced LISA).
Oh, yes, Apple was to have released some kind of Visual-Basic-like language, but the idea was nixed after Microsoft threatened to stop developping EXCEL for the mac if they released that.
With a Mac, you were back to the old high priesthood IBM was infamous for. You could only have software that the high-priests deigned you could have. Nothing else.
Oh, sure enough, eventually, as Macs got more performance, you could eventually get a reasonably-priced SDK for it. And then you had to learn how to program it, because it's operating architecture was totally different from what existed before. Before, your program used to control the OS. "open this file", "read keyboard" and so on.
Not so with the Mac. In soviet Macland, Operating System controls your program: "hey, the user clicked on this button!", "Hey! the user pressed on this key while the cursor was on his widget"! "Hey, the user pressed on the 'OFF' button" (whoops, that was on the LISA, not the Mac), and so on.
Mastering the main event loop was a black art, and took too long for many people to consider programming beige toasters.
In the meanwhile, sheep who know fuck-all about Von Neumann architecture flocked to buy beige toasters, and were so grossly indoctrinated into their quite inferior product (without it's handicapped mouse, a Macintrash is nothing but a sitting-suck -- you can't even turn it off without the mouse!!!) that they felt the need to proselyte their crappy toy to us, who know better and write programs by typing "cat > $EXECUTABLE".
That's all well and good if you're a hipster or computer newbie with money to burn. Not so great if you want value or a system that you can build to your liking.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It helps if you imagine John Hodgman's voice reading the Wired article.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
You make it sound like Jobs was somehow just lucky, since Sculley had business wisdom on this side. I'm surprised that everyone here seems so negative towards Jobs. I've seen very positive comments elsewhere about working with him, and he certainly has some obviously admirable characteristics. His commencement speech at Stanford is worth looking at.
Darwin is not very open-source
The Darwin source code is made available under the APSL, which is OSI-approved.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
OK, I'll bite. (sorry karma)
First we are no longer allowed to label them handicap.. it's accessible parking.
Second, parking is very valuable space nowadays.
Third, in the seven years we were at one business site, our 'accessible parking' was not used once.
So while I agree they should be available where the general public visits (like shops), for business to business sites, I think think they should only be available where there are lots of carparks ( >40)
46137
The paradox is this. I might make me 2 seconds per instance smoother. Maybe.
But the real difference is the LACK of this in Windows XP (72% of users). If I have 6 browser instances open, which I do, and I have MS Visual Studio, and Photoshop and 3 chat clients, and Outlook, and...
Windows treats EVERY instance as an icon on Alt-Tab. Every chat window is its own icon. 4 chats, 4 icons plus the parent. I can have 28 icons when I Alt-Tab. If MSVS is in the middle, I'll take 10 seconds to get there and not over shoot. But OSX treats each APP as an icon. Then F10 to Exposé if I need to (for the 56 photoshop windows)
Another insanely smooth feature is drag-drop a bunch of files onto the Photoshop icon on the Dock. Don't have to be able to see my desktop, cuz I haven't since 1969. I can do more with one hand on my mouse on my Mac than 3 hands and a footpedal on Windows. I have better things to do with my other hand [insert product placement pic of Diet Dr Pepper]
I've left a number of companies that I didn't feel the need to bash to other folks. I just didn't feel like it was a good fit, and didn't feel a lot of confidence in what I was working on/not enough career growth. The one or two companies I left for more negative reasons, THOSE I sometimes complain about and use as examples of management systems I don't want to work under.
That said, I think it's more possible that the author surveyed 20 or 30 people who have worked with Apple at some point, and cherry picked the handful that complained the most, and from that, took the complaints that back up the author's opinion and used those. But I've never worked for Apple, so I have no clue as to whether that would be true.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Apple is not the only successful company that Jobs has led. In fact they even reference his success with Pixar in the article. What they don't talk about (because it is inconvenient to the central thesis) is that Jobs was famously hands-off on the filmmaking at Pixar. He rarely even visited because he did not like to drive that far. Taken from a different point of view--a Pixar point of view--one could write a profile of the "Steve Jobs management style" that is almost totally at odds with this one.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Steve Jobs claim to fame is that he is good at herding cats. Talented programmers/engineers don't work together well as a team. They all know everything better than the other. Add a substandard programmer to the team and they are overwhelmed by the other talent.
Steve nudged WoZ into doing things. Steve got the original overly talented Mac crew to work together as a team (He did fail with the Lisa project though didn't he).
Steve is a Zen Master/Artist who is good at herding cats....
Read the Michael Swaine (URL:http://www.fireinthevalley.com/> or Andy's (URL:http://www.folklore.org/index.py> website sometime. Good stuff.
For all those dissing Apple hardware, I have eight Macs/Apple]['s that just work(TM) today and are just as useful as they were in the 70/80/90's. That alone is a testament of Apple hardware quality. I have friends to still use their Apple Newton. I own an original IBM XT and AT that still work but I have no reason to fire them up. None of my original 386/486/586 clones lasted half as long. The Linux box I'm typing this post on probably won't last longer that 5 years.
I'm just curious if the Apple hardware they make today will withstand 20 years of time like the hardware they used to make.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
allowing mp3 on the iPod, and then lock you into the formats they want you to like
Near as I can tell, after using iTunes since 2002 and an iPod since 2005, there is no such thing as lock-in on the platform. The only pain I've ever felt was using up machine authorizations on stuff bought from the iTunes store, and I quickly fixed that problem by freely stopping my purchases and freely taking my business somewhere else. Later Apple themselves fixed that problem by offering DRM-free material, which is great, but my buying habits have migrated elsewhere and there's no punishment from Apple.
The iTunes store certainly encourages purchase of a large class of their material in a locked format. But there's no punishment for operating outside of that, and it's really not even particularly difficult to unlock the DRM'd stuff.
Tweet, tweet.
Just because someone is an asshole does not mean they are a bad boss. Some of my best bosses have been complete assholes at times, and typically for damned good reasons. There is a difference between being a total hardass and being a malicious prick. Personally I hate working for the "really nice" boss. They will never tell you when you are doing something wrong, they rarely give clear guidance on exactly what your place in the big picture is, they almost NEVER will confront slack asses that are dragging workcenters down, and worst of all, they make terrible shit umbrellas. You need a boss that is willing to fight for you, and a "really nice" boss may never fight with you, but he will probably never fight for you either. Now a malicious prick...a malicious prick is worse than an asshole any day!
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
"[Apple] announced Tiger, the latest version of its operating system, with posters taunting, REDMOND, START YOUR PHOTOCOPIERS."
1) Wired's article is dated March 18, 2008.
2) Leopard, the latest version of OS X, was released last October.
3) Steve Jobs has an eye for detail.
4) Wired doesn't.
"He declined to talk to Wired for this article."
Surprise, surprise.
But that's okay, too, because it more room for people to work than if we all had to work for either Jobs or Google or the Bill&Steve act.
It would be better, I think, if the wannabees would just decide up front that imitation is not going to win the war any better than being who they are and doing what they do right. But if they did, I suspect the whole world would already be open source.
Open source is what we do when we don't have the great vision of things like the iPod. The small vision is still a vision of good things, and still improves the world. In many ways, the small vision is the one that lasts longest, as well.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
most of the comments here seem to indicate that the article "got it all wrong." Since the article is pretty much about how Steve Jobs is a jerk, this largely seems to be people taking offense to the idea that Steve The Great has human flaws.
It is a well known fact in the industry that both Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds are jerks with enormous egos and a habit of chewing people out for minor errors. That doesn't change the fact that they are extremely good at their jobs, and isn't taking a dig at OSX or Linux, it is just a fact about the personality of these guys.
Jobs tends to keep his ego and habit of chewing people out out of the public eye, but you can see Linus doing the same thing on LKML all the time, or at various talks such as this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
The fanboy crowd tends to see people like Jobs, Torvalds, and RMS as their own personal messiah and beyond any sort of criticism even if that criticism is unrelated to the software they produce.
On the other hand, consider how fast I'll get modded down if I suggest that Bill Gates is actually a pretty decent human being, and that his humanitarian work is pretty awesome. I've had people call me a "Microsoft shill" for saying things like that, and suggest that I was being *paid* to say such things. Note, I haven't even mentioned OSX, Linux, or Windows! In fact, the activities I've mentioned so far are totally unrelated to software development. Yet, people can't seem to separate the two.
I think it's pretty sad that there are so many people for whom these "Mac vs Windows" and "Linux vs Windows" debates become so religious and personal that they feel the need to demonize or glorify various people that they don't even know, and engage in such vitriolic behavior. I mean, it's just *software*, if I write a really nice piece of software, it doesn't make me Gandhi, and if it has bugs, it doesn't make me Hitler. As much as I hate using this phrase, because I am a developer and computer enthusiast, *it's just software*. There's a bigger world out there, and more criteria on how to judge someone as human being than their software defect rate or their licensing strategy.
Well the problem is their flaws in design are marketed as cool
And as their fan base ins't realy into computers; they rather paint / draw / or listen to music.
They can get away with this marketing.
Who buys a PC or a mp3 player because it is white and has an "i"
It turns out a lot of simple souls do it, and they are marketed to feel happy about it.
It's not that they think of cheaper products elsewere with more options etc they think: Oh white again cool again.
I'ts not that i hate apple but try talking to an apple addict, you soon notice this.
Well it's a legal addict, wont harm your health only your wallet.
You mean their hardware and software engineers, respectively?
Oh, NeXT was not a complete failure. It was good enough to make it easy for Tim Berners-Lee to invent the web using its developer tools (precursor to XCode). Also, as someone else mentioned, it bought Apple for negative $400 million. That's a pretty good deal. :-)
Lose essential liberties to get temporary safety = get only hassles and security theater.
Actually Apple got NeXT for free. They paid $400 million for the service contract with Jobs. He could have sold them NeXT-branded T-shirts and Mugs instead, but they didn't have enough storage space for $400 million worth of them.