“Apple has long been notoriously secretive about its unreleased products,” Daniel Eran writes for RoughlyDrafted. “Critics compare Apple’s secrecy against the transparent development efforts of open source projects, and even with other commercial developers. Microsoft, for example, has a history of providing detailed roadmaps of future plans. Why does Apple keep its future plans under wraps?”
“If Apple is doing so well in delivering new features, why were some features left under wraps at WWDC? After all, Microsoft has long used early announcements of future plans to overshadow and divert attention from competitors’ existing products. Why isn’t Apple doing this with Leopard? There are multiple reasons,” Eran writes.
Eran’s reasons for Apple’s secrecy:
• It avoids setting up the company for failure (see: Vista)
• It’s how Apple generates the biggest media splash
• It’s how Apple makes the “tech journalist” monkeys dance
• Apple’s unique role as a fixture of national headlines
Erna writes, “While Apple’s secrecy works to its advantage in creating excitement for consumer products, the same secrecy can work against Apple’s efforts to working with partners, particularly in Open Source projects, and in dealing with corporate customers. An upcoming article will look at Apple’s recent efforts to adapt and provide more open information about their future plans.”
Full article with much more here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan The Man” for the heads up.]
And also to keep those photocopiers guessing
Doesn’t do any good when there is so much speculation on future Apple products that the speculation becomes fact without Apple saying a word. People whining because such-and-such product is late to market when no announcement was ever made. “Apple lied to us” and all that crap.
Did someone mention Monkey Dance?
Ok,why they keep secrets was supposed to be a secret.
but also works against them, losing them contracts with governments agencies like with Nasa.
Damn, the secret’s out on that cause for secrecy!
Apple can’t win. People would complain if something “great” was promised, but not delivered. Now, people complain that Apple doesn’t share enough, i.e. the Leopard demo. Overall, I think the Apple approach beats the heck out of M$’s.
Good point! Remember the Newton and how John Scully let the cat out of the bag on that one?
Also how John Scully sold Apple out to Microsoft?
Third parties can always sign an NDA and be exposed to some of those *secrets* pertaining their field of interest.
> Microsoft, for example, has a history of providing detailed roadmaps of future plans.>
Hahahahahahaha, future vista vaporware you mean. Yes indeedy, MS anounces the future waaaaaay in advance—-like five years!
All the speculation and “not knowing” surrounding what Apple is or isn’t doing is fun, interesting and quite frankly, very entertaining to me – I enjoy the way product announcements are made by Apple – they make it exciting to find out – and they get all sorts of free press that way, too – very smart strategy.
However, those people, pundits and otherwise, that end up complaining that their hopes were raised to the heights by all that speculation are just deluding themselves. They raised their own hopes and made the choice to climb that mountain all by themselves. They can climb right back down again, dejected and depressed – all by themselves – and just shut up about having to do it.
Secrecy is important because Slugworth is always looking for gobstoppers.
Lately, M$’s “detailed” road maps only show detours, roundabouts, and dead ends.
ANNOUNCING WINDOWS TIME TRAVEL 1.0 with SP1
Wednesday 30th August 2006
Microsoft today announced plans to release the first portable device that will allow consumers to literally travel backwards and forward in time. The new M$TT with SP1 is the first of its’ kind ever, and company spokesman Steve Ballmer Jr. was on hand to give BBC news the lowdown:
“Forget Apple’s ‘Time Machine’, all that allows you to do is recover lost work. Micro$oft’s new Time Travel with SP1 allows you to LITERALLY recover lost time. Using our patented technology the TT SP1 will calculate how much time you have lost standing at bus stops and transport you back the desired time, so you can have fun instead of waiting for the bus! It’s fab!”
Microsoft said the TT SP1 will be available from January 2060, but Bill Gates (who is still alive and running on Windows XP SP4, known as Vista 2.0) said he will not bring the technology to the market until it is ready.
and U-turns
Yeah, I think I forgot the most detailed part of the map….
I think it works more for Apple than against Apple. If they let everything be publicly known than there wouldn’t be that electricity when Jobs gives his keynote speeches. All of the worlds copy machines would come out with there very bad interpitation of Apple’s ideas before Apple released there own product which would compromise sales and what people would interpit there quality and useability would be like as well. Microsoft and many tiwaneese companies are good examples of that copier mentality.
If everyone saw what they did first and then looked at buying Apple’s products they might think twice about it because of the bad experience they had trying the other guys.
Keep it secret Apple.
I think the secrecy hurts Apple’s sales and I’ll tell you why. I’m not talking about things like Leopard’s feature set (I’m all for keeping that a secret) – but at least Apple told us WHEN to expect Leopard. Great.
Right now I am waiting for Paris Expo (like I was waiting for ADC) to make several major (OK major to ME) purchases. I need a new laptop and will get a 17″ MacBook Pro with a glossy screen. But I know at SOME point in the near future, Apple will slap a Core2 Duo in there instead of the Core Duo. If Apple publicly stated that, “no, they will not do that until next year”, I would buy NOW as I couldn’t wait that long. My main monitor here is dying and I will be getting a nice new 23″ cinema display, but… There were rumors of Apple making the glossy screen optional on the cinema displays (which I would REALLY want to have) so I am waiting for the next round of product announcements, not knowing if such a beast is even coming.
If Apple were continuously laying out it’s product roadmmap for the next 12 months or so, I know I would have bought a laptop and cinema display at least 4 months ago. As it is now, I may wait until MacWorld Expo – almost a year from the time I decided to purchase.
So Apple – I would ask: Keep your secrets about specifics, but give us the big picture! Tell us when the MacBook Pro will be updated to Core2 without commiting to clock speeds, etc.
Because, in Apple’s eyes if anything goes wrong (a la Vista), then no one knows about it.
Take the crashing of Time Machine at WWDC, for example. They probably shouldn’t have shown that – even if it is still in its early stages
Apple and google association is a terrible idea, it will ruin both companies as aol and time warner ruined eachother back in early 2000,
DW, when did Time Machine crash at WWDC? I didn’t see it when I saw the event on apple.com
Dance, tech monkeys, dance!!
Faster!
Picturing Enderle, Thurrott, and Krebs dancing to the iPod commercials… too funny.
Right they seem to be missing the obvious point here. Its in the interest of market leaders to state clearly their future product strategy to maintain their hold on their ecosystem. Do I really need to explain why? On the other hand when you are even a big niche player you have to succeed bringing to the market something new and unexpected, not necessarily revolutionary but something not quite obvious to those that count in the highly structured conglomerates where many levels have to be convinced through continous evaluation before even this week’s sandwich special is decided. If Blackberry had advertised what they were doing years in advance do you really think there would actually be a Blackberry? Same applies even in the podverse simply because while it dominates the market the number and size of potential players in that market are immense and mostly on another’s side.
Fact is big conglomorates are good at monolithic corporate type advancement and terrible at atuning themselves to the new and left field unless and untill they see someone else, usually those very niche or small players making a success of it. Of course IF Bill Gates had played it the monolithic way when in his early days he fooled IBM into creating his empire for him in an area they didn’t even realise existed do you think IBM actually would have?
<i> Apple and google association is a terrible idea, it will ruin both companies as aol and time warner ruined each other back in early 2000,<i>
Time Warner was going to kill AOL any (who needs AOL for the internet when you can have RoadRunner?), now it’s the only thing keeping them afloat.
How this will work out for Apple/Google remains to be seen, but I think they are complementary companies and this has a good chance of success.
MDN word “wrong” as in “You got it WRONG”.
lets see, how well has the pre-announcement of Vista helped MS? nearly all the original features touted have vanished from the original plan.
A road map that shows a highway being built where you end up with a single-track is a pretty <bleep> useless roadmap…