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.'"

Comments

Wow!

[ithinker]

I am wondering how to measure the scalability of secrecy?

Re:Wow!

[kardar]

Which helps the consumer.... how?

Making the front cover of Time means your product is better?

If anything, it's a unified ability to get people to "do their best work". And it shouldn't stop there, and that shouldn't be as painful as it has often gotten. It can and should be par for the course, no unpleasantness required. Much research has gone into this area of corporate culture - the unpleasantness isn't required.

It's interesting, you know -- it seems that Apple is Steve, and perhaps vice versa. And Steve has this "thing" for "devices". He's obsessed with the device. The black cube, the sleek sexy all-in-ones, and that's cool...

But did you ever notice how it really wouldn't mean anything if Microsoft wasn't ubiquitous? In other words -- to have that cover of Time magazine (and to have it mean anything significant), Apple has given up 35%-45% of desktop market share (or better). How on earth is that worth it? Price of success? Hardly.

Apple plays off of Microsoft's ubiquity and plainness. In a world where 90% is Windows, Apple stands out. In any other world, it would be more like Frank Lloyd Wright or Pininfarina. Nice, interesting, beautiful, but decidedly niche. It's front page material because of everything it's given up to not compete with Microsoft. Of course, then the question is does Wall Street value market share, or is it more important to go after and get 91% of the $1000+ PC market? Passion for the "The Device".

It's the only way to make the concept of a "device" work in the marketplace. Play it off MS's ubiquity. Bounce it off Windows' boring and often generic nature. Migrate the focus to uncharted territories -- wireless, controversial Napster territory, and so forth. Contrast it to ubiquity, blandness, and low-budget compromises, and use your awesome resources to leverage your way into entrenched, stifled areas. Not so much to help the consumer, but to peddle "The Device". Point being, Apple can do better. Apple should do better.

Is it really necessary to make the front cover of time to give stockholders a good deal? To give customers a good deal? Is my consumer experience made better if my device is on the front cover of Time? Or is it purely stroking someone's ego? Could tens of millions of dollars be made by simply COMPETING with Microsoft (something Apple is capable of doing quite well at this point in time)?

Unfortunately, great leaders tend to "go nuts", sometimes, taking down entire leagues of followers with them. It's the nature of genius, perhaps. Seeing things others don't see, while fixated on a narrow goal -- in this case, "The Device". A flying saucer landed in my back yard and left me with this unique, fascinating object. Get over it, man. Apple, essentially, wants to have its "devices" (at least in the PC world) stick out so much, it's willing to give up perhaps 45% market share on the desktop to Windows, perhaps similarly significant market share to Linux on the server side, simply to have its devices "stick out". And the consumer loses choice, the developer gets frustrated, the employee loses significant quality of life. Pointless pain and suffering, unnecessary inconvenience.

To some extent, this "sticking out" is leveraged by gains and innovations with the ipod and the iphone, perhaps the tablet -- but man oh man -- an MSI Wind or Dell Mini 9 running OSX86 rocks. Where's Apple? Do they care about the consumer at all? Or just the image? Exactly how much do they sacrifice to maintain that image?

It's such a shame too. I guess it all boils down to this -- Steve is an inspirational dude, he runs a tight ship, and that tight ship has historically churned out some nice, innovative hardware and software products -- and continues to do so. But... consequently... Apple is CAPABLE of much more. We KNOW Apple can do better than it's doing. You may say it's doing great, but we KNOW it can do BETTER. Much, much, much better.

Apple is capable of doing better. It's the genius student, the teacher's pet. Yes, those are unr

Re:Wow!

[jcr]

I think jcr was being less eloquent and more fanatic than Anil

I don't see how you can claim that either of us was "fanatic". Do you know what the word means?

-jcr

I PREDICT

[linhares]

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.

Re:I PREDICT

[icebike]

I would have rather had the FTC or the DOJ, lauching this probe rather than the FCC.

I doubt the FCC can tell Apple what they can and can't put in their app store. The FCC simply has no standing in this area. Apple may not want to piss off the agency that approves new handsets, but realistically the FCC has little leverage on Apple.

The FCC does have jurisdiction to hold ATT's feet to the flame.

If it turns out that ATT told Apple not to accept these apps, citing some boilerplate non-compete clause in their contract, that would be a Microsoft Moment. (Microsoft ordered Compaq to restore IE to prominence on the desktop, or lose the right to sell windows. Justice department saw it differently).

There is always the possibility that Apple quietly leaked to FCC that ATT was violating some rules/regs. Apple would make sure they too get called on the carpet at the same time as ATT for plausible deny ability reasons.

And we can't overlook the possibility of Google quietly putting its oar in.

Who ever made the decision to block Google Voice, picked the absolute worst time to do so. Congress has already sent the FCC on a slash and burn mission into the cell phone market.

Of late, the FCC has actually seemed to be on the side of Joe Average Citizen, compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Yes, they might come out with another Janet Jackson ruling, but it is equally likely something good will come of this.

We can only wait and see.

Re:sometimes secrecy is necessary

[Entropius]

My issue with Apple shit isn't secrecy before it's released; it's secrecy and proprietaryness *after* release.

I was given an ipod as a gift. I regifted it after it took me 45 minutes to figure out how to play music on the damn thing (after trying to cp *.mp3 /dev/sdb1 multiple times and wondering why it wouldn't play the files), and after I realized that you can't replace the battery. Li-Ion gets old, you throw it out. WTF?

Their hardware certainly is pretty, and well-engineered in a lot of cases. But if I can't make it do what I want it to do (rather than what Apple wants me to do with it), it goes down the crapper.

In summary: if I buy a computer, I want root on it.

(Yes, I know you can hack the things. But lots of other people sell hardware I don't have to wrestle into submission for it to do what I want.)

Re:sometimes secrecy is necessary

[icebike]

Most games would get crucified if they got leaked to the press or the public too early in the dev cycle.

And you know this how?

Id software was great for putting out "Technology previews" which crashed a lot, but sure built sales.

If you produce crap, and people can see its crap, they tend to step around it like a dog-pile on the pavement.

But a good concept demonstrator with wide appeal, even if rough around the edges, will draw customers like flies.

Not Scalability, Marketability

[SeaFox]

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.

This article misses the point that

[aussersterne]

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 .

Re:sometimes secrecy is necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason iPhones and new MacBooks don't have easily-replaceable batteries is so they can have more space to hold bigger batteries, and thus have longer battery life. It's a tradeoff, but I for one prefer having a laptop with 5+ hour battery life or a phone that can go 3 days without charging to saving $100 when I do replace the battery in 3 years. If you don't like it, buy another product.

The art of war...

[UBfusion]

... (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.

Re:sometimes secrecy is necessary

[DarkOx]

My firends and I used to do it with floppy disks all the time. You could wedge a frew more seconds of audio on those if you dispensed with the file system. We could play them directly from the disk too. It was sorta like a tape deck, but with one song tapes.

Re:seems kind of stupid

[tgibbs]

Actually, this is a rather well written article, with several points you chose to ignore (including the Google Voice fiasco, treatment of App Store developers

I ignored these because they seemed to have nothing at all do with the author's thesis regarding secrecy--it seemed that the author was so anxious to criticize Apple that he just threw in everything he could think of, whether or not it was relevant or made any sense. What does Google Voice have to do with secrecy? It is clearly an application that impinges on the core business of Apple and Apple's partner AT&T. One can reasonably question whether such restrictions actually benefit Apple and AT&T, or whether it would be a good business move for Apple to invest more of its resources in hiring people to work with developers of rejected applications and help them create approvable applications (and perhaps make up the cost by taking a bigger cut from developers' profits), but it has nothing to do with secrecy.

I know this is slashdot, and who am I to tell you to RTFA (I don't usually read them myself, I'm more interested in the comments)

I would not consider commenting on such a thread without reading TFA--my criticisms are of TFA.