“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Kahney writes, “At most companies, the red-faced, tyrannical boss is an outdated archetype, a caricature from the life of Dagwood.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.]
So now, not only is loose lose, so is loss.
Frickin’ bozo illiterates.
Let us pray: Thank you, Lord, for creating Steve Jobs and Steve Woz, hippie, lefty, Democratic, capitalist innovators, who created Apple Computers in hippie, lefty, Democratic Northern California.
@ Lardlad,
If you jailbreak your iPhone you void the end user agreement you sign at startup. As a result you invalidate the warranty and you end your ability to install any possible updates.
If you decide to break the contract with Apple, it’s your decision, not Apple’s. When you get an Apple product you get the whole ecosystem. You don’t like the ecosystem, no problem, but you’re on your own.
Quit your whining.
@Lardland
“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.”
A cell phone is not an independent product that can work with out a network. Apple chose to tie the iPhone to a network because it also wanted to use proprietary technology, like the visual voice mail feature. It also wanted to keep full support of the phone and it’s updates so it will continue to be a reliable product. All other restrictions imposed on the user are based on this last premise of reliability. Think on this last point carefully and then consider the alternative. I have unlocked 3 iPhones for friends and family members that do not have access to ether ATT network or iTunes Music Store in the countries they reside. I have also first hand knowledge of how easy it is to use the iPhone with T-Mobil for example, and having it also be using the latest update. So if you want one, but have not purchased, it’s probably because of two things, one loosing your warranty is a big deal for you, or, you can’t afford one.
I guess we never explore, in depth, why Microsoft, uh, thrives, because if we did everybody that works at MS would have to go to jail.
Actually, one could also make the opposite argument: that it is the design-by-committee mentality that is the relic. Design by inspiration is not the result of wielding autocratic control; it is the result of vision, which is always a rare commodity.
The design-by-committee mentality is not based on some new-age world view but is the predictable result of the autocratic, top-down management style that, contrary to the author’s opinion, still dominates business and industry today. Most white-collar workers in our society strive not for creativity, but for survival. Nothing kills creativity faster than realizing that your job is as disposable as the next bright-eyed job applicant. No one wants to stick his (or her) neck out; and the company big shots, for the most part, wouldn’t know a good idea if it poked them in the eye. Hence the invention of design-by-committe, wherein individual workers never have to take sole responsibility for anything and the big boss can be assured that at least a dozen middle managers think the company’s latest creation is a good idea. Needless to say, this kind of “creativity” could also be called design-by-mediocrity. Praise be to the bell-shaped curve.
” . . . because if we did everybody that works at MS would have to go to jail.”
Directly to jail. And you won’t get $200 either. You know why.
People are just tired of Apple and Steve Jobs showing the rest of Silicon Valley how they screwed up the very basic products they are supposed to be experts at…computing, telephony, digital entertainment. Let’s face it if you are some top dollar Berkely/Stanford grad and Steve Jobs runs circles around you on a daily basis, it is difficult to justify your salary.
If I worked at M$ I would go to trade shows with a bag over my head. How could I look my peers in the face after I screwed up a Clinton provided de facto anti-trust exemption, and I still can’t release products people can get excited about. Nor can I finally put all my competitors out of business with superior products. Talk about a company making money solely b/c it has locked its users into a sad ecosystem.
Just my $0.02
Ok.
So who would you rather work under:
A sarcastic jackass like Ballmer or a brilliant tyrant like Jobs.
@lardlad
I think you have a valid point. Apple is locking the phone to ATT because it gets a monthly kick back. This is a new model; different from the computers, or even the iPod. For it to be similar you would be forced to use only one ISP and only could get music only from iTunes. This would be the case simply so that Apple could make more money. We have this going on with the iPhone.
I think you have a valid point. Apple is locking the phone to ATT because it gets a monthly kick back. —Not Bill
No, Apple is locking the iPhone to AT&T;because no mobile service provider in its right mind would have allowed Apple to maintain so much control over the iPhone unless Apple gave them an exclusive deal for some period of time. Apple’s “monthly kickback” from AT&T;is a drop in the bucket compared to all the revenue they’d make if every mobile service provider in the universe was authorized to support the iPhone?
But even if Apple could have avoided giving AT&T;an exclusive on the iPhone, turning it loose in the wild for just anyone to connect to just any network would have also limited Apple’s ability to exercise the degree of control they deem necessary for the proper use and development of their ground-breaking product. So, in a sense, AT&T;is serving as an iPhone laboratory; but Apple certainly may prefer not to sign new exclusive distribution deals when the first round of contracts expires.
Hey MacNugget…. Do you know any other software maker who would continue to upgrade your software after you radically altered it? you can always re-set it to the way it was and then upgrade. You’re also free to hack it as much as you like, no-one will stop you. Just don’t expect Apple’s upgrades to work on altered code.
Two favorites from the Wired article.
1) RMA is the fault of the record companies NOT Apple’s – and now they complain about it locking into iPods. morons
2) The comment by the right winger claiming that Macs were for Liberals and not him and his PC. You right wing folks need to set him straight. haha
&
@Jake (here on MDN) – that was awesomely droll.
Ask people who go on the wildest of roller coasters if they feel the compulsion to have the “choice” of <u>not</u> being locked in!!
Gruber has a scathing response…
http://daringfireball.net/2008/03/kahney_jackass