How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

An anonymous reader writes "Wired has a look at how the good and bad of Apple, their Yin and Yang, have come together to form a company that actually works. The piece looks at Steve Jobs' unusual and abrasive management style, otherwise known as 'Management Techniques From the Dark Side'. It's essentially a list of counterintuitive, suspicious-seeming and downright evil management techniques that work - for them."

What a silly article

[wass (72082)]

I read the first of five pages of the article, and decided it's not worth further click-throughs.

The author tries to come up with ways that Apple is evil, but really winds up taking jabs primarily at Steve Jobs. As a newfound mac user, I don't give a crap about Jobs, I care about using a computer that matches my needs and does what I want. For me that's Mac. And for most of the other 6-7% of the Mac marketshare it's a pretty similar situation.

Re:What a silly article

[podperson (592944)]

Agreed.

My favorite bit from skimming it: "even WIRED got it wrong" (referring to telling Apple to get out of the hardware business).

This from the magazine whose cover story was "The Long Boom" the month that the internet bubble burst.

Wired hardly ever gets anything right (not entirely its fault, since it makes lots of predictions), but still.

Re:What a silly article - Mod Parent Up

[db32 (862117)]

No joke, I wish my mod points hadn't expired. This really is some twisted shit. This seems par for the course lately from Wired. They have been publishing absolute garbage lately. Air Force blocks blocks and other sites and suddenlty something that is an industry best practice for security becomes censorship?

I also noticed that the people bitching about Jobs were "former" employees. Well holy shit...someone who left or was fired is going to bitch about their former boss for some media facetime? This is a 5 page article?!

And maybe I didn't read enough, but "micromanaging" has nothing to do with demanding exacting detail from the output. Anyone who calls that micromanaging has NEVER been micromanaged and its an insult to anyone who has suffered through a real micromanaging boss.

completely ignorant

[gnutoo (1154137)]

The author seems blissfully unaware of Apple's free software use. GCC, Darwin, Khtml and what not punch a few large holes in their central thesis.

Re:completely ignorant

[abigor (540274)]

Not to mention original efforts like launchd, which Apple has released under the Apache license. There's also Bonjour, Darwin, etc. - see here: http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html [apple.com]

Re:completely ignorant

[peragrin (659227)]

apple only uses free software to assist in rapid building of large software projects. Why build a custom MSFT SMB/CIF/what ever it's called this year Interface when Samba is free, works well with your base system, and only needs a custom GUI interface?

KHTML, Cups, etc all fall into that category. While Apple routinely publishes it's open source code back as it is required under the GPL, the software that is BSD based doesn't get published as often. Where is the Darwin version for the iPhone? If it really is running a custom version of OSX then it exists, but you will never see it.

Meh.

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Where modern management philosophies are mainly about touchy-feelie crap and corporate culture is trending toward openness, Apple stands out as a company where management is aggressive and dictatorial and corporate culture is supremely secretive.

If you want to call that "Evil" I suppose you can. I think, however, that design by committee only produces piles of steaming crap. There is definitely something to be said for a guy who has vision, and the force of personality to see it through.

Re:well, it is silly, but not in the way you think

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

The main difference between Apple and other companies is who they design products for. Most companies try to identify a market segment, work out what people in that segment want to buy, and then produce a product for that market. Apple tries to produce products for Steve Jobs. He has fairly good taste and so often those are also products that other people want to buy. Sometimes, they are not. A classic example is the Cube - a computer everyone wanted but no one thought was worth the price (the down side of designing products for a multibillionaire). It remains to be seen whether the MacBook Air will fall into that category.

Another company that used to work that way was Palm. Their flagship pilot was built to be something that the CEO would to carry around with him. There is a well-known story about him getting a block of wood cut which would fit in his jacket pocket and giving it to the designers as a maximum size for the device.

Re:What a silly article

[WhiteWolf666 (145211)]

Apple is irredeemably evil, and more obsessed with proprietary secrets than Microsoft, however, Apple doesn't practice 1/2 of the dirty business games that Microsoft plays.

Partnering with Microsoft is the kiss of death. Period. Microsoft will do legal & illegal things to fuck you, and then worry about the consequences later.

Apple doesn't do this; so even though Apple is a brutish sort of company, they're easier to do business with. Lawful Evil > Chaotic Evil ;-)

Its not hard - most managers are tools

[Gothmolly (148874)]

Given that most managerial types are ignorant tools whose rise to power is typically fuelled by a mediocre knowledge of PowerPoint and Project, its a no brainer that to succeed, be agile, and come up with good products, you simply do everything that 'traditional' techniques says to avoid.

Re:Its not hard - most managers are tools

[ubrgeek (679399)]

>fuelled by a mediocre knowledge of PowerPoint

Hey! I resent that. And I can prove it's not true. I've got a 70-page presentation that I'd like to share. I'll read through every single slide and, to keep you interested, it's got all kinds of text that flies in from the left and fades out and ... ;)

He needs to get towed a few times.

[ptbarnett (159784)]

Unauthorized parking in a handicapped spot is a violation of state law. In this case, the rules do apply to Jobs, regardless of the high opinion he has of himself.

Jobs needs to make a few trips to the impound lot to bail out his car. He would probably create his own reserved parking place, but at least that would put an end to the myth of the egalitarian parking lot policy.

Re:He needs to get towed a few times.

[sm62704 (957197)]

Unauthorized parking in a handicapped spot is a violation of state law. In this case, the rules do apply to Jobs, regardless of the high opinion he has of himself.

To Steve Jobs, the hundred dollar fine he'd pay here for parking in a handicapped spot is akin to my putting a quarter in a parking meter. Chump change not worth worrying about.

Fines should be based on net worth, or at least income. Since they're not, the richer you are the less the law applies to you.

Re:He needs to get towed a few times.

[ptbarnett (159784)]

Seeing as how it's private property, he can park anywhere he wants. He can park in the front entrance if he wants.

He can indeed park in the front entrance, on the sidewalk, or on the front lawn. But, he can't park in a handicapped space unless he is handicapped. That's the law.

The law also requires a certain number of handicapped spaces. The formula varies by state -- maybe someone knows the details of CA law, as it would apply to Apple. So, Jobs couldn't just convert a handicapped space to his personal parking space, unless they are currently exceeding the requirements of the law.

Re:He needs to get towed a few times.

[BlowHole666 (1152399)]

Seeing as how it's private property, he can park anywhere he wants. He can park in the front entrance if he wants.

Yes it is private property but it is required to follow city laws and codes. That is why businesses must have handicap spots in the first place. City regulations require that a business have those spots. So no he can not park in the handicap spot. He could park in the front entrance however, but he would probably be breaking fire code. So just because someone owns the business does not mean they can do whatever. For example a chemical company can not just dump chemical waste on their back lot. If only life were as simple as your mind :)

They Be The Opposite

[webword (82711)]

Much of the success of Apple has nothing to do with Apple itself or Steve Jobs. Instead, Apple allows people to directly reject Microsoft. Linux satisfies this anti-Microsoft position as well, but Apple actually markets itself and has the financial backing to push this branding.

With that said, Apple helps keep Microsoft out of even more legal hot water, for example, by directly backing Apple. It's a CYA tactic on the legal front.

Bottom line: Don't just drink the Kool-Aid on the Apple story without taking 1-2 steps back to look at the marketplace, cultures, and end users.

Re:They Be The Opposite

[Life2Short (593815)]

It's like the joke about the two lawyers in the woods who stumble across a bear. The first lawyer begins to run, and the second says, "Hey, forget it, you can't outrun a bear." The first lawyer yells over his shoulder, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."

Apple has pulled their share of disasters as well, but when you look at Apple's competition, their products are often mind-numbingly BAD. VISTA? Earlier online music purchasing systems? Dell and Gateway computers?

Apple isn't all that great, it's just that the competition sucks. I mean when the Asus eee-pc is the most encouraging thing you've seen come to the tech table in awhile...

Evil Works

[thomas.galvin (551471)]

I think the point of the article is that evil works, if evil is also very good at what it does.

The whole point in allowing many different people to tackle a problem is to eliminate single-point-of-failure. If one company's product blows, we can choose another's. This is very important, both to the consumer, and to the market as a whole.

But when one company is the best at what they do, people stop thinking about choice. If apple makes the best mp3player/music store, why go anywhere else? If their operating system is so good, who cares if it only runs on their hardware... as long as their hardware is great, too?

Unfortunately, even evil geniuses sometimes fail. For instance, the iPhone SDK... I honestly don't see that going anywhere, unless the current license agreement is modified to something less draconian.

Re:Evil Works

[jedidiah (1196)]

Jobs is good enough to pull off his "asshole" routine. This doesn't mean
that it can work for anyone else. It also may not work for any other
company. It happens to work for Jobs and Apple (apparently).

On a similar note, there are plenty of people that are "google wannabes".
They will pick up on something they've heard about Google's management
style. They will try to implement it and be full of themselves. It ends
up being a big fiasco of course because such people are just kidding
themselves. They don't have the talent to be managers at Google or
Apple.

Better Link (IMHO)

[webword (82711)]

Read the entire article on one page... *

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=all [wired.com]

So much better than flipping, flipping, flipping through pages and waiting for reloads. It's the print version, so you can use it that way too -- long article so print and read offline.

* = Assumes you plan on actually reading the article. ;-)
 

Differences with Google are oversold

[snowwrestler (896305)]

Google runs its servers on Linux, but with propietary tweaks. The Google search ranking algorithm is at least as secret at Apple's product roadmap, and they are no more forthcoming with their product roadmap than Apple is (remember all the random answers and stonewalling that met questions about Google's plans on a mobile phone prior to the Android announcement).

To be a large, public, consumer company you have to keep some things secret for a variety of reasons. You don't want to telegraph strategy to your competitors. You want to release things with a splash to earn unpaid media coverage. You don't want to be held legally liable for stock price movements based on R&D projects that might never get released. etc.

Apple is very closed and secretive about some things, but quite open about others. Like Google their core OS kernel is open source. Like Google they employ commonly available technologies--http, MP3, H264, AAC, Unix, USB, ATA, 802.11, etc.--but put them together in unique ways to create new products.

Leadership, not totalitarianism

[boristdog (133725)]

Jobs may be a dick, but he's also a natural leader, which is always more important.

I'm not a fan of Apple, nor of Mr. Jobs, but he has some serious leadership skills. The fact that he's also a dick is not a factor in his success. Apparently his leadership can outshine his dickishness.

Fortunately Mr. Jobs decided to start a computer company instead of a religious cult in Guyana. Who knows what Jim Jones' "Kool-Ade OS" might have been like had he chosen a different path.

Been there

[overshoot (39700)]

I've worked for an Apple supplier, and it's a bit creepy to have someone take mug shot of you because "Mr. Jobs wants to know what you look like." Not as creepy as getting a phone call at home late at night because they want hand-holding, but creepy.

Re:Handicapped

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's possible those spaces are for the emotionally handicapped [folklore.org].

Re:Handicapped

[eln (21727)]

I don't know, but I bet they were all making handicapped faces when he did that.