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."

Better Link (IMHO)

[webword]

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. ;-)
 

Re:He needs to get towed a few times.

[ptbarnett]

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:completely ignorant

[abigor]

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]

Actually...

[techwizrd]

Darwin is not very open-source, and they use WebKit which was developed off of KHTML.

Re:"Management" is not "Evil"

[Lemmy Caution]

Dell is Texan, but Intel was created in and is still HQ'ed in Silicon Valley, with origins in Fairchild Semiconductor, a seminal Silicon Valley firm. It's about as Silicon Valley as you can get.

Re:Meh.

[ClosedSource]

Actually the time between the introduction of the Mac and Jobs departure, Apple wasn't all that successful. It was his second coming that led to Apple's first big financial success following the Apple II. In any case, I wasn't talking about Apple's success as a function of Jobs overall performance, but rather about the claim that his being a jerk was the cause for Apple's success. What about Next? Wasn't he enough of a jerk there to be successful?

Re:What a silly article

[severoon]

Agreed? It does affect you. You buy one Apple device, you're stuck with Apple whether you "agreed" to it or not. The consequences mean that you should make sure you're ok with it before you drink the Kool-Aid.

Re:completely ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

The Darwin version for the iPhone is already available. The iPhone's kernel is compiled from the same sources as the Mac's. It is not running a custom version of OS X, it is simply running OS X. The differences between desktop OS X and iPhone OS X are entirely at the user interface level, none of which is open source.

What kind of research did they do?

[argent]

Look at this: Last year, Amazon.com began selling DRM-free songs that can be played on any MP3 player. [...] Not Apple. Want to hear your iTunes songs on the go? You're locked into playing them on your iPod.

Amazon's DRM-free downloads started last September.

Apple's DRM-free downloads started last April.

Did the author of this piece do ANY research?

Re:What a silly article

[toriver]

In addition, it's not clear whether Apple would be even more successful if it licensed its operating system to other companies willing to make less expensive boxes.

Actually, that is clear - since they once did, and almost went under because of it. One of the first things Jobs did when Pepsi-Sculley was out and he was back was to cancel all deals with companies like Power Computing.

Re:They Be The Opposite

[VGPowerlord]

Hell, even when there is a worst case scenario and you have to reinstall your operating system, apple provides a special mode that will reinstall your OS from scratch while maintaining a backup of your data and applications. And this has been a part of the OS for a good decade.

Microsoft, why *arn't* you listening?

The option you describe sounds suspiciously like the Repair install option that's been part of Windows since at least Windows 2000.