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Apple and the Scalability of Secrecy
RobotsDinner writes "Anil Dash has a thoughtful exploration of Apple's notorious devotion to secrecy, and argues that not only is there a limit to its feasibility, but that recent events show Apple has reached that limit already. 'If the ethical argument is unpersuasive, then focus on the long-term viability of your marketing and branding efforts, and realize that a technology company that is determined to prevent information from being spread is an organization at war with itself. Civil wars are expensive, have no winners, and incur lots of casualties.'"
I am wondering how to measure the scalability of secrecy?
I bought an ipod touch today only to find out that without iTunes you can't access it at all. I'm running Linux and iTunes doesn't work with Wine. Ipod touch goes back in the morning. The ipod touch and the iphone have such hideous vendor lock in Microsoft must get a hard on just thinking about it. I hate Microsoft and now Apple is starting to give me a rash. Openness where are you?
That after the FCC probing into Apple's nasty rejection of Google Voice, from now on we're gonna have to live with Michael Arrington proclaiming how, in his modesty and disregard for material things he saved the world from tyranny.
May god have mercy on us all.
Yet, as I mentioned in the other /. submission, here is one tiny shred of reason to think that a government entity might, just might, have a tiny shred of value. And the FCC made it clear that a "blanket" of confidential docs concerning this would not be accepted, which means at least *some* info concerning the latest brouhauha will be public. Seriously, for once, kudos to the FCC.
I happen to work in the game industry - there is a lot of secrecy in our industry too, by absolute necessity. Most games would get crucified if they got leaked to the press or the public too early in the dev cycle. Most people are not used to filling in the blanks - ignoring the rough edges, or even disregarding the aspects of an early product that just plain suck. That's all part of the development process, but consumers are used to seeing just the slick, final product (well, even that's not guaranteed nowadays unfortunately).
There's also some other very good reasons not to go blathering on about features that haven't even been developed yet: those features might get cut for budgetary, creative, or technical reasons, and then you look like an ass for not delivering on what you promised.
I'm not defending Apple's business practices necessarily, but I'm just saying that throwing your doors open to the press and public isn't the panacea that this guys is making it out to be.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'll be the first of the (of course) many people to say I will give my life on the front lines against apples secrecy.
Apple are very good at obscuring things instead of securing them. I'm not saying they're the only one who are doing it, but hey, does anyone remember the 8400M/8600M fiasco? Apple said it was a PC issue only, thus not affecting Macs (My ass!). But what tops it all is the use of ads stating Mac user don't need to use antivirus software, resulting in said users spreading viruses when their machine is a "symptom-free carrier."
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
A Steve Jobs controlled Apple, be it in the 70s-80s or the late 90s-early 00s knows how to "scale secrecy." I'm not giving that article any web impressions. Now stop playin' wid yoself before you go blind and get off my lawn!!
The article seems kind of stupid. For example, he dismisses the motive of withholding information from competitors who might want to create rush knock-offs on the grounds that "no amount of secrecy will stop it." This is a like arguing that nobody should lock their doors, because houses get burgled anyway, and no amount of locks will stop it. He argues that copying is "a normal part of the business cycle," begging the question of whether it is beneficial to the company that is copied--and ignores the fact that trade secrets are also a normal part of business. He implies that Apple might somehow be culpable in the suicide of an employee, even though there is no evidence whatsoever that Apple drove him to suicide, and the apparent motive (to the extent that anything is known)--failing in one's responsibility--can be and has been a motive for suicide in many contexts that do not necessarily involve secrecy.
Even if there are some valid grounds for criticizing Apple's policies (and it is hard to defend some of their litigious actions), the obvious bias behind such obviously fallacious arguments undermines the case
There has been some recent discussion on Macrumors about Apple's discontinuation of their video composting software Shake. And several of the posters point out that Apple's "cloud of secrecy" around products and their roadmaps is one of the major contributing factors in people migrating away from Shake. In the consumer space, such secrecy is allowable and even generates hype. But in a business where production software needs to be STABLE, both in the technical and support sense, the idea that "we can't tell you what will happen next" simply doesn't fly.
Apple's customers are not the same customers as those of other computing companies (a silly, obvious statement, but apparently not so obvious that it doesn't need to be said).
Things that are clear:
Apple is doing very well right now.
Apple is doing very well as a very secretive company.
Apple's current customers, which are the reason it's doing very well, support Apple while it's a very secretive company.
Things that have been the subject of much speculation:
Apple's customers buy in many cases for non-technical reasons.
Apple's customers buy in many cases for social, identity, or personality reasons.
Things that are also clear:
It cannot be ruled out that Apple's secrecy contributes to the loyalty of its customer base, which is not congruent to the customer base of other technology companies.
It cannot be ruled out, therefore, that a reduction in secrecy would alienate some current customers.
It cannot be guaranteed that a reduction in secrecy would gain Apple an equivalent number of new customers.
Synopsis:
If I'm Apple, and I'm having the best few years in a very, very long time for the company, I am not . changing. a . thing .
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
mount -t auto /dev/sdb1 /mnt/why_do_my_partitions_keep_getting_erased
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The day that a blackhat finds a hole on a virgin iPhoneOS image that gets exploited to spread a nasty worm will be the day that millions of AAPL fans will feel sunk and betrayed that Apple didn't coddle and protect them.
For the private domain, that might be the only thing that throws much of Apple's secrecy policy out the window. They would have to in order to save their unblemished reputation.
Either that, or AAPL installs iNortonAV for free on all mobile devices much like what Windows users deal with (an AV client that takes up 2GB of flash and steals 50% of your CPU cycles while it scans for trojans in your 3G packets while taking a call from your grandma)
Cellphones are very much under the control of the FCC. Apple can't even market them without FCC approval.
So, this is bullshit. You can keep secrets as long as the people involved think secrecy is warranted.
Google have an astonishing track record of not leaking projects to the press. They've worked on some incredible stuff, and the vast majority don't get leaked at all, or get leaked accidentally. Huge numbers of internal/infrastructure projects never get told about outside the company. Sure, some projects are pre-announced because by working with outside companies they assume there will be leaks (ChromeOS, Android).
Internally people get told "Please don't leak unannounced projects. A leak could cause your co-workers to have to launch an unfinished or unpolished project ahead of time, reducing the impact of months or years of their time".
The problem with Apple is that they work with a lot of outside agents, all of whom can leak without thinking of the personal consequences to friends, just financial/legal ones (which can be avoided). Their own engineers have a pretty good track record of keeping quiet about 'important' things.
From TFS,
"If the ethical argument is unpersuasive, then focus on the long-term viability of your marketing and branding efforts, and realize that a technology company that is determined to prevent information from being spread is an organization at war with itself. Civil wars are expensive, have no winners, and incur lots of casualties."
This analogy relies on one assumption: that the natural inclination of people is to be open and vocal.
What if people simply do not care about sharing what the "next big thing" happening at Apple is. What if the only one who really does care is Mr. Steve Jobs himself. Then perhaps the war he is fighting isn't really all that awful. And the employees at Apple may not be at all as interested in their work as the media projects.
My page.
... (by Sun Tzu) is probably the only holy (non-red) book that Jobbs was/is reading everyday before sleep. Secrecy is a fine weapon. Energy efficient and non-violent too.
I will reluctantly counterpoint ancient wisdom with a quote from the former Greek lunatic dictator George Papadopoulos (1967-1974): "Please allow me to worship surprise attacks, and therefore prepare to get surprised".
Don't get fooled by this 'surprise theater', if I may coin the term. Is it really different from the complementary strategy? "Look! We have nothing to hide, we are together in this, there are no secrets, no hidden agendas, let's live together in harmony" (insert romantic Hollywood scenery sequence featuring a transparent beer summit).
Let me digress a bit: I am not fooled by the staged wars between MS and Apple. These two may well amount to the 90% of all tech customers (and developers), in the same sense that Republicans and Democrats represent the 90% of politically active Americans. However, I firmly believe that totalitarianism (100%) is not very different from 50%+40% or even 70%+20%. Some will say that "divide and conquer" is one of the main lessons we get from History, including civil wars. It's a blatant lie, "divide" does not necessarily mean "divide in two".
Let's not forget that it's the third way, the mutated gene, the remaining 10% that makes the difference and provides new perspectives and hopes for a better future. Anyone ignoring the big picture and arguing pro or against Apple's secrecy without taking into account not only Microsoft but also that tiny 10% (many of us would call it Linux, open source and collaborative production paradigms) is no better than those orchestrating the endless (but never purposeless) mainstream media-induced sagas.
Making technological and other life choices involving money in the 21st century means signing contracts with the Devil. So, make sure to read the fine print. Choose your Devil. Sell your soul for a good price. And make sure all rest suffer in Hell worse than you.
I work at Apple and I know exactly how scalable our system of secrecy is.
:D
Thing is, I can't tell you about it since it is, itself, a secret. Sorry!
Shit you know the fanboys are angry when a run of the mill first post gets modded troll rather than offtopic or redundant. Apple fanboys are angry and they will burn a pre-school full of kids over it.
Nintendo. But, then, they seem to have a lot in common with Apple, besides a heavy use of white.
the radio silence that precedes a little tweak in hardware specs is pretty stupid.
Is it stupid, or is it Apple trying not to Osborne itself to death?
I am wondering how to measure the scalability of secrecy?
Number of customers you can have while still maintaining a given level of secrecy. It's one thing to keep a secret when your organization is small enough to serve 100 or even 100,000 people; it's another thing to keep it from 100 million.
is... They don't attempt to push out unfinished products. Foot and mouth disease when you look at AppleTV and the iPhone, but at least they are attempting to turn out working solutions. Biggest problem occurs with unmet expectations on rumors occur frequently. Being an enormous Apple Fan I have bias, but I certainly don't believe in Apples full solution approach. I just wish someone could show a better example.
"the obvious bias behind such obviously fallacious "
The core of your argument is this article is *biased*? In what way?
The definition of bias:
* influence in an unfair way; "you are biasing my choice by telling me yours"
* a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation
Is your argument that the author is wrong? That's an okay argument, I think you are partially correct in that argument, but are you claiming the author has an obvious bias against secrecy? If so, you're making a bizarre argument. It's like saying you're "biased against free speech".
Civil wars have no winners. That's why the United States is a British colony.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Apple's policy keeps details of the upcoming products out of the popular press while simultaneously allowing the blogger / technophile communities to obsess about every rumor and alleged detail that does leak out. So it whets the appetite of the hardcore fans while still allowing Apple to "surprise" Joe Consumer (who doesn't read macrumors et. al.) when it comes out with something "new".
A giant customized Starbucks in Cupertino California where lattes and no soy skim macchiatos are given out free to all employees. The background music involves a playlist of Nora Jones, David Matthews, John Mayer, and Bono on loop from an Ipod docked somewhere in the Apple/Starbucks facility. Hours are long but morale is surprising high as developers, hardware and software, are given 30 minute breaks to masturbate to the new itunes interface.
All developers sit at cafe type tables with a Mac Book Pro while their lord and master Steve Jobs stands deskless in his predictable attire of a turtleneck and jeans. In fact, this is the preferred (mandatory) dress code at Apple. Jobs walks around to each and every department, separated by latte and vegan preferences, and checks on the performance and efficiency of his developers. At any given point in the day one may see Mr Jobs yelling at a programmer for not implementing a button in the perfect shade of corn flower blue (#6495ED) and immediately sends him to the apple punitive chamber, consisting of a HP Compaq running Vista Basic.
There are 2 software development departments and 2 hardware development sections in Apple. For software there is the Apple core team, Apple Open Source team. In hardware there is the Apple systems and management team and the iDevice team. Since the OSX kernel consists of a BSD darwin kernel there is no real need for low level programmers and as such the entirety of the Apple core team consists of UI designers and photoshop junkies. All software churned out from the core team is designed in a program strikingly similar to Visual Studio's form designer but with Cocoa Objective C generated instead. The 16 hour day (Jobs demands 16 hour days since he himself never sleeps) of a core dev involves lining up the right shade of chrome with the latest photoshopped graphite button and maintaining the correct color scheme, not an easy job at all.
The Apple open source team involves a little bit more coding, which is mandated to be done in TextEdit or the option of a $80 third party mac text editor. The Apple open source team doesn't actually create much code but searches the internet for interesting BSD licensed software and modifies it as it's own through obfuscation and conversion to objective C. Many of the items a mac user sees comes from the open source world stamped by apple such as the ability to play music taken from 67 different originally linux based players, CD burning, and the overall ability to click a mouse. Apple's legal department has no qualms about this practice and has assured many that since most of the code is BSD and if any is GPLed many Linux hippies should be grateful that Apple fostered WebKit by using KHTML and adding some Gecko bloat. Perhaps one of the most important items that the open source team has done to date is use parts of the FreeBSD to keep the kernel up to date.
There's not much to say about the Apple systems and management team. I suppose they can be classified in to desktop and laptop systems. Because hardware work is beneath Apple in general and thought of being only worthy of Windows Users and as such can be found working on these beauties in the starbucks bathroom. Desktops are currently made by buying dell machines and putting them in Lian Li cases, where the majority of the costs goes to buying titanium Apple emblems to paste on the sides. Laptops consists of the rebranding of only the most silver and black Sony Viaos but talk has been going around about rebranding Asus EeePCs for a new Apple netbook but you didn't hear that from me, for fear of my life.
The iDevice team's job is to develop for the ipod, iphone, itouch, and many other portable electronics apple may release in the future. Their jobs are very interconnected with the open source team as well as the core dev team. Using firmware from random samsung devices and giving it an OSX skin the ipod stands as a shining example that infringement only applies to greasy file sharers and that the music player remains the best in market
First of all what MP3 player doesn't require a computer?
Computer != computer with one of two proprietary operating systems that Apple has blessed.
The $600 dongle? What are you talking about? [...] The first Mac mini (2005)
You answered your own question. If your main PC runs Linux, then in order to run iTunes, you have to either A. buy a Mac or B. buy a copy of a Microsoft Windows brand operating system.
Last I heard, there isn't a lot of software out there than reads MP3s written on to a raw block device.
I still think you're taking this too literally. Entropius already admitted that using the device node in /dev instead of the mount point in /mnt was a typo. The lack of "sudo" before the "cp" clued me in, as usually only root can write to the device node without a file system in the way. I was replying to the "read the fucking manual" part of mambodog's post and clarifying the issue that I thought Entropius was trying to raise.
*my* "try gaining root" comment was directing *you* to gain root on *your* box
If I buy an iPod, is it "my" box?
Maybe he can start his own computer company that's better if he knows so much. I can name several successful secretive organizations but I couldn't name a one that was open. Even now that my app is finished, I realize I do better to keep some things close to the chest, even with the guys who helped me build it. The problem with Apple is not secrecy, which has contributed enormously to their organizational success, but that the path from developer to consumer is so convoluted.
If there's one thing the app store has convinced me of, it's that even in this new age of online distribution, there's still a place for publishers in the ecosystem. Indeed, with such powerful tools making it so easy for amateurs to produce shitty content, publishers are more relevant than ever. As the greatest developer who ever lived, (suck it, Carmack) I resent being blown off so a game that would be considered shitty on Newgrounds can get catapulted to #1 by a bunch of "geniuses" who should really be working at Kinko's instead of a tech company.
Someone has to filter out all the crap since Apple can't and/or won't do it. And someone has to get after Apple to approve the quality because I speak from experience when I say they don't do that either. Maybe they're jealous that I created a better UI than Jonathan Ive could ever dream of if his life depended on it.
Look, someone has to give personalized attention, marketing, and support to the programs that rock vs. those that shouldn't have ever left the bedroom. Otherwise there would never have been any PC publishers since anyone who wants to can make and sell any PC game they want.
Frankly, the online community and even word of mouth can be a helpful supplement to this process, but never a substitute for it.
It is self-evident that there just is no way to get quality in front of consumers without professional gatekeepers and anyone who has seen the App Store knows Apple epically fails at this.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
Nobody wants to spend hours waiting for their iPod to build something as nebulous as a "database" before they can use their music.
It's not a bad idea if it weren't for the access time/data rate and slow processor.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Who spends 45 minutes looking confused before cracking a manual.
Hell, who didn't know about iTunes. I think we're talking about two different kinds of secrecy here, one of which isn't secrecy, even if it sounds somewhat the same.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
... is not a good product.
There is no reason whatsoever why I should need a third device in order to use a bloody mobile phone.
Which is one of the several reasons I have not even contemplated getting an iPhone
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They are open about it and people get along fine with products in a beta phase.
The game industry could learn some lessons from that.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
secrecy usually means you are up to no good (no surprise from apple with the exploding ipods)
why not let your customers know what you're working on and get them pumped up?
ion.simon.c is a convicted child rapist who was arrested for raping small boys several years ago.