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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?
Really? This article is just dumb. And ridiculous. And link-bait.
Stop with the BS "like Apple" stories and OMG Apple-is-amazing stories!
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.
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.
Walter White didn't invent anything! He just packaged up his meth in blue crystals instead of boring white ones
You are rated insightful more than funny, so even though this is meant as a joke:
Walter White had challenged the general attitude of "they are stupid junkies, they'll smoke whatever we give them" by insisting that a higher-purity product will sell better. It is actually not the worst analogy to, say, Microsoft (you'll get our new OS with your new desktop and like it) vs. Apple (let's make our OS so that users like it).
This is completely orthogonal to discussion of which may be better. It is simply a fact that achieving monopoly status leads to complacency towards customers.
Vision? Apple just waits for technology to reach a point where they can stick a really good UI on it. I wouldn't deny that they are good at it, but Jobs didn't have some "vision" of creating a HDD based MP3 player or phone and then go out and invent all the necessary technology. He just waited for other companies to have the vision to develop the necessary hardware and open up new possibilities which he then exploited (very well).
Even most of the stuff Apple claims to have "innovated" has been demonstrated to have prior art. Even though you can apparently get a patent on it just by doing it on a phone or a tablet does not make it highly innovative or the product of vision in my book, merely an obvious transference of technology.
I'll give you attention to detail, just a shame much of it goes into locking the user in to Apple products. I'd say the font rendering on MacOS is actually one of the worst aspects of the design too, funnily enough.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC