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How Apple's Story Is Like Breaking Bad
theodp writes "Over at CNN, Omar L. Gallaga explains how Apple's story is like Breaking Bad, the TV drama whose protagonist — high school chemistry teacher Walter White — decides to use his science skills to cook methamphetamine to provide for his family after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Walter takes shocking, out-of-character risks but reinvents himself as a brilliant, feared meth chemist who grows more ambitious, ruthless and cocky with each victory. 'Like Steve Jobs,' writes Gallaga, 'Walter White's cancer awakens a panic in him to hurry up and leave a legacy through his work.' Gallaga continues: 'Like Walter White, it [Apple] has mixed the proper elements at just the right amounts to create highly pure, addictive products. The products have been made within secretive working conditions. The skill employed to design and manufacture them tends to make what competitors put out seem like cheaper, cloudier, less effective imitations.'"
And Samsung is Pollos Hermanos or just Tuco?
Can't we for a while at least stop ascribing a success, which is due to the hard work of a very large group of people over a long period to one man, and further look for some magical parallels where there are none?
Is that why there have been so many deaths surrounding the manufacture of Apple products?
It is shocking how putting effort into producing a good product actually pays off from time to time.
Nowdays it takes a real outlaw to put significant effort into appealing to customers.
Slow news day?
Walter White didn't invent anything! He just packaged up his meth in blue crystals instead of boring white ones and the spinners were all like, duuude, I'm only going to buy your meth!
The CB App. What's your 20?
No more Apple stories!
Walter was a cunt as well.
Really? This article is just dumb. And ridiculous. And link-bait.
Stop with the BS "like Apple" stories and OMG Apple-is-amazing stories!
This is Slashdot. Car analogies only, please.
People always blah blah about KISS. But when it comes to most products it usually ends up being too many cooks. Years ago I built a website for a telco. They wanted two things. One was online bill viewing and the other was to promote this new thing called DSL. Website was supposed to cost around $50,000. So we cook along and they keep adding more and more to the website with nearly every department in the telco getting their little bit in; one part being a what's happening at the local universities. After the budget blew through $200,000 they started to suggest that we cut the online bill check part along with the rate card. One of our people stood up in the meeting and said, "Those are the only two things on the whole damn site that people will want. Cut those and you have $200,000 worth of dog shit."
But it gets even worse. This new DSL was being introduced at a time before cable modems. The highest speed connection of any geek I knew was a 128k ISDN line and this new DSL was going to give you 1Mbs for $40. Then as I did up the specs for it for the site I realized that the whole business model was a stupid Novell system of renting applications such as Microsoft office. Internet was way down on the list of features. I called up the Product Manager and he said, "Well we might not even offer connectivity to the internet initially." I told him that if they were able to offer 1Mbs for $40 when all the competition was offering 56kbs for $20 they were going to clean up. He told me that there was pressure from their own dial up to not offer internet via the DSL. I think what may have saved it was that I told him he would be out of a job if he didn't offer internet and they would be out of a job while he would ride a wave to the future if he did.
Now think about the above. This is the big telco in my area taking business advice from a tiny web shop. Good advice if I say so myself.
So how many companies don't have a single man who can stand up and say "whoa there cowboy. That might look good on a spread sheet but our customers will want to ram it up your ass.... sideways....covered in the juice from a ghost pepper."
From what I have read about Steve Jobs is that people brought shit to him with a great story and they left his office crying. Then they came back to him with something less shitty and left crying again. This would happen over and over until it just wasn't shitty anymore.
It is hard to tell an employee that what they just spend a lot of time on was crap. It is unpleasant for most normal people. So I suspect that where Steve Jobs' genius lay is in somehow being an ass right up to but not beyond the point where everyone quit. Beyond that he was probably just pretty smart.
Agreed. The meth dealer's probably got morals.
Yeah right.
The protagonist in breaking bad was a normal upright person who turned "bad" after he was diagnosed with cancer and tried to use his knowledge to support his family in the event he would die. Apple was an arrogant bully from the get go, they just hadn't had the chance to show it when they were smaller.
It wasn't about underestimating Apple, but rather, needing a visible competitor to not be broken up via an antitrust suit. Also, in what universe does apple have the 'online video' market?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The difference is that breaking bad is fiction- it doesn't actually demonstrate anything. The writers decide the outcome, and the results are imagined, not real.
And is less harmful to our society's future.
For the "I hate Apple week", has it already started?
No he really doesn't; at least not after the first season or two.
Steve Jobs (Wikipedia): According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.
Breaking Bad ("Say My Name" Recap): When Walter tries to browbeat Jesse into staying, the young man will have none of it. He even walks away when Walter tells him he won't get a nickel.
OK, there may be worse, but admit it - this is pretty bad.
My other account has mod points!
Walter takes shocking, out-of-character risks
Out of character? You haven't been paying attention, especially in the current season. They made it clear from the very first episode that Walt is not a nice guy. His anger issues cost him his share of the startup that would have made him rich, and sent him off to a teaching job he despises and that doesn't pay the bills. Later, he refuses to accept help with his medical expenses from his former partners, obviously still pissed at whatever issue forced him to break with them.
He wears a mask of a mild-mannered suburban nebbish, but his sociopath side becomes evident early on and gradually becomes the only face he shows to his colleagues in the drug business. More and more, people suffer because of Walt's lack of moral center, sometimes just because he's mad at them. (So long Mike!)
Mr. Wizard was always a front. Now he's Nero.
Jeez, what a great show. I look forward to the final 9 eps with anticipation and dread.
If you study the Betamax vs VHS, you will see many similarities between how IOS vs Android is playing out. Betamax was technically better in the beginning, it had an earlier start in a new market and it was controlled by basically one company but VHS came on strong with lower prices, more choices, flexibility and options. It eventually won over the consumers. Smartphones are not exactly like in a "format war" like home video was but based on the strong showing of Android devices in the last 2 years, the consumers are basically following the same pattern and eventually moving to the route with the most options. I know a lot of people like to claim Apple is doing so well because of the limited options but is that really why people choose Apple? They still had to make a choice. Limited options does not seem to be the reason people use to buy anything else they spend their money on. Car analogy here, what car company would make a killing only selling 2 different models per year? If they were good or had a good reputation they would do well but not simply because they only had 2 models to choose from.
Except that Apple was failing before jobs came along. He made it profitable very quickly. And Pixar, again, also his, also success. And NeXT, created some amazing products, and before that Apple went from nowhere to success.
At some point you have to accept he was pivotal in all of these. Even if it was simply to empower the right people, assign budgets in the right places and to fire a few slackers.
If it's soooo easy, then why is Apple finding it so hard now? Look at them, Siri was the last of Job's influence, where iPhone 5? Where's the magical new feature? The suprise wow thing??? If Jobs was pivotal in the success of Apple, then why have they degenerated into a crappy patent troll living on past glory?
is this the new ' car analogy' trope? The ' breaking bad' trope!
"Apple's story is like 'Breaking Bad' in that I really don't care about either of them, and am tired of people always bringing them up and telling me I need to be watching it"
Can everyone just shut up now? This has gotten so out of hand. Two or three articles a day trying to draw parallels between Apple and Linux and any other bullshit anyone can add to the mix. It's gotten old and fucking stupid.
"If you want to know how Apple's epic run turns out or how its ongoing battle with longtime rival Microsoft is resolved, you can watch the series, which ends its current half-season of eight episodes with a finale Sunday night."
It sure sounds like an advertisement to me... either that or CNN really has completely run out of news to create. My expectations from CNN are very low, so this doesn't surprise me much. What surprises me is that this is on Slashdot. Perhaps the story title should be "CNN ran out of news" instead.
My favorite part on the CNN page, on top it reads: Filed under: Innovations ... How this is innovation?
Jobs' sense of his specialness and his rush to get things done before he died was there way before the cancer was found. I rely on the Isaacson book for this tid-bit.
Meanwhile, Jobs is not Apple and Apple is not Jobs. Addictive, as in products, is a clumsy metaphor. Addictive as in meth is a physical and psychological state which reveals itself in isolation, anti-social behavior, and health decay.
Facile, featuring convenient memory holes, and poorly thought through. Yep, CNN all the way.
So our iPads are made out of meth? Cool recycling plan there... No wonder they want us to send them back..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So, in other words, Apple is like Breaking Bad that Apple loves to do illegal things, take out the competition any way possible, and overcharge for their product? Yep, sounds about right.
I don't really like Breaking Bad, yet so many people tell me I should love it. I generally like shows like that too, just can't seem to make myself like that show.
I have seen enough to not really feel like this analogy holds any water. The show, like this analogy are weak and annoying. That's my two cents =\
I hope Faux News counters with a car version. I really don't understand anything tech unless it's explained in terms of cars.
From TFA:
'Like Walter White, it [Apple] has mixed the proper elements at just the right amounts to create highly pure, addictive products. The products have been made within secretive working conditions. The skill employed to design and manufacture them tends to make what competitors put out seem like cheaper, cloudier, less effective imitations.'
I am no Apple fanbois, but I had spent past few decades in the tech field
What TFA has forgotten to list are the following:
I. Vision
Almost everyone in the Silicon Valley, since the 1980's, have gone through similar experiences, and have used similar gadgets.
What Steve Jobs got, which others unfortunately didn't have, is a vision.
From hardware (Mac to NeXT to iBook to iPhone / iPad), to software (MacOS to OS X to iOS), Mr. Jobs opted for his own path
That takes vision.
II. Attention to detail
We can't deny that the one thing that makes Apple different from the rest of the crowd is their attention to detail.
From the way MacIntosh can create smooth curvy fonts to the "feel" of the original iPhone when it first came out (as versus the offering from the rest of the cellphone industry), Mr. Jobs had taken great pain in making sure that the products that have the "Bitten Apple" mark on it come with as few bugs as possible
As I said, I am no Apple fanbois, and I do not own any Apple product
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A better analogy would be that Apple is like the Little Red Hen.
"Who will dare to make a computer that gets rid clunky serial ports and is USB-only to drive development of USB as a platform?" asked Apple.
"Not I" said Dell.
"Not I" said Gateway
"Not I" said Compaq.
"Not I" said Acer.
"Then I'll do it myself" said Apple. And she completely broke backwards compatibility to make the iMac.
"Who will make a minimalist music player without a billion clunky extras that product managers want to add and that has a really neat jog-wheel that give people a great user experience?"
"Not I" said Phillips.
"Not I" said Diamond.
"Not I" said Mitsubishi.
"Not I" said Sony.
"Then I will" said Apple. And they made the iPod.
"Who will spend large sums of money to have design engineers experiment for months molding a block of clay into a non-clunky shape that works great for cell phones?" asked Apple.
"Not I", said Samsung.
"Not I", said Nokia.
"Not I", said LG.
"Not I", said HTC.
"Then I will" said Apple. And she designed a phone with rounded corners.
"Who will spend lots of money and take some risk designing cell phones with a revolutionary slide-to-unlock feature and the first really non-clunky mobile web browsing experience that includes pinching and swiping gestures?" asked Apple.
"Not I", said Samsung.
"Not I", said Nokia.
"Not I", said LG.
"Not I", said HTC.
"Then I'll do it myself" said Apple. And she designed the iOS UI.
And when the iPhone was released, the tired little company in Cupertino asked her competitors "who will help me use my designs to make billions in revenue I've earned by taking all sorts of marketing and design risks and putting in so much efforts to do what competitors didn't to move a stagnant and complacent industry forward like I've always have had to do?" asked Apple
"I do" said Samsung.
"I do" said Motorola.
"I do", said LG.
"I do" said HTC.
"No, I'm going to keep all of those designs to myself" Apple said, and she happily sued them into oblivion. The end.
CNN really has completely run out of news
News is very slow right now. Huge news teams were tied up reporting the GOP convention, which is over, and Hurricane Isaac, which is over. So there wasn't much in the TV pipeline. Neither CNN nor Fox has anything substantive today.
Clearly Apple should sue the producers for intellectual property infringement.
Shut. The. F. Up.
I thought "cloudier" products are on the contrary, being promoted, these days.
and they didn't shift nearly as many as they expected, once most people had worked out that they could buy the same actual Apple functionality in a more 'normal' box for a fraction of the amount.
Oh, and then the cubes all started cracking as form had over-ridden function and every engineer who said it was a stupid idea was proven right.
Conversely though (and I'm not an Apple customer a few ipods aside), it did looked awesome, got placed in art/design museums AND as I look back over the thousands of computer designs that have come and gone, I remember this one and still think it looks stunning and am glad it existed.
I've no idea what the lesson to be learnt here is, see also Delorean.
Apple
Breaking Bad
Cancer
iPad
iPhone
Meth
Microsoft
Steve Jobs
Walter White
Now how can I put these all in one article?
You are confusing the Next Cube with the G4 Cube.
The Next cube was a cube made of magnesium alloy. The PowerMac G4 Cube many years later wad not really a perfect cube, an was made of sheet metal and moulded clear plastic that was not a perfect cube.
I'd say Steve Jobs comparison to the Breaking Bad story is somewhat of a lame attempt at giving the man some "street cred". You know, building his "Legend" and stuff. But hey... I could never understand this whole PC/MAC debacle. Superfluous argument when both platforms (hardware/software) are used where they function best. Using all kinds of analogies to create spin and brand your product (post-posthumously) and to tell us everything but what your product can do for us, I find in advertising terms, quite "missing the brief".
So associating with a drug manufacturer/pusher is a good thing?
Houston, we have a problem.
Because the signal is always breaking and the voice quality is bad :(
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
suffering from some form of addiction.. perhaps Apple addiction.
Should i/we give him some consideration/credibility? Hell no.
Well I've always thought Apple Fanboys must be smoking something.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Maybe it's just because I've seen every episode of BB.
Who is so desperate to keep Jobs' name in the press that they'd stretch things this far?
Bear in mind that the format that proved a hit with the professional market was "Betacam", not the domestic Betamax. Although the early versions of Betacam used the same shell as Betamax- and could in theory use the same cassettes, though apparently Sony discouraged this- the recording format was entirely different and incompatible. Betamax recorded composite video, Betacam was a form of component video with higher quality (but faster tape speed and hence shorter running time for a given length). Later versions of Betacam used different cassette shells.
I've never seen "Breaking Bad", but if it is about a genius nerd (Woz) being exploited by an arrogant businessman, then I think the comparison is spot on.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
...so Tim Cook (get it.. cook?) is going to arrange to whack google, htc, motorola, samsung and LG in the same 2 minutes. /I really liked Mike.
When news come with something like that, nothing happened.
When I saw the headline I expected that the story would be about how once apple went down the path of suing their competitors they got sucked in and the whole thing began to snowball as it become a bigger and bigger part of what defines them.
-- QED
LOL Walter doesn't wear Mom jeans.
Jobs is Cartman and Microsoft is City Wok. (RIM is mr.Hanky)
This is Bullshit.
That this made CNN is nothing more than Apple buying headlines. Bullshit product placement in the News.
I mean, they've been at it for a while now; trying to associate Apple with Cool Stuff. Anybody who can't see through this is just being made a victim of the Public Relations Mafia.
Check this one out:
http://i.imgur.com/u7a9u.jpg
It's a bloody embarrassment. I wish Apple would just go away and die already. This mind-control crap makes me sick.
They didn't invent meth er technology, but they are good at making it.
Now they are just in the business of trying to kill off the competition by any means necessary.
So to perfect the analogy, the courts are their intended gun to keep the competition at bay.
Aha.
I couple more of these "Apple's Story is Like [TV Series]" and we can finally debunk this Slashdot poll "How much TV do you watch in a week"
Why are there so many articles with people making up some BS and calling it news? Why is it always listed on Slashdot? "Well I think Apple is like Game of Thrones cuz Ned Stark dies but his legacy lives on. Come click on my article and learn all about the BS I just made up." Whatever. This is not news for nerds, nor stuff that matters.
And to the wankers who write these articles: Shut up and go build something useful.
As a fan of this brilliant show, I am offended by this. Apple love is a religious experience for the fans of them, whereas good TV is just that, good TV.
Nobody that owns an apple product thinks it is "just okay". They either love that they own one, or loathe that they must use one at work.
TV can have fans all across the spectrum.
Walter White set out to make money, not addiction. Jobs had money. Jobs wanted useability and ease, and maybe addiction. Maybe he wanted the legacy too.
disclaimer: I hate Apple's limitations, limited useability, and policies on intellectual property.
The author is a moron looking to grab attention by making the idiotic comparison. The author is a cheap whore.
The simile breaks down when one considers that Apple makes products that increase productivity, while meth cookers do the opposite.
Yes, because Apple is now in the business of murdering people, including children to get their products out. *rolleyes*