Apple's Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger 305
Posted
by
kdawson
from the tell-no-one dept.
from the tell-no-one dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has a story on the culture of secrecy at Apple (registration possibly required). Secrecy is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture that had its origin in the release of the first Macintosh. 'It really started around trying to keep the surprise aspect to product launches, which can have a lot of power,' says marketing veteran Regis McKenna who advised Apple in its early days. Today few companies are more secretive than Apple, or as punitive to those who dare violate the company's rules on keeping tight control over information. Employees have been fired for leaking news tidbits to outsiders, and the company has been known to spread disinformation about product plans to its own workers and sue bloggers who cover the company. Apple's decision to severely limit communication with the news media, shareholders, and the public is at odds with the approach taken by many other companies, and many experts agree that the secrecy that adds surprise and excitement to Apple product announcements is not serving the company well in corporate governance. Some say that recent reports that Steve Jobs may have had a liver transplant, still not confirmed by the company, now makes one of Apple's assertions from January — that Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance — seem like a deliberate untruth."
Re:Personal Life (Score:3, Informative)
He is associated more strongly with Apple than perhaps any CEO is associated with any large company in America.
Not quite. Throughout history there have been CEOs who've been very strongly associated with their companies. Here's a short, non-exhaustive list (in no particular order):
Bill Gates - Microsoft
Warren Buffet - Berkshire Hathaway
Jack Welch - General Electric
Larry Ellison - Oracle
Andy Grove - Intel
Michael Bloomberg - Bloomberg
Charles Schwabb - Charles Schwabb
J.P. Morgan - J.P. Morgan and Co.
John D. Rockefeller - Standard Oil
Re:Anything is better than Microsoft FUD and whini (Score:5, Informative)
Apple is pretty good in the sense that they don't appear to criticise the competition (or if they do it doesn't make the news). They get on with what they do best.
Never seen the "I'm a Mac - I'm a PC" advertising campaign?
Re:Apple is not a tech company (Score:3, Informative)
Sure...
OK, we have a 1099 dollar MacBook here and a 799 HP laptop here. The Apple is more expensive, one less USB port, same size screen, and IEEE 1394 port on my Mac.
The HP that lacks "selling sex appeal, social status, and "having a good time"' hangs every couple hours, wifi drops hourly and reboots 3-5 times a week. My sexy, social status having a good time Mac has 9 days uptime right now.
I've been using computers for 30 years now, our first computer was a IBM PC XT in April '83, first laptop I used was a Toshiba T1000, so I've been around the sexy and unsexy for a while, I use a Mac because I find them to be more stable and reliable, not because they have cool commercials and neat stores.
Apple is very much a technology company, they invented Firewire/IEEE 1394, pioneered USB and Wifi enabled computers across entire lines.
Re:Apple is not a tech company (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like you picked up a crappy HP.
My £500 3 year old PC has never crashed, doesn't hang, doesn't drop WiFi (I've had disconnects, but only due to the router, not the laptop). It Just Works.
Actually tell a lie, I have had hangs - when I'm running Itunes (though the OS recovers fine when I close off the dodgy software).
Wow, 9 days. Obviously no one's ever had a PC on for that long.
USB and Wifi weren't Apple inventions, but no doubt like most mythical "Apple firsts", you are using some definition of pioneered that excludes any other company who did so first.
nytimes blogsafe links (Score:5, Informative)
New York Times link generator [blogspace.com]
For instance Apple's Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger [nytimes.com]
In this case, "?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all" was appended, though at times, other magic keys have been required.
Re:Apple is not a tech company (Score:2, Informative)
Wow, 9 days, yea, thats how Macs work now, they stay up pretty much until you need to do a software update that requires a reboot. Uptime on my iMac here is 31 days, 17:55, because I've not patched it yet.
My xserve has done over 365 serving files/html.
Vista/XP it doesn't matter, OS X since 10.1 has just been more stable in my experience.
I didn't say USB/Wifi were Apple inventions, I said they were the first to deploy them across the product lines. They did the same thing with DVD-ROM drives, but missed the boat on CD-R/RWs.
Go back to the launch of the iMac and show me what makers deployed USB that vocally, then to iBook launch and show who had Wifi.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec7.html [ibm.com]
IBM's history of the USB standard credits the iMac.
http://www.coe.montana.edu/ee/rwolff/EE580/history_of_wifi.htm [montana.edu]
"The technology had been standardised; it had a name; now Wi-Fi needed a market champion, and it found one in Apple, a computer-maker renowned for innovation. The company told Lucent that, if it could make an adapter for under $100, Apple would incorporate a Wi-Fi slot into all its laptops. Lucent delivered, and in July 1999 Apple introduced Wi-Fi as an option on its new iBook computers, under the brand name AirPort. âoeAnd that completely changed the map for wireless networking,â'
Re:Avoid the Osborne Effect (Score:3, Informative)
The vast majority of those who bought the iPhone 3GS ALREADY HAD an iPhone. [citation needed] [wikipedia.org]
Re:Parts: The Clonus Horror (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/05sjletter.html [apple.com]
One week later there was an update that stated his problems were more complex than originally thought. It was in this second message that the medical leave of absence was announced.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/14advisory.html [apple.com]