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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 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.
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
Anil,
When I started working at Apple, a colleague in product marketing explained to me exactly what the secrecy was worth to the company, in dollar terms.
Apple got the cover of time magazine when the iMac G4 came out. Apple got that coverage, because they had something to offer to Time, and they had it to offer because of the diligence with which they maintained secrecy. You can't buy Time's front cover as an ad placement. If you could, it's easily worth tens of millions of dollars. Your claim that Apple doesn't get free press due to the secrecy is complete nonsense.
The rest of your list is basically pulled out of your ass.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
This was one of the reasons Apple extricated itself from the major trade shows years ago, and completed the transition last year: Sometimes they have something big to announce, sometimes they don't. The fact that there's a trade show scheduled is not an indicator of one or the other.
Right. Name one tech company that gets the same amount of press. Name one tech company whose press events are always packed. Name one tech company whose press events and keynote speeches are ALWAYS liveblogged.
That's advertising too, and it seems to be working.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Gee, you must be a self made billionaire with all this business insight you have. Apple doesn't look for market share. A lot of companies such as Honda and BMW, don't. Others, like GM and Toyota do seek to maximize market share. Would you rather invest in GM or Honda? Apple looks to maximize its ROI and that in part means sustaining relatively high margins. They've been wildly successful at doing that since Jobs returned. If Apple played the same game as Dell or Microsoft, they'd not be as successful as they are. They'd be another Dell or Microsoft or they'd be out of business.
As to what is "good for the consumers". That's not what major corporations are about. Their job is to maximize profits/shareholder value. There are many strategies for accomplishing that. Microsoft and Dell have theirs and Apple has its. Doing what is "good for consumers" is sometimes a byproduct, but that is not their primary goal. It's the market and the "invisible hand" that are supposed to deliver an end result that is "good for the consumers".
Business and markets are not about morality or altruism. They are about return on investment. The theory is that this will end up being good for "everyone" and sometimes it works out that way, but it's not the responsibility of the participating concerns to forego their own economic self-interests in order to accomplish that.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok