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Apple's Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has a story on the culture of secrecy at Apple (registration possibly required). Secrecy is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture that had its origin in the release of the first Macintosh. 'It really started around trying to keep the surprise aspect to product launches, which can have a lot of power,' says marketing veteran Regis McKenna who advised Apple in its early days. Today few companies are more secretive than Apple, or as punitive to those who dare violate the company's rules on keeping tight control over information. Employees have been fired for leaking news tidbits to outsiders, and the company has been known to spread disinformation about product plans to its own workers and sue bloggers who cover the company. Apple's decision to severely limit communication with the news media, shareholders, and the public is at odds with the approach taken by many other companies, and many experts agree that the secrecy that adds surprise and excitement to Apple product announcements is not serving the company well in corporate governance. Some say that recent reports that Steve Jobs may have had a liver transplant, still not confirmed by the company, now makes one of Apple's assertions from January — that Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance — seem like a deliberate untruth."
But even by Apple's standards, its handling of news about the health of its chief executive and co-founder, Steven P. Jobs, who has battled pancreatic cancer and recently had a liver transplant while on a leave of absence, is unparalleled.
Indeed, very little of the matter comprising Steve Jobs is still Steve Jobs. The man's like a rebuilt Delorian. Am I the only person that shudders when he closes all of his speeches with "Remember, there's a little piece of all of you inside me"?
I guess if I ran a cult I'd be asking for new organs from my younger zealots too.
My work here is dung.
Appleâ(TM)s Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger
By BRAD STONE and ASHLEE VANCE
SAN FRANCISCO â" Apple is one of the worldâ(TM)s coolest companies. But there is one cool-company trend it has rejected: chatting with the world through blogs and dropping tidbits of information about its inner workings.
Few companies, indeed, are more secretive than Apple, or as punitive to those who dare violate the companyâ(TM)s rules on keeping tight control over information. Employees have been fired for leaking news tidbits to outsiders, and the company has been known to spread disinformation about product plans to its own workers.
âoeThey make everyone super, super paranoid about security,â said Mark Hamblin, who worked on the touch-screen technology for the iPhone and left Apple last year. âoeI have never seen anything else like it at another company.â
But even by Appleâ(TM)s standards, its handling of news about the health of its chief executive and co-founder, Steven P. Jobs, who has battled pancreatic cancer and recently had a liver transplant while on a leave of absence, is unparalleled.
Mr. Jobs received the liver transplant about two months ago, according to people briefed on the matter by current and former board members. Despite intense interest in Mr. Jobsâ(TM)s condition among the news media and investors, Apple representatives have declined to address the matter, reciting with maddening discipline only that Mr. Jobs is due back at the company by the end of June.
Mr. Jobs was actually at work on Appleâ(TM)s sprawling corporate campus on Monday, according to a person who saw him there. Company representatives would not say whether he had returned permanently.
Even senior officials at Apple fear crossing Mr. Jobs. One official, who is normally more open, when asked for a deep-background briefing about Mr. Jobsâ(TM)s health after the news of the transplant had become public, replied: âoeJust canâ(TM)t do it. Too sensitive.â
Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas.
Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said. Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.
Apple employees are often just as surprised about new products as everyone else.
âoeI was at the iPod launch,â said Edward Eigerman, who spent four years as a systems engineer at Apple and now runs his own technology consulting firm. âoeNo one that I worked with saw that coming.â
Mr. Eigerman was fired from Apple in 2005 when he was implicated in an incident in which a co-worker leaked a preview of some new software to a business customer as a favor. He said Apple routinely tries to find and fire leakers.
Philip Schiller, Appleâ(TM)s senior vice president for marketing, has held internal meetings about new products and provided incorrect information about a productâ(TM)s price or features, according to a former employee who signed an agreement not to discuss internal matters. Apple then tries to track down the source of news reports that include the incorrect details.
Five years ago, Apple took its obsession with secrecy to the courts. It sued several bloggers who had covered the company, arguing that they had violated trade-secret laws and were not entitled to First Amendment protections. A California appeals court ruled for the bloggers, and the company had to pay $700,000 in legal fees.
Apple also sued a blog called Think Secret and settled the case
Well, that's a strategy that has worked out pretty well for Cher, hasn't it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
needs to hire Apple.
...from a web site that requires registration. Think I'll pass...
"A god does not reveal his plan to his subjects!" "Don't question Steve Jobs!" "I love Apple!" Etc etc.
One of the things Apple learned well by observing others was the Osborne Effect. And its true: Would you buy a "new" iPhone if you were told a better one was 6 months away, and all the cool features it would have eventually?
Test your net with Netalyzr
If Apple were lying about his health, could this be a case of misleading the shareholders and put Apple at risk legally?
They want to keep their company secrets, secret. Put a slanted evil spin on the title just a little more please...
[sarcasm]
SHOCK
HORROR
How DARE they keep secrets secret!!! I am entitled to know everything they do, when they do it, and if I don't like it, I am entitled to force them to change it because I am entitled!
[/sarcasm]
*rolls eyes*
In plain English, that's called a lie.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
So we realize that instead of it being something mild, Steve Jobs very well may die. Does it really make sense to go after someone who is dying for not being completely honest about well, their mortality? I mean, I'm a shareholder of Apple, and I just don't find myself furious at someone who is dying from illness.
What was the difference? If I or a colleague said anything, it was a leak, and we'd be fried. But if someone on top said something, well, that was strategic.
See the difference?
It's quite possible that they knew of the likelihood of cancer at the time of the announcement, but that only the hormonal imbalance had been officially diagnosed. I mean, I think that Jobs has done a great job since his return to Apple, but there's more than one way to skin a cat, and it's possible that someone like Cook could take over and take the company even further into the stratosphere. I'm just saying, Jobs is only a man.
Combine that with the fact that plenty of perfectly healthy CEOs have been raping and plundering their companies, destroying entire industries with practices ranging from questionable to outright fraudulent. Jobs' health is his own concern, and I wish him good health for its own sake, not the value of my share in Apple.
The CB App. What's your 20?
It seems impossible to me to attribute All Things To Chairman Steve, and at the same time suggest that serious illness of the CEO, Chief Designer, Head Boffin, and the virtual Persona of Apple Inc is not a material event, and is something the company can glibly lie about. http://valleywag.gawker.com/5028508/steve-jobss-health-leads-top-apple-flack-to-contract-common-bug-with-the-truth
If true that Jobs had liver replacement, why is this not a violation of reporting requirements?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Off topic, I know, but can someone with the requisite background knowledge clue me in to why apostrophes and quotes get turned into multi-character garbage when pasted into Slashdot? I know it's some kind of character encoding issue, but why multiple characters?
Does everyone see the apostrophes in the parent comment as "Ã(TM)"? What's going on here?
The culture of secrecy is not an Apple exclusive. Any company that has an inventory which needs to be sold would be foolish to open it's future product line to the public's eyes.
Any company which has a carefully crafted public image will not suffer just anyone to make public announcements about them. This goes double (well, a few billion times actually) for companies which are publicly traded.
Anyone who is upset about a so called "deliberate untruth" regarding someone's health is a total jackass. This article is almost too stupid to respond to.
Steve Jobs may have more to worry about than losing face over being dishonest about his medical condition. His failure to fully disclose it may warrant investigation by the SEC. Company stock prices often waver based on medical reports of their CEOs, especially ones with as much direct influence and control as Jobs. Intentionally lying to shareholders may be construed as an attempt to manipulate stock prices for the benefit of Jobs and Apple's board of directors. If so, the head dogs at Apple are headed for the dog house.
There is no reason that every bit of Steve Jobs personal life needs to be on display for the world. Being a CEO of a prominent company does not mean that you need to show your medical records to everybody. All it means is that he needs to make sure there is a plan for the company to continue running if something does happen to him. I have to same responsibility to my company: make sure there is someone else who can take over my projects reasonably well if I happen to get hit by a bus. It doesn't matter if he has cancer, a liver transplant, or is 100% healthy, he still might die tomorrow if the bus comes with his name on it. The only right shareholders have is to know that the company will continue on if he dies. And all signs point to YES.
Qxe4
If all the underlying story is about Steve Jobs' health. I don't see any reason why the world should be prying into his medical records. Apple makes good products and creates that anticipation that can electrify a buying frenzy. I say go Apple.
I (sorta) see where you're coming from; the problem is one of "just because he's a CEO doesn't mean he's not entitled to privacy about medical matters." It was announced that he was having "medical problems;" past that I don't really see as it's the world's business. If it was, we'd not have things such as HIPAA in place.
How about an article about the medias obsession over Apples obsession about secrecy?
love is just extroverted narcissism
There's a serious question if Apple obeyed the laws for not disclosing more about Jobs' health. There are strict rules about publicly traded companies having to disclose materially relevant information to share holders. Having your CEO, who is known for being extremely influential and essentially responsible for most of your major products, having a severe, life threatening illness and not disclosing it, might very well run afoul of those regulations.
Since Apple is a publicly traded company this is information that definately should be public. Withholding that kind of information could be construed as Anti-Trust when/if it's used to try to keep stock prices from fluctuating.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
that apple has a "keep everything secret" policy... oxymoron?
When a thief sees a saint, all he sees are his pockets!
I would argue that blizzard does this quite well. I don't think this has to do with Vivendi, Blizzard's mother company, either.
Just another term for lie when coming from a fanboy.
>> Some say that recent reports that Steve Jobs may have had a liver transplant, still not confirmed by the company, now makes one of Apple's assertions from January -- that Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance -- seem like a deliberate untruth."
Hmmm, I would not classify that as a deliberate untruth since having a malfunctioning liver will indeed cause a hormonal imbalance. I would classify it as a good 'ol half-truth instead.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Is that anything like a lie?
If I was still an Apple shareholder I would be extremely pissed at the Apple CEO for keeping such an important bit of information secret. How much you want to bet that the very few people who knew the truth made some interesting trades in Apple stock during the period this deliberate lie was in effect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That not anti-trust MORON. That is stock price manipulation and is what every corporation tries to do as best as they can.
I always thought that Apple's biggest secret was the *fact* that we have such a strict culture of secrecy. Oh, wait, I probably shouldn't have said that. Uh-oh! Who is at the door? Hey, just forget this post. No, really, I was just making a little joke. Look, I thought we decided that waterboarding is torture after all! Arghhh.....
By that argument we should probably require all employees of any publicly traded company to make their genetic sequence available publicly, plus briefs about any potentially dangerous hobbies they may have. Better throw in data about their relationships too. Nothing impairs performance like trouble at home.
This "publicly traded company" nonsense is used to justify too much. "Medical problems" is more than enough for the shareholders and the public.
Apple would stand to be sued by the stockholders and Steve Jobs if Apple had intentionally violated the medical privacy act (HIPPA), which is FEDERAL LAW.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Wanna page back a bit to when Apple was manipulating stock prices illegally and working very hard to cover it up as "oh, well we didn't know at the time"? This is part of a larger pattern of wrongdoing that is very legally actionable.
---Vote None of the Above---
PC: Hello, I'm a PC.
Apple: Hi, I'm a Mac.
PC: Hey, Mac, that's a very professional looking suit you have on there. Quite a change: is it an Armani, by any chance?
Apple: Oh, no. I'm just here to deliver you these papers. See you in court.
*Commercial ends with "Think Different (R)" on the screen.
I'd sooner have secrecy than having to listen to Balmer and co whinging about Google and talking about suing Linux vendors all the time.
Apple is pretty good in the sense that they don't appear to criticise the competition (or if they do it doesn't make the news). They get on with what they do best.
If you look at Apple's stock price around the times health issues were declared, then you will see that it mirrors more the general tech market than knee jerk reactions to his health.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"Oh, and that whole ease of use thing."
Don't confuse the marketing tricks with the product. Miller Lite is beer (sort of). They're selling beer. They're suggesting you'll have a good time if you drink it, but they're selling beer.
Apple is selling a computer system. Not a computer, a computer system. They're an integration company. You're perfectly correct, the hardware is not particularly special. Rather, it's the way it's put together and runs. Like pretty much any other company, they use commercials that promise you'll have a good time and be popular if you buy the product.
Job's health is absolutely his business and no one else's. Who cares if it's a publicly traded company. Did he agree he and his families lives would be an open book to shareholders by virtue of them investing a few dollars? NO.
His professional actions are absolutely subject to scrutiny, after all a public company does not work for it's customers, it works for it's shareholders. This is established, especially in the US. But read that carefully, his PROFESSIONAL actions. It ends there.
If shareholders view his absence as harming stock they are welcome to replace him, temporarily or permanently. That is their sole recourse. He has done his duty in saying "I cannot preform my function and thus take a leave of absence." but in the end he wasn't even required to tell them it was for medical reasons.
I heard something about it... no idea if it is just a rumor..
I recall, back in the mid-eighties, visiting an Apple development site (on business I won't go into here). I noticed that they had a bunch of trays lying around with encouragement for the people to deposit used papers in them for recycling. Lots of rah-rah-eco-responsibility slogans on them. My impression was that these were pervasive throughout the company.
They were full of listings of the software under development.
They were provided by an external service.
OCR systems for stock printer fonts were just getting really reliable.
Soon after that visit the source code for Finder was leaked broadly. It was apparently a development version rather than any of the released versions.
I have often wondered if these facts are related.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think you mean HIPAA, and it has nothing to do with SEC.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
If the market is basing its pricing of Apple's stock on Jobs' health, that's kind of the market's fault, don't you think? I certainly wouldn't want to be required to disclose my personal medical history because some external entity decided to base financial decisions on it.
Disagree. "Medical Problems" more than cover it. If the shareholders disagree, they're welcome to attempt to replace him...
I think the last five months have demonstrated that apple can operate perfectly well without Steve Jobs anyway. Thats much better than having a single point of failure.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
. . .the article also claims that Apple's policy "is at odds with the approach taken by many other companies". So. . .uh. . .so how do you like those apples?
I don't have any problem with their hiding specific product details. But some of it is just insulting. All mention of ZFS has disappeared. Are they not ready? Have the reconsidered their commitment to it? Why should we be put in the position of Kremlin-watchers in the days of the Soviet Union, having to read meaning into the most minor of wording?
Enterprise customers expect a bit more communication, and as a consumer customer I'd appreciate it as well.
Another big problem is serious product defects. When the newsgroups are full of people who are having problems, would it hurt their image to say "we acknowledge that this is a problem, and we're doing something about it. Stay tuned." The current approach encourages lawsuits by angry customers who think they're being stonewalled.
He died in a car accident in 2006. The Steve Jobs you see today is a look-alike hired by Apple. The whole illness story was fabricated to explain the subtle differences in appearance between the the look-alike and the real Jobs. What's left of Steve is being held at a cryogenics facility in silicon valley. It's all true. Don't believe me? Play the latest iphone commercial backwards. You can hear a voice say "Steve Jobs is Dead".
Of course it doesn't have to do with the SEC. Regardless, it is still a law and the company has to follow it.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I was with Apple through the late 90's. Yes, that was an era of leaks -- but more often than not, they came from up top, not from the folks down in the trenches.
What was the difference? If I or a colleague said anything, it was a leak, and we'd be fried. But if someone on top said something, well, that was strategic.
See the difference?
At least you got to keep your job!
Perhaps Apple IS talking about suing Linux vendors...in secret!
Yes, their leaks were planned and approved, which makes them strategic. You did not have that right.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Apple is pretty good in the sense that they don't appear to criticise the competition (or if they do it doesn't make the news). They get on with what they do best.
And how did the Mac vs. PC ads not criticize the competition?
...with competing products has fewer features, and is more expensive...
Anybody who can do this deserves all the money they can get from all of the supposed suckers who buy Apple products. All the other companies who sell all these fantastic products, especially Windows computers are losing money or maybe barely making a profit. A company who can sell you the sizzle and keep the steak must be doing something right. After all, most businesses I know are there to make a profit and Apple is pretty profitable these days.
All theory is gray
Steve Jobs may have had a liver transplant, still not confirmed by the company, now makes one of Apple's assertions from January -- that Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance -- seem like a deliberate untruth."
"Deliberate untruth?" How about "bald-faced lie?" That's like trying to recast rape as "surprise sex."
Apple deliberately lied and concealed the state of Steve's health because they wanted to prevent a public panic. The public would panic because Jobs' has been made the public face of the company, is Apple to the public's perception, and the wheels will fall off if he's out of the picture. Whether or not that would be the case, this is how the public feels. Given his rock star CEO status and given that the stock may well drop with this disclosure, there may very well be a case for the shareholders to file a class-action suit calling this fraud.
I do think that the lack of public awareness of any succession policy within Apple, the naming of an appointed and groomed successor puts the company at risk. Smart people have always worked at Apple but we saw how lost they became after Jobs was kicked out. Smart people working at cross purposes leads to a giant mess. The wiki writeup on the development of OSX was an eye-opener. Jobs had to be brought in as a consultant to clean up the mess left by the aborted OS9 replacement efforts. The company needed a benign dictator to sort things out.
Some will point out that many other technology companies survive without having a CEO who is on a first name basis with the global public. This is true but Apple is as much a fashion label as a technology company. He's more akin to Oprah or Richard Branson than, say, the heads of Sony or IBM or Samsung whose names I can't even think of at the moment because nobody's made an issue of it. I don't think anybody would panic if the CEO of American Airlines dropped dead but if Richard Branson croaked, I think the Virgin brands would take a hit even if it wasn't really warranted.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Apple is pretty good in the sense that they don't appear to criticise the competition (or if they do it doesn't make the news). They get on with what they do best.
Never seen the "I'm a Mac - I'm a PC" advertising campaign?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Isn't this like withholding info from shareholders?
I would think that the health of Steve Jobs is quite important to the stock price of apple.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This is just a side effect of the Reality Distortion Field. Nothing to see here, just move along .
Apparently you don't watch much TV; Apples entire advertising strategy is criticizing the competition for claims which, in many cases, simply fantasy (such as "1,000 years in the future, we will still be a superior machine").
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Sure...
OK, we have a 1099 dollar MacBook here and a 799 HP laptop here. The Apple is more expensive, one less USB port, same size screen, and IEEE 1394 port on my Mac.
The HP that lacks "selling sex appeal, social status, and "having a good time"' hangs every couple hours, wifi drops hourly and reboots 3-5 times a week. My sexy, social status having a good time Mac has 9 days uptime right now.
I've been using computers for 30 years now, our first computer was a IBM PC XT in April '83, first laptop I used was a Toshiba T1000, so I've been around the sexy and unsexy for a while, I use a Mac because I find them to be more stable and reliable, not because they have cool commercials and neat stores.
Apple is very much a technology company, they invented Firewire/IEEE 1394, pioneered USB and Wifi enabled computers across entire lines.
Apple is pretty good in the sense that they don't appear to criticise the competition (or if they do it doesn't make the news).
They certainly do.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
mmMMmm...Delicious Apple Fritters.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Where I might slightly disagree with you is that the Apple, Inc. image is very closely tied to the public illusion that IS Steve Jobs... people don't wait with baited breath for the next press release from Apple... they wait for the next PR demonstration from Steve himself. And yes, to an extent, Steve (though not his family) did agree to be an open book when he allowed himself to become such a big part of Apple's advertising and promotions.
Because of this, I think the shareholders might be due more than "medical problems"... certainly his specific medical records aren't for the public consumption, and obviously don't violate HIPPA (we have enough precedents breaking things like that), but the shareholders probably do have a right in this case to more than just "medical problems". Maybe something to the effect of "on-going treatment with an expected return to his post in 6 months, and full health within the year" kind of thing.
A cold is medical problems... so is cancer. A share holder of a company that uses it's CEO as one of it's primary selling points does have a right to know if that PR asset is about to kack.
--
I drank what?
"Parts: the Clonus Horror" with Peter Graves. Classic.
See the difference?
Despite your attempt at sarcasm, I DO see the difference. Generally people not in upper management making decisions that affect the whole company is frowned upon. Do you also get equally upset when upper management decides to develop some new product, and they don't let you make that decision?
AccountKiller
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm not sure HIPAA would apply in this case. It only covers "protected entities" from disclosing medical information -- usually insurance companies, hospitals, etc.
A share holder of a company that uses it's CEO as one of it's primary selling points does have a right to know if that PR asset is about to kack.
Really, a right? How exactly was that right bestowed upon them? What gave them that right? Is there some sort of shareholder's bill of rights that I haven't heard about which says that if a company uses its CEO as a PR asset then shareholders have the right to know if the CEO is having medical problems?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
From The Atlantic. Ruthlessly compressed.
It has become conventional to think that a corporation, for better or worse, takes on the coloration of its CEO--Jack Welch turns GE into a tribe of aggressive, rigorously unsentimental alpha dogs; Jeff Skilling populates Enron with nihilists expert in gaming the system.
But how strong is this power--or any executive power?
James March goes so far as to say that in any well-run company that's conscientious about grooming its managers, candidates for the top job are so similar in their education, skills, and psychology as to be virtually interchangeable. All that matters is that someone be in charge. "Management may be extremely difficult and important even though managers are indistinguishable. It is hard to tell the difference between two different light bulbs also; but if you take all the light bulbs away, it is difficult to read in the dark."
One problem with the idea of the transformative CEO, able to reshape corporate culture or inspire workers to new heights is that people simply don't feel allegiance to large entities like corporations, no matter who's at the helm. Their loyalties are far more localized. Like infantrymen, their sense of belonging extends to their own platoon but no farther. And in these postmodern times, employees are scornful of grandiose rhetoric about higher purposes and the nobility of their cause. From this perspective, the CEO's power to affect performance, while strong within the immediate team of top executives, rapidly diminishes as it extends beyond that team.
The highly localized nature of loyalty means that the real power to influence corporate performance resides not with the CEO but with middle management. In the The Truth About Middle Managers, Paul Osterman contends that middle managers are neither "victims," robbed of the ability to act independently by some faceless bureaucracy, nor "villains" like Dilbert's Bozo-haired boss, too clueless to do anything but gum up the works. In Osterman's view, the middle manager is the secret hero in the large corporation's rise to social and economic dominance. That rise "depended on middle managers, because you just couldn't achieve the scale that we have without people doing the kind of planning work that they do." As "craft workers," middle managers value their task, sense its importance to the larger cause, and feel great loyalty to the people they work with. But their loyalty to the corporation is fraying, largely because they see top management hogging all the rewards and glory. "There's more cynicism" in the middle-management ranks now, Osterman says. "There's less willingness to go the extra mile."
CEOs in some industries have a great deal of discretion. They're known as "Unconstrained Managers." In a company such as Apple, the CEO is the one who decides which new cell phone to release to a waiting public, which chip company will supply the integrated circuits that make it work, and which phone-service providers to partner with.
In hotly competitive industries where new-product development is crucial and choices about which markets to focus upon are difficult an Unconstrained Manager can have a big impact. Investors worry about Steve Jobs's health because they believe Apple needs his flair for making inspired choices.
Not every Unconstrained Manager is a Steve Jobs, of course. Donald Hambrick and Sydney Finkelstein, who coined the Titular Figurehead/Unconstrained Manager dichotomy in a 1987 article suggest that the world would be better off if leadership effects were always negligible. "If we had to choose as a society between doing away with Figureheads or Unconstrained Managers," they wrote, "it is the Figureheads we would keep."
"Good leaders can make a small positive difference; bad leaders can make a huge negative difference," Jeffrey Pfeffer told Fortune in 2006. Many Americans, surveying the aftermath of eight years with an Unconstrained Manager as their chief executive, might be tempted to agree.
Do CEOs Matter? [June 2009]
He was on openly announced medical leave, and was plainly, visibly, quite ill. The fact that he didn't send a bunch of bloggers and IT pundits a weekly email update on his health is, officially and in all probability, legally, of no consequence, due to his leave of absence.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Wah-wait wait what? No, seriously. WHAT?
I'm a Mac.
I'm a PC.
I'm totally not criticizing the competition.
Again and again and again.
I'm not a fan of Monopolysoft, and, granted, this is after several Anti-trust suits, but One Microsoft Way (cue ominous music) has almost ALMOST become a helpful though reluctant neighbor as opposed to the We're hip; We're cool; We're an exclusive clique; We repeatedly make fun of anyone who is not with us (just like high school); We cost at least 50% more than we should (I reference the Mac Pro and I have done the math); Heaven help you should you ever need to buy one of our replacement parts (you techs know what I'm talking about); and We'd sooner die than tell you the very least of our secrets! lunatics at #1 Infinite Loop.
Dammit, I wish I hadn't sold my penguin box.
Yeah apple never whines or criticizes it's competition. Well except for nearly all of their commercials where they rely on stereotypes to bash Microsoft. Those commercials are the ultimate whine about their competition and they are annoying as hell. Im not a fan of MS but honestly when was the last time XPsp2 crashed or didn't "just work"? Maybe I'm just jaded because I admin 50 XP boxes and 20 OSX boxes, but the people using OSX have a significantly greater rate of needing assistance than my windows users...
"Some say that recent reports that Steve Jobs may have had a liver transplant, still not confirmed by the company, now makes one of Apple's assertions from January â" that Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance â" seem like a deliberate untruth."
Really? You know IGF-1 is produced in the liver right? Lack of IGF-1 can affect weight. It's directly related to growth hormone. So, at worst, we're talking misdirection here, not deliberate untruth.
Predictably you got modded down, as does anything that doesn't praise Apple (I browse Apple stories at -1, because of the moderation abuse). But I agree. And more to the point, surely so do Apple fans - consider how many times that they themselves argue:
Sure, that other phone may look better on paper, but who cares about features. What Apple are selling is an experience. I can't explain that to you, because it's not measurable, it's intangible.
I've also certainly heard on Slashdot the argument that the Iphone is better on the grounds of its looks.
Apple is pretty good in the sense that they don't appear to criticize the competition (or if they do it doesn't make the news). They get on with what they do best.
1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial
The funny thing is, you're confirming exactly what the OP said, by making just those points: that it doesn't matter about the hardware or the features, because instead they compete on intangibles, and the experience of using a "system" rather than a computer. But you get +4, and the OP gets -1 Flamebait.
are Secretive Copyright Nazis and Lie for Profit and this is news how? Oh and Dear Apple娉 Legal Person, please do not sue my ass off!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Sounds like you picked up a crappy HP.
My £500 3 year old PC has never crashed, doesn't hang, doesn't drop WiFi (I've had disconnects, but only due to the router, not the laptop). It Just Works.
Actually tell a lie, I have had hangs - when I'm running Itunes (though the OS recovers fine when I close off the dodgy software).
Wow, 9 days. Obviously no one's ever had a PC on for that long.
USB and Wifi weren't Apple inventions, but no doubt like most mythical "Apple firsts", you are using some definition of pioneered that excludes any other company who did so first.
in the 1970s. the apple II
Any Mac bought in 1997 will run the new OS - the 20th Annv. Mac does not and I have a 1997 sales receipt.
Apple ][ forever
The Newton is an important part of our product line. - Said by Apple salesmen in March after the Feb Steving of the Newton
Note how all of these were while Steve Jobs was in charge.
Other Jobs' truths: /// is perfection in design due to the lack of a noisy fan
Lisa is not my daughter
Apple owns the name Macintosh
Apple records - we won't get into music
Woz, dude. This is all we were paid for the gig
The Apple
I'll be interested to see if Apple is more honest post Jobs.
New York Times link generator
For instance Apple's Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger
In this case, "?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all" was appended, though at times, other magic keys have been required.
I was with Apple through the late 90's. Yes, that was an era of leaks -- but more often than not, they came from up top, not from the folks down in the trenches.
What was the difference? If I or a colleague said anything, it was a leak, and we'd be fried. But if someone on top said something, well, that was strategic.
See the difference?
maybe the guy on top had permission to speak and it was a thought through decision! did you sign NDAs? Were you given permission to speak about an unreleased product?
Just a thought.
P.S. I don't have a /. account that's why i used AC.
Yes, Steve's health is his own personal business. But like Martha Stewart and Oprah, they ARE the companies that they run. Stock holders better be informed that there is something wrong with Steve, Martha, and Oprah, because without out them, the companies might not stay afloat. Do people need to go running around flashing Steve's health records in front of every reporter who asks? NO! But lying doesn't help. Either say no comment or come out and be real with people. Let them know that Steve is not well, is taking time away from the company, and that you don't know when he'll be back. In most companies, everyone is replaceable, certain companies don't have this luxury, Apple is one of them.
If I or a colleague said anything, it was a leak... But if someone on top said something, well, that was strategic.
But that is a huge distinction. If I tell you my secret, that's me confiding in you. If you tell someone else my secret, you're breaking my trust. Since the people at the top are the ones who own the secrets, it's theirs to tell.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Did you miss all those PC/Mac ads where they roundly criticise the competition?
My bookie(SEC) doesn't need to know about a quarterback (CEO) injury. It's clearly a family(insider) matter.
after all a public company does not work for it's customers, it works for it's shareholders. This is established, especially in the US.
And it will wreck much of what's left of the culture and economy if its not re-examined and un-established.
Certainly a company has very significant obligations to its investors, because they have committed their money, and hold the ultimate power for executive decisions. But it also owes a lot to its employees, who have invested their lives, and are powerful in the sense that most of the company's intellectual capital is in their heads. And it owes something to its suppliers, people who buy its products, all all other parties it has relationships with.
True, company employees are free to leave if they don't like how they are treated, if they can find another suitable company willing to hire their specialized skills. And customers are free not to continue buying products. But this ignores the significance of their investment, and the high cost of starting again elsewhere. And its also true that stockholders can sell their stock if they don't like how they are treated. This assertion that only stockholders matter exists to justify immoral behavior that maximizes short term stock value, but there's no other logic behind it.
I'm in agreement about Steve Jobs though. Just had to rant about the 'maximize shareholder value' thing. (You are certainly correct in your characterization of the prevailing consensus, and I mean nothing personally.)
Maybe? Does he have a good product idea? Is the idea that upper management have stupid?
Companies that don't listen to all the experts they've hired aren't getting their money's worth.
Wow, 9 days, yea, thats how Macs work now, they stay up pretty much until you need to do a software update that requires a reboot. Uptime on my iMac here is 31 days, 17:55, because I've not patched it yet.
My xserve has done over 365 serving files/html.
Vista/XP it doesn't matter, OS X since 10.1 has just been more stable in my experience.
I didn't say USB/Wifi were Apple inventions, I said they were the first to deploy them across the product lines. They did the same thing with DVD-ROM drives, but missed the boat on CD-R/RWs.
Go back to the launch of the iMac and show me what makers deployed USB that vocally, then to iBook launch and show who had Wifi.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec7.html
IBM's history of the USB standard credits the iMac.
http://www.coe.montana.edu/ee/rwolff/EE580/history_of_wifi.htm
"The technology had been standardised; it had a name; now Wi-Fi needed a market champion, and it found one in Apple, a computer-maker renowned for innovation. The company told Lucent that, if it could make an adapter for under $100, Apple would incorporate a Wi-Fi slot into all its laptops. Lucent delivered, and in July 1999 Apple introduced Wi-Fi as an option on its new iBook computers, under the brand name AirPort. âoeAnd that completely changed the map for wireless networking,â'
Maybe so, but then just say "medical problems," instead of spreading misinformation (aka lying) about the extent of his health issues by saying it was a "hormonal imbalance." Unless he really didn't know, which is something we'll probably never know.
At any rate, there are different SEC disclosure rules for executives than for employees. Ultimately, if an employee is having a performance problem that could affect the company, it is the CEO's responsibility to correct that problem. That authority can and typically is delegated to management, but the responsibility cannot be delegated; it is incumbent upon the position of CEO. Therefore, it is always more important to know details about the CEO than any particular employee.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Apple's Obsession With Sorcery Grows Stronger
which would explain a few things.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Deliberate untruths are lies, but not all lies are deliberate untruths. The most effective lies tend to be composed of nothing but true statements; the lie in that case consists of the deliberate omission of crucial information that the liar knows, in the expectation that the hearer will reach a desired false conclusion. The thing that makes those lies the "best" is that they're verifyable; if your victim takes care to check whether what you actually said is true, they will find that indeed it is, and that will reinforce the conclusion you want them to reach.
Are you adequate?
There was actually speculation on Buzz Out Loud that the leak about Jobs' transplant was a very strategic and deliberate leak. What it boiled down to is the fact that the WSJ got a report from an unnamed source that Jobs had a transplant, and broke the story after the markets had closed on friday and iPhone 3GS sales had gone well on release day. Thus Apple stock didn't take the large hit it would have taken had this story hit during the week, instead of giving everybody a full weekend to calm down. According to a later episode of BOL the unnamed source was in fact confirmed to be Apple, meaning that it was very likely a strategic press release.
Here's my take on the article - "Whah. Apple does things their way. And they have enough influence that we have to kiss their ass, instead of their PR dept kissing ours."
This is a media cry-fest masquerading as an insightful opinion piece. Problem is, the opinion being championed is important to media, not shareholders.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Hello, I'm a mac commercial who likes to criticize the competition...
What?
He did have a hormonal imabalnce, they said he had very serious health issues and would return to work in June. All of that is true. The press thinks it has a right to know everything about everyone. Apple provided all of the information any investor would need to make an informed decision.
He has the right for privacy, but investors have the right to speculate -- that's what investors do.
Steve Jobs being at Apple must have some measurable financing impact on the company or else he wouldn't get paid his bonuses.
If Steve wants his privacy, that comes with a share price that's volatile on the basis of speculation. I don't think that's too high a price to pay personally, but he seems very irritable about that reality.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
If you're worried about the stock tanking, hedge it with some puts. The puts's price have the uncertainty in the CEO's health baked in.
Really, a right? How exactly was that right bestowed upon them? What gave them that right?
SEC.
Saying "Our CEO/mascot/messiah will be out for a while just for the hell of it" would likely run afoul of SEC disclosure rules (use google's cache, direct link require registration).
I don't think the specific details of his medical condition should be public knowledge under any circumstances but some idea of the time-frame of the absence should be given (according to the SEC) .
Just as the GP stated:
Maybe something to the effect of "on-going treatment with an expected return to his post in 6 months, and full health within the year" kind of thing.
Don't be so ignorant. Apple's entire marketing campaign is based upon criticising the competition!
Ever see those Mac vs PC ads?
Who the hell modded you insightful?
Life is full of intangibles. That's why I'd rather listen to Beethoven the Backstreet Boys. I can't explain why, but that doesn't mean that a difference doesn't exist.
Every business entity has something their coulda/woulda/shoulda done differently. And, every stock holder wants complete transparency for all business dealings and information but their own.
Apple feels it realizes a business advantage from playing its cards a bit closer to the vest than - say - Dell. The only difference, the only difference between the trade secrets Apple holds dear (starting from the very existence of an unreleased product, on down) to those for Dell (a US$0.02 price advantage on sata cables) is that Apple's are vastly more interesting to read about.
Therefore, what Apple considers a trade secret is of great financial interest to writers and publishers who are accustomed to knowing every corporate detail except how the execs are manipulating the company stock this week, and which subordinates they're dicking.
If the press, or more to the point the stockholders, don't think they're feeling enough love, they can sell the other owners on the Transparent Apple, Inc. concept at the next stockholders meeting, and vote a new board accordingly. Until I see signs of a nasty proxy fight over this, the whole thing is made up news, or in the word of the metatags, !news.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Have you ever heard of the "Hello, I'm A Mac" advertising campaign?
Apple doesn't appear to criticise the competition? "Redmond, start your copiers."
I think the last five months have demonstrated that apple can operate perfectly well without Steve Jobs anyway. Thats much better than having a single point of failure.
And the next five years?
Five months isn't even two quarters.
Apple is first and foremost a marketing company, they spend more time and energy on creating images around their products then actually creating them.
see.
HP's are complete crap, try Dell's or Lenovo's Business range (Latitude and Thinkpad respectively). They cost a little bit more then the consumer lines but come with better HW support. I just bought a 14" Lenovo R400 for A$1300, a 13" macbook is A$1600 both of these prices in are EOFY sales, The Lenovo has a newer C2D proc, same RAM (2 GB, 800Mhz) newer Intel IGM (X4500 in Lenovo, X3100 in Macbook), higher res screen (1200x800 for macbook, 1400x900 for Lenovo), 2yr RTB warranty (Apple is 1 yr RTB). The Lenovo came with Vista home basic (this is about the only major flaw I could find with the R400) which I quickly removed all trace of and instilled Ubuntu and it runs like a train.
When buying a laptop, always buy from the business range as there you get what you pay for and to the best of my knowledge, Apple has no business range.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This quote is interesting: "Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for marketing, has held internal meetings about new products and provided incorrect information about a product's price or features, according to a former employee who signed an agreement not to discuss internal matters. Apple then tries to track down the source of news reports that include the incorrect details."
Also, "Four years ago, he said, a senior Apple executive directly told him the company had no interest in developing a cheap iPod with no screen. Soon after, the company released just that: the iPod Shuffle."
Translation: Apple top management believes that a publicly-owned company can be deliberately dishonest.
"Apple is first and foremost a marketing company, they spend more time and energy on creating images around their products then actually creating them."
Really?
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/07/apple-adds-staff-boosts-randd-spending-in-fy2008/
"The filing also said that Apple spent 40 percent more on research and development this year, compared to 2007: $1.1 billion."
http://industry.bnet.com/technology/10001556/examining-microsofts-and-apples-marketing-spend/
"Appleâ(TM)s filings for the quarter that ended on March 28, 2009 indicate that for the three month period, SG&A increased by 11 percent, or $99 million,"
So the marketing company spends about $400 million a year on marketing and $1,100 million a year on R&D. Yea, they are a tech company still.
As for not buying HP, not my choice, its the fiancee's and she loves them.
As for Apple not having a business range, those would be the MacBook Pro and Air lines.
I supported alot of Dell/Lenovo and IBM laptops in enterprise and education, from a support standpoint, the Dells were the worst, then MacBooks, Lenovo/IBM and finally MacBook Pros. So yea, from that standpoint the MacBook Pros were the "business" stable computers.
He did have a hormonal imbalance, they said he had very serious health issues and would return to work in June. All of that is true.
Quite true, assuming the liver thing is accurate:
From Apple's press release:
Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause - a hormone imbalance that has been "robbing" me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.
From Wikipedia:
The liver plays a major role in metabolism and has a number of functions in the body, including [...] plasma protein synthesis, hormone production, ...
So if your liver's on the fritz, you're hormone production will be off, and so will plasma protein synthesis. Personally, I think all of this should just go away. Whether or not the CEO is healthy is relevant to shareholders, but the details of that ought to be private.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
No, you are gravely mistaken. From the Lexicanum: Steve Jobs is confined within the Pearl White Throne, vast bio-mechanical machinery forming the great Sanctum Pommumnis, located deep within the continent-spanning complex in California known as the Cupertino Palace. There Steve Job's physical form is sustained by carefully-maintained machinery. Physically, the enthroned Steve Jobs is a ravaged corpse. The last surviving cells in his shattered body are sustained by the Pearl White Throne, providing an anchor for his spirit, which extends across the entire Internet . While his body is sustained, his will endures. His existence is said to be an unending torment, with his every thought enslaved to the task of ruling, guiding and protecting his release dates. Ultimately it is only his will to endure that allows him to survive, as he knows his death would lead to the destruction of the Apple Empire and leave mankind without the guidance it needs to survive.
You managed to completely ignore the GPs rant about selling image and being popular and having a good time, etc.
Note that you can buy a boat or plane or house quite cheaply. You just have to put it together. Companies that assemble those things for us are very popular, and don't get accused of merely selling image. Even Dell charges you something for putting the computer together. And putting a pile of crap on it so you have to format the thing when you get it.
Of course they are obsessed with secrecy, Big Brother is watching you know.
Shhhhhhh.
By that reasoning, CEO's dropping dead of a totally unexpected heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm should be totally against the law. Inconsiderate bastard needs to SCHEDULE that sort of thing, and warn shareholders 6 months in advance.
Get a grip. There is nothing certain in life - not even the life of a valuable commodity such as some pinheaded CEO. In the history of the United States, much more important people have dropped dead unexpectedly. Lincoln and Kennedy come to mind. There have even been one or two important people outside the US who have keeled over for one reason or another. Princess Di comes readily to mind.
The world goes on. Stockholders and everyone else pick up the pieces and finds someplace else to invest their time, money, and other resources.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Those are emphatically not business line laptop. Lack any kind of NBD on-site warranty completely disqualifies them from this category. Also, Apple just doesn't do volume deals, if I by 10 Dell's or Lenovo's I get a discount (10-20% depending on stock\sales\time of year) and this is in a small business under 70 people.
Further more, the Air is terrible at running XP, I'd hate to think what Vista and 7 would look like. This makes it completely useless for the business world.
Once again, the difference between dell consumer support and dell corporate support. Dell consumer support is crap, not nearly as bad as apple (who's solution was to tell me to take it to an Apple store, the nearest one from Perth, WA is 5000 KM's away) but Dell's corporate support is excellent, for a small business they will have a part dispatched to you within 24 hours of a fault being reported, they will even send a tech if needed but this may take longer then 24 hours depending on support arrangements. Dell's consumer call centre is in India, their corporate support call centre is in Singapore (Malay/Singaporean accents are a lot easier for westerners to understand, but they are more expensive), their sales call centre is in Sydney.
All major OEM's separate out corporate support and consumer support. Dells corporate support is trained to deal with sysadmins so you dont just get the phone monkeys going through a script, if you tell them the problem they will respond accordingly. With Apple I've only ever had script monkeys and people who would act offended that I would insinuate that a Mac was having a problem. Apple is by a country mile, the worst support I've ever had to deal with.
Yes, really.
Spend has nothing to do with it. Income and sales determine what category a company falls into.
Almost all of Apple's income is from royalties derived from the sale of its trademarked products. Apple produces none of its own hardware and little of its own software, all the production is outsourced and much of the software development. Seeing as Apple does not license its OS to outside companies there is no income derived from licensing. Apple own the trademarks and patents, all of the production is outsourced.
Almost all of the work that comes out of Cupertino is marketing, making Apple a marketing company who sells devices made by other people with their trademark.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Another person's view: Apple Lies?. Quote: "I'll be interested to see if Apple is more honest post Jobs."
Where is the empathy on this list for someone who has health problems, especially when it is a man who has a wife and kids? It really sickens me to see the "humor" on some of these posts. Steve Jobs has done more for the personal computer industry than anyone I know. He has restored Apple, Inc to profitability. No analyst, no investor, no Mac or iPhone owner can dispute this.
The infantile need to judge someone who has achieved more than you will ever will is an ugly thing.
You changed the subject. I wasn't talking about what is legal. I was saying that news reports indicate that Apple executives believe they can be deliberately dishonest.
Not to mention that the company and CEO himself have built up this "Cult of Steve" mythos so much that when he does leave the company unless they plan it VERY very well, then it is gonna cause a serious dive in their stock price. Considering that a lot of this is due to Apple themselves building up the "Cult of Steve" I think the stock holders have a right to know if the "man that saved Apple" is about to bail or not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Apple should be required to post to their website an image of the bottom of every cup of tea or coffee that Steve drinks, so stock analysts can exercise their sacred rights and interpret the patterns of the leavings to foretell the market.
but we'll have to kill you. [and take your liver]
I will concede that my use of the word "right" in this sentence: "A share holder of a company that uses it's CEO as one of it's primary selling points does have a right to know if that PR asset is about to kack." implies something stronger than may be legally or morally correct.
But you've exaggerated the issue as well... accidents happen, workers strike, epidemics occur, laws change, manufacturing plants suffer catastrophe's, people die, economies shrink... basically sh^t happens. And a lot of it happens with little to no warning.
But when publicly held company chooses to let it's CEO become an integral part of it's PR strategy, that CEO becomes more than just "a person"... he is an asset (or at least considered as one if you don't hate Apple reflexively... and before the comments, I have on occasion, so this isn't fan-boyism) Certainly, an unexpected death is just that... unexpected. So is an earthquake that takes out your largest materials supplier.
To the extent that he can, he owes the people he works for (the shareholders) a reasonable amount of information about his ability to do his job, ESPECIALLY since he is such a major PR asset for the company. Read my post again... I never said he should tell them the exact ailment and the exact treatment and the exact effects it will have on him. I said he owed them an outline that gives them the information necessary to determine if he should/needs to be replaced temporarily (or permanently) because he WORKS FOR THEM.
If I get sick, my boss expects to know how long and to what degree this is going to affect my ability to work, even if laws or a contract prevent him from outright firing me.
The fact that anything Steve might tell the shareholders will become public knowledge (i.e. newsworthy) is irrelevant. He is their employee, and if he becomes unable to do his job, even temporarily, they deserve to know because they also have a job to do, and that is, ensure their funding and direction (for the majority stakeholders) keeps the company profitable.
--
I drank what?
Apple has no obligation to tell them. And the investors have no reason to not ask. It's up to Jobs to deny requests. There's nothing legally compelling him to talk and nothing legally stopping people from talking about it. Is it polite? No. Do investors care what is polite? No. Should they? No.
If it helps them make more money what incentive is there to not and try to figure it out. If Jobs' death was imminent then they could lose money.
Rumor has it he is 99.999999% empty space, is full of charged particles, some moving at relativistic speeds, and is largely comprised of matter from a ancient supernova. Clearly then, he can't be human.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
"The NY Times has a story on the culture of secrecy at Apple (registration possibly required)."
/facepalm
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Shhhhhhh people, let's keep it between us... is't supposed to be a secret...
Heh, good luck with that. Shareholders have been fighting a losing battle recently on Wall Street, trying only to simply control executive salaries and bonuses that are in effect a highly elaborate and ritualized train robbery and put into place by secretive and anonymous boards of directors who are literally "the old boys club". The chances of shareholders actually being able to select specific executives in this day and age is practically non-existent. This is the crux of the crisis in corporate governance that may yet crash and burn our economy.
That's like saying "see, my car just went on this straight road fine while I had my hands off the wheel for 5 seconds!". That doesn't mean that it'll also work in tight turns.
Yes, car analogies just work for any fucking thing. I wonder how people did before we had cars...
You just got troll'd!
What I dont understand is why people always tie Apples success to this one man. Do people really think Apple would just wither and die if the almighty Jobs wasnt around? People always seem to give him sole credit for anything innovative that apple does disregarding the huge number of lowely peon engineers and design teams that bring a product to the market. If anything, Jobs has hindered innovation that comes from the community that has given apple the financial sucess that it has by being obsessed with control of source code and enterprise image. Perhaps withput Jobs Apple will become a true force in the OS market that embraces development and innovation from the people that matter, the ones that spend money on its products and would like to improve them.
How does the slashdot community that embraces open source and free exchange of information worship Apple as the company that will dethrone Microsoft? I for one am happy that Apple is not in the position that Microsoft is in, and is not the domminent company in the OS and software development market. I will take the lesser of two evils, thank you very much.
Anyone care to describe what they think an Apple domminated PC market would look like?
Permission to flame away...
(Just to throw this in I dont think his personal medical history should be revealed to anyone that he does not want it revealed to, wether its the SEC, shareholders, or the zombie apple consumer)
but:
simple hormonal imbalance with treatment methods known and expected recovery in 4 months is what is realeased.
in reality: scouring the US for the hospital with the shortest list for a liver transplant (getting one is incumbent on being extremely sick or else it goes to a sicker person).
guess what, he was the latter, not the former. announcing your key employee who is basically responsible for the success/strategic direction of your company is ok when he really isn't is the problem.
I don't care frankly about a cold he may have. But if you call it a cold and you knew it was the Ebola virus, you are misleading your shareholders. now , if his condition deteriorated in the last 3 months and testing revealed it to not be a simple hormonal imbalance, the fact you decided to get into details means you probably ought to be telling people it isn't that simple. if you had simply said steve jobs is taking a medical leave then you could only be held for omission of details, which is different than deliberately misleading people.
Interesting: Steven Paul Jobs.
Quote: "I have 3 kids (Lisa is not my daughter, enough of those rumors)."
Wikipedia: Steve Jobs.
Quote: "The couple have three children. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan.[43] She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity.[43]"
Wikipedia's reference 43 is page 2 of Fortune Magazine's March 5, 2008 article, The trouble with Steve Jobs.
Quote: "When Jobs had his own illegitimate child, also at the age of 23, he too struggled with his responsibilities. For two years, though already wealthy, he denied paternity while Lisa's mother went on welfare. At one point Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn't be Lisa's father because he was "sterile and infertile, and as a result thereof, did not have the physical capacity to procreate a child." He later acknowledged paternity of Lisa, married Laurene Powell, a Stanford MBA, and fathered three more children. Lisa Brennan-Jobs, now 29, graduated from Harvard and is a writer."
From page 1 of that article: 'Pondering this issue, Stanford management science professor Robert Sutton discussed Jobs in his bestselling 2007 book, "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't." "As soon as people heard I was writing a book on assholes, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story," says Sutton. "The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry'
Another quote from page 1: "... his deployment of stock options at Apple and Pixar, which exposed both companies to backdating scandals."
From page 2: 'Jobs' break-the-rules attitude extends to refusing to put a license plate on his Mercedes. "It's a little game I play," he explained to Fortune in 2001.'
'One former board member described Anderson's role as "tantrum controller." '
'The company discovered "irregularities" with 6,428 grants between 1997 and 2001 - roughly one in six that Apple issued during that period. (New disclosure requirements after that time caused backdating to dry up.) The company also found no instances of backdating before Jobs took over as CEO. Apple was forced to restate its earnings, taking a pretax charge for unreported compensation expenses of $105 million.'
"Disney, which bought Pixar in 2006, also investigated and found a backdating problem there during Jobs' time as CEO."
Page 3: "Anderson, in an extraordinary public statement he issued after settling his case with the SEC, disputed Apple's exoneration of Jobs. Through his lawyer, he said he alerted Jobs to the accounting implications even as the CEO was in the process of picking a retroactive date for the grant to his top lieutenants. He also said Jobs assured him that the award had been properly approved by Apple's board."
Page 4: "It was a great speech, simple and moving - though it clearly left the false impression that Jobs had learned of his illness in mid-2004 and immediately proceeded to surgery, when in fact he had learned of it in October 2003."
I've studied the issues for many years, and have formed the theory that Job's abusiveness is possibly the cause of his illness.
You have it backwards. Most of Slashdot hates Apple, and Apple products. Most of them think that Apple products are vastly inferior to more geek friendly products because they are shiny and put user friendliness above pure utility and complexity. To rectify Apple's success over more nerdly products, we must put the success outside of the product, and thus the only reason people like Apple products is because of Steve Jobs, or they want to show off in coffee shops.
Obviously this point of view is rather stupid, but thats how psychology works.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
OF course they do, and comes as part of being a CEO of a large company. Just like shareholders would like to know if the CEO is suddenly selling millions of bucks worth of shares, or suddenly lost billions on a shit investment, they should know about the health of the most important people in the company... What if Jobs had syphillis and went bat shit crazy and spent 3 billion developing a mp3 player that you listened to by sticking in your ass? Considering the shareprice of Apple can go up or down depending on what Jobs says (regarding the future of the company) it's all fair. If he doesn't like it, he can stop taking such a public role and hands on approach to managing the company and delegate to someone else.
Obviously it has a bearing on the companies future. If the man who guided them to success suddenly stops working, then that affects future performance. I agree that not everything needs to be made public, but the severity of the illness, timeframe and the illnesses effect on his future work capacity should have been made public.
If you invested in Google when it was Brin and Page and a couple of others, wouldn't you like to know if they had a medical condition that would incapacitate them in 2 years?
Sure, Apple can function without him for now, but what direction is the next CEO going to take? There are many examples of a new CEO coming in and raping the company because either they took a different direction or made bad decisions. That can make or break a company.
Simple hormonal balance what was released at first:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/05sjletter.html
One week later there was an update that stated his problems were more complex than originally thought. It was in this second message that the medical leave of absence was announced.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/14advisory.html
Just wait... all of this is going to seem like a genius move when the iLiver comes out.
Apple is heavily reliant on open-source software, so IMO, they just owe transparency to the public.
Anyway, with that kind of attitude, I'm not sure if I want to use their technology. We have no idea what will be supported in the future and for how long. Also getting more in-depth information about a product (perhaps even source-level) will of course be impossible.
...and Larry is getting laaaaarrrrrrger.
Should be "Jobs' abusiveness", of course.
Slashdot's Obsession With Apple Grows Stronger
There you go.
"Remember, there's a little piece of all of you inside me"
;)
That is so gay.
If Steve Jobs is terminally ill and Apple knows it, they cannot say that he broke his leg. I suspect that Apple can say nothing about Steve Jobs health, but if they make a statement about his health it must be true.
The statement they made about Steve Jobs health and his leave of absence treads a fine line. If he returns to work in July or August, they are probably just fine. If he never returns to work their statement is quite possibly basis for a winnable stockholders suit. If they had merely said he was taking an indefinite leave of absence and said nothing about his health, my understanding is they would be ok. However, they wanted to squash some of the rumors and minimize their impact on Apple's stock price,
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Did somebody get their mail order legal license today and decide to take it for a spin? Jobs isn't company property, and he is entitled to his medical privacy like anyone else. As for your nonsense about anti-trust, you obviously have no clue what you're talking about.
I've met some Apple fanboys so dedicated to the cause they probably would have given if Steve asked.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It doesn't apply to "normal" people. If you're rich and famous like Steve Jobs, then too fucking bad. That is just the price he has to put up with.
"Maybe something to the effect of "on-going treatment with an expected return to his post in 6 months, and full health within the year" kind of thing."
- I believe this is exactly what they did. They disclosed his medical issues were more complicated than originally thought, that he was taking 6 months medical leave, and expected to return after that leave. What exactly are they missing that you think they should have disclosed?
This right was bestowed on the shareholders because this information is material to running the business. The comment above that all the employees should submit their genetic sequences is off-base, because they're not all material information. However, given the role Steve Jobs plays - which is arguably more important than most CEOs - this is definitely important.
Suppose *you* were the person who bought Apple shares right before it was revealed that Jobs was going to have to retire for health reasons. You'd be pretty unhappy to know that this information was known to the company and not revealed as part of their filings, at least as much as if they suddenly had to deal with a major lawsuit.
My penis is bigger than yours...
Fuck dude grow up, no-one's computer crash daily anymore no matter what OS they are running. (Well except maybe Vista hehe )
By that argument we should probably require all employees of any publicly traded company to make their genetic sequence available publicly, plus briefs about any potentially dangerous hobbies they may have. Better throw in data about their relationships too. Nothing impairs performance like trouble at home.
And by that argument strawman isn't a fallacy. Equating someone wanting to know about the serious health issues concerning a very key and influential CEO, like, y'know, those that require a liver transplant, to requiring all employees to submit their genetic sequence, hobbies, and relationship information is exactly that.
Apple is a publicly traded company, yes. Steve Jobs is not publicly traded. He is an employee of that company, not the entire company.
And what semester of pre-law are you in?
The problem is that this has happened before, and the company tanked. An Apple without Jobs is just another electronics company.
This is probably more true from a PR standpoint than a technical/business standpoint. Steve Jobs is the face of Apple, he's played up as the artistic genius behind everything. From a PR standpoint the best thing they could do is find a healthy young guy with indoor hobbies to become Jobs' "apprentice," have them appear together in public a lot and make them look like best friends. IIRC when the health issue first came out there was some talk of him having an "apprentice," if so they would be wise to make this more public.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Unless Apple administers its employee's health plan (i.e. they're self-insured), they are probably not bound by HIPAA. HIPAA covers providers, insurers, and medical clearing houses. Employers aren't covered and they don't need to be. If the covered entities are obeying the law, Apple, Inc. should have no way of getting their hands on Jobs's medical history short of him voluntarily disclosing his condition. Once that happens you have no protections under HIPAA.
Also, even if your employer has a self-sponsored healthcare plan, only disclosures made to the plan as part of medical care are covered (i.e. filing claims). If you walk in to your boss's office and tell them about a medical procedure you're having, that is not considered protected healthcare information.
Incidentally, that's why you should stay the hell away from services like Google Health. They're not covered entities either. Any patient-facing hosted EMR service not run by a covered entity is bound only by its promise to make nice.
Gee, for years people have claimed Apple sells products because they are shiny, and now all of a sudden it's supposed to be Steve Jobs' presentation?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I'm a regular citizen, just watching the market like everyone else. You shouldn't have to be a lawyer to do that. The major difference between me and a lot of other people in this discussion is that I'm not going around claiming that shareholders have all these rights that they don't actually have.
I agree that Steve Jobs is a major public part of Apple's success, and I can understand that some investors might not be happy that he's not talking about his health problems. But the thing is, he has every right not to talk about that. The shareholders have no right to demand that information from him, regardless of anything having to do with money. His rights as a person supersede anything having to do with people making a buck. A lot of people here don't understand that. People are claiming that shareholders have certain rights that they were never given.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
They said he'd be out until June, and look, it's June and he's back.
How's that? Why is the CEO different? How about the CFO? COO? Should the requirement be limited to CEX officers? All executives? Jonathan Ives isn't a CE-anything but his getting sick and dying would certainly hurt Apple. How about other companies, where the loss of the loss of one ordinary employee who actually does the work might have a Steve-Jobsesque effect on the whole company?
The shareholders need to know that there are people ready to take over if ANY employee is unable to do his or her job. Period.
Indeed, I think he should make all of his facebook, twitter, myspace, and other online accounts and passwords available for the public. We really have to make sure he's the type of person we think he is.
See, here we go again with the fallacies. This time, with Jonathan Ive, you use a red herring. Now, he isn't exactly an "ordinary" employee since he is the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design for Apple and reports directly to Steve Jobs. But, I was saying all serious health issues for an influential CEO like Steve Jobs are important to the shareholders. To accurately disprove this you need to find me an influential CEO whose serious health issues are not important.
The CEO is different because he or she is the Chief Executive Officer. There is usually only one of those. And, as the title may or may not imply to you, he or she is the officer chiefly in charge of the execution of company policies and practices. That sounds pretty important to me. Further, the SEC wants to know the compensation for chief officers and top executives. These are a matter of public record. They consider that these top executives and chief officers ARE different from ordinary employees. I tend to think they are right about this.
Right now Steve Jobs holds about 5.5 million shares of Apple stock. That's a shade over 19 times larger than any other individual (person) shareholder. At the current value ($137.1368) that's $760,622,541.4968 he has in company stock. When he took over as CEO in July 1997, AAPL stock was trading at $4.375 per share. I wouldn't call anyone who could have a similar effect on their company an "ordinary" employee.
Also, wanting to know about serious health issues is not exactly the same as wanting to know all about someone's hobbies or personal realtionships. The risks of someone diagnosed with pancreatic cancer dying are not remotely the same as the risks of dying from hang gliding.
I hope that may give some insight as to how you committed the strawman fallacy earlier and this time tried to use a red herring. Better luck next time.
So you think we should draw the line at the CEO? Jonathan Ive doesn't make the cut? Do you think someone might disagree with you?
Now, what you've said about Steve Jobs being a share holder, how does that fit in? Did you just want to put some gratuitous numbers in and couldn't figure out any other way? Is SJ important because he's a major shareholder? But I thought it was because he was the CEO? Maybe it's both? Either?
You seem confused. Perhaps you should sort out what your argument actually is.
I also think you need to look up just exactly what a "strawman argument" is. My post was much closer to a slippery slope argument. Yes, the difference can be subtle sometimes, but if you think about it carefully, you can figure out the difference. Also, consider the description "insufferably condescending" and how it relates to your posting style (and the one I've adopted).
I think that the SEC and most organizations do in fact make a distinction before having every "ordinary" employee subject to the same terms as the CEO. Some include top executives, some don't. But, in determining whose particular actions and circumstances may have considerable effects on stock price, the CEO does, in fact, make the cut.
OK, so the point of the whole stock value was to show you the voting power and financial value controlled by Steve Jobs. I used it to try and illustrate how any employee that influential can't really be considered "ordinary". I consider owning and being able to vote and being able to sell at a moment's notice over 19 times more stock than any other single person quite significant. This is a response to your claim that an "ordinary" employee could have a Steve Jobs-like effect. Just to re-iterate, I don't consider any employee able to do that "ordinary". As a quick FYI, this does not imply I believe that any non-ordinary employee must therefore submit information regarding any serious medical conditions.
OK, my argument is this. You committed a strawman fallacy in your first reply. I consider such logical miscues uninsteresting. That's it. As to your counter claim that it was a slippery slope, I disagree. It was a strawman. A slippery slope would say that disclosing information regarding a CEO's pancreatic cancer and/or liver transplant would lead to every "ordinary" employee having to submit their genetic sequences, hobbies, and personal realationship information. You stated that by the original argument , the genetic sequences, hobbies, and personal realationship information of "ordinary" employees are as important as information regarding the serious health issues of a CEO and should also be submitted. A point no one was arguing. It's an exaggerated and weaker argument that you made up to tear down.
See, a straw man isn't very strong. It's much easier to tear apart than a real man. Similar to that, a real argument is much harder to tear apart than a really exaggerated and weak one that you make up. That's why they call the fallacy the "strawman" fallacy.
To address your final fallacy, the ad hominem you stuck in there at the end, I will just say that I find it uninteresting to argue against someone on points they never made. That no one made. That no one would make. Because no one would agree with it. That's just putting words into someone's mouth and then "exposing" what an idiotic opinion they have. How insufferably condescending, don't you think?
By that argument we should probably require all employees of any publicly traded company to make their genetic sequence available publicly, plus briefs about any potentially dangerous hobbies they may have. Better throw in data about their relationships too. Nothing impairs performance like trouble at home.
This "publicly traded company" nonsense is used to justify too much. "Medical problems" is more than enough for the shareholders and the public.
But isn't the fact that so much of Apple is tied up in Jobs (will Apple even survive without his innovation) the thing that makes him "different" from other companies?
That's like saying "see, my car just went on this straight road fine while I had my hands off the wheel for 5 seconds!". That doesn't mean that it'll also work in tight turns.
Yes, car analogies just work for any fucking thing. I wonder how people did before we had cars...
Especially since with any company that has a long design-to-release period, effects of a leadership change may not really be felt for months or years down the line.
There was actually speculation on Buzz Out Loud that the leak about Jobs' transplant was a very strategic and deliberate leak. What it boiled down to is the fact that the WSJ got a report from an unnamed source that Jobs had a transplant, and broke the story after the markets had closed on friday and iPhone 3GS sales had gone well on release day.
The leak itself may not have been planned, but Apple may have been able to cut a deal with the WSJ to time it to do the least amount of damage possible. IE, "We know that you know about the transplant. We know you're doing to print the story. If you delay it 24 hours, we'll give you top access during the next MacWorld." Or.. you know, something to that effect.
What, do you keep the MacBook in your freezer or something? There's simply no way you've had a Macbook on for 9 days without it overheating and crashing, the cooling in them is totally inadequate.
Though if you want to compare uptimes, I once went over 6 months without rebooting a Thinkpad running XP, with suspending/resuming it several times a day.
Ha, no, it just runs. I use it every day 4-8 hours, mainly for web, Office, videos through VLC and some iTunes.
Before 10.5.7 came out, the uptime on it was 27 days 10 something hours before I patched it.
I've used old crt iMacs, G4 towers, G5, G4 and G5 Xserves and have had them all go over 270 days uptime with no sleep.
"But anyway, what's wrong with it?"
It's dishonesty, which once allowed tends to spread throughout the company.
Certainly people have less trust in Apple than before.
If you were a large Apple shareholder I think you would see things differently. It's not a black and white issue- it's definitely grey. It's a difficult balancing act, however, when you take on the celebrity role of CEO of a company like Apple, and you are the embodiment of all the success the company has achieved, the job comes with responsibilities- including a certain degree of truthfulness with your investors.
zizinya
Suppose *you* were the person who bought Apple shares right before it was revealed that Jobs was going to have to retire for health reasons. You'd be pretty unhappy to know that this information was known to the company and not revealed as part of their filings, at least as much as if they suddenly had to deal with a major lawsuit.
Yeah, I might be unhappy, but I would also try to put myself in Steve Jobs' shoes and realize that I wouldn't want to talk about my health problems either. I would also hope that I had some sympathy for Jobs instead of just worrying about my bottom line. But at the end of the day, I would realize that what I invested in was Apple Computer Inc., not Steve Jobs.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black