Four things you need to know about Apple

16 years ago

“All big companies have their critics. But what’s interesting about Apple’s detractors is universal surprise. Their disappointment often stems from finding out that Apple isn’t the company they thought it was. So I’m going to do all you would-be critics a favor, and explain some fundamental aspects of Apple’s culture,” Mike Elgan writes for IDG.net. “Next time, you won’t be blindsided and confused.”

Here are four things that Apple believes that explain the unexplainable:

1. Everything Apple sells is an Apple product: Everything Apple offers on iTunes is viewed by Apple in the same way they view music: They’re all Apple products… There’s a great scene in the upcoming movie, “Me and Orson Welles,” in which Welles responds to a fellow actor’s complaint that ‘he is an arrogant, selfish…’ with the line: “I am Orson Welles, and every single one of you stands here as an adjunct to my vision. [If] you don’t like the way I work here, there’s the door.” That, in a nutshell, is Jobs’ view of the relationship between Apple and its developer community.

2. Apple products are disposable: Apple makes high-quality, durable gadgets… But don’t let that fool you into thinking Apple wants those products to enjoy years and years of use. Apple expects you to dump your old product and buy the new one just as soon as it comes out. And they don’t expect you to sell the old one to someone else. There’s no such thing as an old Apple product. There is only the current Apple product, and trash.

3. Nothing exists unless Apple sells it: In Steve Jobs’ world view, nothing exists outside the Appleverse. People don’t read because Apple doesn’t sell a reader. Mark my words, when Apple ships its tablet or some other device that can be used for the serious reading of books, people will read again.

4. Apple doesn’t want to be a successful business: It has no interest in… imperialist expansion. Apple is interested only in surgical strikes into this business or that product category, where they can solve design problems others have failed to solve… Apple’s choices in markets it gets into make no sense, unless you understand that they don’t want to dominate industries, or even maximize revenues. They just want to design and sell better products that will affect user experience in markets where that’s an achievable goal.