“Google and Apple may have a friendly relationship — Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board, after all — but by Google’s definition, Apple is irredeemably evil, behaving more like an old-fashioned industrial titan than a different-thinking business of the future. Apple operates with a level of secrecy that makes Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton. It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem. And as for treating employees like gods? Yeah, Apple doesn’t do that either,” Leander Kahney writes for Wired.
“But by deliberately flouting the Google mantra, Apple has thrived. When Jobs retook the helm in 1997, the company was struggling to survive. Today it has a market cap of $105 billion, placing it ahead of Dell and behind Intel. Its iPod commands 70 percent of the MP3 player market. Four billion songs have been purchased from iTunes. The iPhone is reshaping the entire wireless industry. Even the underdog Mac operating system has begun to nibble into Windows’ once-unassailable dominance; last year, its share of the US market topped 6 percent, more than double its portion in 2003,” Kahney writes.
“It’s hard to see how any of this would have happened had Jobs hewed to the standard touchy-feely philosophies of Silicon Valley. Apple creates must-have products the old-fashioned way: by locking the doors and sweating and bleeding until something emerges perfectly formed. It’s hard to see the Mac OS and the iPhone coming out of the same design-by-committee process that produced Microsoft Vista or Dell’s Pocket DJ music player. Likewise, had Apple opened its iTunes-iPod juggernaut to outside developers, the company would have risked turning its uniquely integrated service into a hodgepodge of independent applications — kind of like the rest of the Internet, come to think of it.
And now observers, academics, and even some other companies are taking notes. Because while Apple’s tactics may seem like Industrial Revolution relics, they’ve helped the company position itself ahead of its competitors and at the forefront of the tech industry,” Kahney writes. “Sometimes, evil works.”
Kahney writes, “At most companies, the red-faced, tyrannical boss is an outdated archetype, a caricature from the life of Dagwood. Not at Apple. Whereas the rest of the tech industry may motivate employees with carrots, Jobs is known as an inveterate stick man. Even the most favored employee could find themselves on the receiving end of a tirade… But Jobs’ employees remain devoted. That’s because his autocracy is balanced by his famous charisma — he can make the task of designing a power supply feel like a mission from God. Andy Hertzfeld, lead designer of the original Macintosh OS, says Jobs imbued him and his coworkers with “messianic zeal.” And because Jobs’ approval is so hard to win, Apple staffers labor tirelessly to please him.”
Kahney writes, “No other company has proven as adept at giving customers what they want before they know they want it. Undoubtedly, this is due to Jobs’ unique creative vision. But it’s also a function of his management practices. By exerting unrelenting control over his employees, his image, and even his customers, Jobs exerts unrelenting control over his products and how they’re used. And in a consumer-focused tech industry, the products are what matter. “Everything that’s happening is playing to his values,” says Geoffrey Moore, author of the marketing tome Crossing the Chasm. ‘He’s at the absolute epicenter of the digitization of life. He’s totally in the zone.'”
Much, much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
…and I thought I was totally in the zone?
When I got up this morning, my RSS reader showed 6 new stories for Wired. Five of them were Apple related, including this one.
or was that zune?
@TowerTone
I guess they’ve said all that can be said about vista’s greatness!
How about the secret of Apple’s success is that they are one of the few companies in America that actually respects the customer and builds products that they can take pride in? So much of what the rest of corporate America throws our way is an insult to our intelligence, e.g., Vista, Zune, McDonald’s, most of the cars. When you throw down the money for an Apple product you don’t feel porked.
“It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem.”
I don’t feel locked in. My OS X can handle a whole lot (anything M$ can program) more than his MS system can. How can that be a lock in? Idiot Wired writer!
I have an iPhone, an iPod Touch, a macbook pro, etc.
Please Apple let me know what I want next.
one needs to look to their inner soul
seriously, who hasn’t been flunked by dodgy mobile phones… maybe that’s what ticked Jobs off to creating one.
We’re all happy that our USB printers work when their plugged in, hence there’s no point in making a better one. The real money comes from a device that does what other industries still scratch their heads on.
the next step in technology is wireless HDMI
You’re right Bill. Yet none of these reporters want to say that. It doesn’t have “pizazz”, and they won’t get hits. Welcome to 2008.
You cannot formulate genius. Another tyrant would simply be a buffoon. The amazing thing is how right he is about his world; how in th zone. He has also matured greatly. He is not the jerk he once was. Read iCon (biography of Steve) for a good perspective on this.
People think Apple has a closed system when they look at it from the hardware manufactures point of view. The miss the fact that it is pretty open from the users point of view. It is MS that tries to crush the competition by forcing everyone to use their applications if they want to use their operating system.
It seems like Jobs is the prototypical consumer at Apple. If he wants it and it is developed to the point where he is satisfied (nearly perfect) the rest of us just love it.
“At most companies, the red-faced, tyrannical boss is an outdated archetype.”
Err, no, at most companies, it’s a current reality. And he or she is a total idiot to boot. Jobs may be a tyrant, but he’s a brilliant tyrant. So were Edison and Picasso.
Since when is “locking the doors and sweating and bleeding until something emerges perfectly formed” evil? If Apple’s success is due to its “Industrial Revolution relic” way of conducting business, well, God help us all.
I want a Big Mac.
“It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem.”
And Microsoft doesn’t? It’s a bigger ecosystem but you are still locked into it.
i’ll never forgetting seeing this on a news stand in 1997
This is my favorite line…
“It [Apple] locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem.”
So true. Hey MAC lemmings, how does it feel to be chained and bound to Apple’s antiquated proprietary system? I can put any video card I want in my Dell. Can you do that with your toy I-Mac? You have to feel especially disappointed with the closed file formats Apple dumps on you like .PDF, .JPG, .PNG, .MP3, and the worst of them all .AAC. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. It’s called lock-in, losers.
I’m rockin’ some Styx in magnificent .WMA format right now on my Dell. Maybe later I’ll watch that funny video Ned in Marketing sent me of a monkey peeing on himself in glorious .WMV format. Good stuff.
Your potential. Our passion.™
@Macromancer,
I believe the author meant proprietary in a sense that Apple hardware must be used to run Apple software.
@ Sheep Register
*Exactly*. Problem is, many companies have a boss who pretends they aren’t a tyrant for the sake of the New Economy, and then goes ahead and does the same old shit. I think a trip to Executive Compensation Land might be a better window into what kind of tyrant runs your company.
Bernard Ebbers is looking quite well fed in prison.
I love Zune Tang’s silly sarcastic piss takes. If he were for real he would be such a freakin idiot
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But hey, .wma and .wmv not lock in formats!
Brilliant!!!
I take issue with the word evil on this article. Evil is dumping your product for free or as a loose-leader to gain a market, only to squeeze the consumer at a later date. Evil is investing money in companies only to influence them in to killing your competitors market viability, as opposed to competing on pure merit.
I used to like Wired Magazine back in the early 90′. To me it is no longer in “the zone”. So I stop reading it a long time ago.
Now, if we only examined with detail what getting locked in to Apples ecosystem really implies, you would conclude how little veracity this article really possesses.
Apple “locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem.”
BULL CRAP! What other computer allows you to run BOTH Windows and the Max OSX, natively?! And Linux? Huh? It’s the most OPEN machine on the planet!!!
Also, Apple is great about avoiding proprietary tech and seeks always to work with open standards — in direct opposite of MicroSloth which forces its proprietary hooks and standards on everything it touches.
GET IT STRAIGHT!
As Apple keeps growing, get ready for more of this. And the lawsuits too.
Mac84, just to be fair, the only reason OS X doesn’t run on non-Apple hardware is because Apple won’t allow it. BUT it is a good point that Apple cares more about you buying it’s hardware than it’s software.
If there is one thing that bothers me about anything that Apple has done lately it is the iPhone. If I pay $400 dollars for a phone and want to use it with a different carrier, I am guaranteed no updates for life. I bought it, it is my property, if I want to hack it, that’s my business. Don’t go out of your way to brick it, if I want an update. I don’t care what terms they set before the sale, once that money leaves my pocket the cord should be cut. It’s no different than GM replacing upgrades on your car when you get an inspection. I think most of you would be very upset about that right? So you could say ‘well don’t buy one,’ and that is why I haven’t. And that still does not make it right.
This article is an insidious attack on Apple and Steve yet again.
Google’s ‘do no evil’ mantra depends on Google’s definition of evil, they are not the white knight but it suits their purpose if you think that they are.
What “proprietary ecosystem”?
My printer, scanner, router, and digital camera have nothing to do with Apple. You can connect your Mac to any third-party monitor. You can run any OS you want on a new Mac and never (the horror of it) run OS X if you want. My iPod is loaded with music from CD’s I purchased. No one has to purchase a single damn thing from the iTunes store.
Why do journalists still spew out this proprietary ecosystem crap? It’s the same as all the lies from the 90’s – Macs can’t get on the internet, you can’t run Microsucks Office on a Mac, you can only use an Apple monitor, etc., etc.
Kahney writes, “At most companies, the red-faced, tyrannical boss is an outdated archetype, a caricature from the life of Dagwood. Not at Apple. Whereas the rest of the tech industry may motivate employees with carrots, Jobs is known as an inveterate stick man.”
What an idiot Kahney is. Jobs is not simply some ego-driven authoritarian; that is what drives the MS camp and other mediocre products. Jobs simply recognizes true creativity when he sees it and is unapologetic to dullards who falsely think they are, because it is this acceptance of mediocrity that begets products like MicroSoft and the other cell/pc makers. This of course makes him very unpopular to any who like to entertain lofty delusions about themselves. If you are in Steve Jobs’ company and you say you have a great idea … it better be great or he’ll let you know. That is not authoritarianism, it is challenging people to be truly great, accepting nothing less, and why Apple is releasing great product after great product.