Yet more whining on Apple secrecy

I'm sure Jens Alfke is a great guy and a great engineer, and I understand if he leaves Apple due to creative differences. Yet some of his comments seem to warrant a big "Duh!"

I think Apple’s policy on blogging is one of the least enlightened of major tech companies; Microsoft in particular is surprisingly open.

Well, Apple has been all about secrecy for the past decade or so, while Microsoft, perhaps the world's greatest vendor of vaporware, has always embraced blabbering as one of its main communication tools. Isn't it as simple as this?

Read More...

Summary only...

Leaked iPhone sales textbook reveals Spartan feature set, lack of AT&T crapware

Uncharacteristically, Macrumors.com has posted an original story that got picked up by the entire Mac web, featuring the scanned pages of a sales training booklet that helps AT&T employees sell the iPhone.

No significant new features are revealed, though. As the workbook often states the obvious, it might be safe to assume that its failure to mention a functionality (e.g. voice dialing) probably means that the functionality in question is not going to be part of the iPhone, at least at the time of its launch.

The lack of GPS mapping is mentioned as a potential "objection" to be expected from prospective clients, and the guide even offers a canned answer, thanking the client for the feedback and promising to forward it to Apple. Unfortunately, there's no mention of any alternative geographical positioning solution.

Considering all of this, as well as the new TV ads, I'm getting more and more convinced that the iPhone's June 29 incarnation will to be a true 1.0 release, with the absolute minimum functionality Apple deemed necessary for the launch. MMS or voice dialing, which, frankly, nobody uses, have fallen victim to this strategy. The device should wow millions with its sex appeal and user-friendliness, and convert unsuspecting iPod users into smartphone owners.

As for business users, or even simple power users like yours truly: the iPhone will need some improvements to be truly useful for us. For example, I will definitely need to be able to select, copy and paste text, and so far, I haven't seen any indication that this would be possible.
But we are a small, hard-to-please crowd. Clearly, Apple isn't after us, at least not in the beginning.

By the way, for me, the most entertaining parts of the presentation have been the comparisons with other AT&T offerings. It's amazing how much crap AT&T is trying to feed to its customers, and Apple must really feel victorious about shielding iPhone users from all that: the AT&T Music Folder, MEdia Net, Cellular Video, and others all get a mention as no-shows on the device. Apple also doesn't believe in partnering with MobiTV or TeleNav.

Read More...

Summary only...

Will 2007 turn Apple into Sony?

Damn. One of the real reasons why I always wanted to write a Mac blog was so that I can publish Macworld Expo predictions and speculation. However, this year is difficult. There are already way too many shoo-ins, too much speculation, and a general cornucopia of rumors, predictions and wishes.

But anyway, these are my pre-expo thoughts. As this post will have a very short shelf life, I'm not bothering with links or references. Use Google at your own discretion.

What's given

iLife '07 can't just be merely inferred from a pattern, it's been leaked brutally (by Amazon.com). iWork will almost certainly receive an update, too. Leopard and iTV are the rare things that Apple pre-announced, so some details will certainly follow. Of these two, the iTV doesn't create that much buzz, though it's yet another non-Mac product from Apple with a GUI and an OS of its own, and should thus warrant great interest as a significant player in the diversification of Apple.

Leopard

I think Leopard's Top Secret features are perhaps the most eagerly anticipated items in the keynote. Leopard will certainly be a developer's delight with Objective-C 2.0, Core Animation, greatly enhanced developer tools and other killer features, but the consumer appeal of the new OS itself may be lacking a bit in comparison to earlier Mac OS X upgrades, especially in light of the slower update cycle that debuts with Leopard (which will ship after an almost two-year wait over Tiger). By the way, I don't think Leopard will ship any earlier than the spring deadline Apple announced. It just doesn't seem ready yet.

Rumors suggest an updated GUI, though nobody knows whether this change (if true) would only be skin deep, or it would add new behaviors or change existing ones. I guess the iTunes look (i.e. gray window borders without textures, flat, matte scroll widgets, and a shiny 3D selection highlight among others) will become more widespread, at least this would be the least surprising development (and certainly a welcome one over the brushed metal look, though not necessarily suitable to replace current non-textured windows).

If the look and feel change, I certainly hope for the following:

• Hopefully, it won't be such a radical change that all icons, buttons and other custom graphics of third-party apps would need to be redone in order to avoid looking out of place. This was the case with the switch from Platinum to Aqua, and the transitional period wasn't pretty. Platinum icons on Aqua backgrounds looked decidedly horrible.

• I hope pinstripes will be gone for good.

• The ability to select a neutral gray color scheme (unlike the blue-biased Graphite theme) would be good for graphic designers.

If changes go beyond looks, I'd like to see a revamped Dock with some hierarchy or grouping of the countless random objects that thrive there. And, of course, many hope for the return of a spatial Finder, or at least the debut of a simply better one.

I've been thinking a lot about the "top secret" features, and have considered various theories on why these have been kept secret. The official explanation has been to prevent premature copying by Microsoft, but many wondered what Microsoft could have copied in the few months between the WWDC and Vista's debut other than looks – and this has certainly helped the "new GUI look" rumor gain momentum.

However, I don't think Apple's fear of the Redmond copycats necessarily involved Microsoft looking at Leopard features in August and squeezing them into Vista in two months' time.

Instead, this is what I think this "fear from copying" might have involved:

• Announcing even difficult-to-copy features seven months before shipping, rather than only two months ahead, would give Microsoft five more months to catch up with these in a Service Pack release of Vista. Apple has bought itself five more months of market lead on these (still mysterious) features.

• Microsoft isn't the only company that copies Apple. With the advent of the so-called Web 2.0, rich web interfaces abound, and many Apple design trends already surface on new websites. Today, web applications sometimes approach the functionality of desktop apps, and their development and distribution can be very fast.

• Most likely, though, I suspect that at least some of the "Top Secret" features have something to do with as yet unannounced products, both hardware and software. Just one example: I think .Mac will be seriously revamped (the updated webmail client may be a hint of some progress going on behind the scenes), and just about everyone agrees that Dot-Mac sucks. The complaints have been going on for so long (and have yet to be addressed by Apple) that I'm sure something is happening by now. Oh, and of course, the iPod phone and the touchscreen iPod wil both use some extra tie-ins with Leopard.

Macs updated? Yawn…

Some Mac models will likely be updated. Eight-core Mac Pros do sound cool (c'mon, eight freakin' cores), even though the OS won't support them really, but come on, when did that particular problem stop Apple from releasing new pro hardware?

But frankly, who cares? If 2007 is going to be a great product year for Apple, I'd really like to see new things. Apple calls just about all of its years "great product years," with "exciting products down the pipeline," but these usually merely signify updated laptops, desktops and iPods with elegant, minimalist designs.

I actually hope that Mac updates will be a minor part of the keynote, or they may not even make it into the keynote.

Sonification ahead?

I mean, sure, it's great if the Mac Pro receives yet another update and gets even faster (prompting Phil Schiller to announce with genuine enthusiasm that "this is the fastest Mac ever," as if we were somehow expecting Macs to get slower every year), but still: there's only so much enthusiasm incremental updates, or even new form factors such as the Mac mini can create. I hope Apple is in a position today to become more like Sony, and diversify. Create new things. As in, mobile phones and PDAs. Apple-branded versions of these devices have been but a pipe dream for a long time, but not any more. The iPod phone is a given (though not necessarily at the Expo), and the iPod PDA is a possibility.

As it turns out, at least one of Apple's MWSF posters will tout the year 2007 (as does Apple's homepage). Will we see a(n unlikely) roadmap for the rest of the year, or will 2007 start with a bang? We'll see very soon.

Read More...

Summary only...

Should Apple blog?

Daniel Jalkut mentions a few worthy blogs on his own, including Microsoft's official Office for Mac Team blog, personal blogs by two of that team's members, Google's Mac Blog, and Apple's infamous Masked Blogger.

He's going somewhere with these. He says Microsoft is "kicking Apple’s butt in terms of public exposure." He thinks the Masked Blog is a proof of "Apple’s idiotic blog-stifling policies," and the Google blog is a "'cooler than Apple' corporate blogging entity."

I understand if Daniel would like to read blogs by Apple employees, either personal ones, or perhaps team blogs on the latest goings-on of some particular projects. Apple is very picky about the way it communicates with the public. Major announcements are invariably delivered by Steve Jobs at press events. Whatever else Apple wants to tell the world will be communicated in the form of press releases. It's very rare to find anything beyond the already-stated official position anywhere else, be it interviews or conferences or any other forums. Apple's spokespersons sometimes seem to have one task to perform only: to decline to comment on any given issue. Rumors, leaks and any unauthorized disclosures are frowned upon, or even taken to court.

So where would blogging fit in this picture?

I was excited when Safari/WebKit developer David Hyatt started to publish his "Surfing Safari" weblog (moved about eighteen times, currently accessible here), where he started discussing a lot of the issues concerning his work and web standards in general. Of course, he never gave away anything that he wasn't supposed to, and it was nice to get some insight into a very important part of the Mac experience: the default browser, one that Apple developed no less.

So where are all the other blogs? How about an iCal, an iLife, or iWork blog, or a general Mac OS X blog? And an iMac or Mac Pro blog? How about blogs for the iPod, AppleCare, .Mac, and so on?

Well... I really don't see what anyone could post in those blogs, really, apart from truly uninteresting stuff. Any mention of upcoming products or features would be a big no-no. Not just that: any information from which any hint of a future direction might be distilled would need to remain unblogged. And unlike Surfing Safari, where the authors discuss an open-source framework and other general web issues, these other hypothetical blogs would have no subject to blog on.

Apple is a very secretive company. A vast majority of its products are announced the day they ship, or a couple of months ahead at the very most. When Apple announces a product, it means that it's ready. Apple might have worked on it for over a year, gone back to the drawing board several times, considered then dropped several features, agonized over all the specifications and the pricing, and worked excruciatingly hard on the design and manufacturing process. But now it's ready. What we get to see is the end result.

Of course, there are a few exceptions. Operating system upgrades are dealt with in a slightly different fashion, involving developers (and, in a limited way, also the public) six to nine months ahead. But with the hardware or paid software offerings, Apple usually announces when it ships. In fact, with the single exception of iTV, Apple never discusses any hardware products in its pipeline. And iTV had to be announced for Apple's movie download service to make a bit more sense.

Contrast that with Microsoft's constant blabbering about its upcoming products. Does it really help Zune that the whole world is discussing all of its features, bugs, color schemes, marketing blunders and limitations? Zune is still months away from going on sale, yet the world has basically already reached a consensus that it won't be an iPod killer.

Announcing something that you're still working on might signal that you're eliciting feedback or discussion. And Apple's lack of doing that suggests that the company is confident in its ability to design products, without constantly turning to the public and asking, "Is it going to be okay? Or shall I change something?"

Apple also tries to fend off copycat competitors by not pre-announcing its products. Just think about Leopard's still unannounced 'top secret' features.

Apple's secrecy has spawned a cottage industry of rumormongering. Apple and Mac rumor sites run stories not only based on purported leaks by Apple insiders, but also on Apple's patent filings and even job adverts. If an Apple employee were to write a blog discussing just about any facet of his or her work at Apple, those blog posts would be scrutinized by hundreds of people associated with a dozen of such websites, trying to gather even the tiniest bit of information suggesting an upcoming Apple release. For example, Apple developer Blake Seely's mere mention on his personal blog that he got transferred to the Aperture team caused considerable impact on the rumors community, fueling the on-going speculation on the future of Aperture.

If Apple allowed its employees to blog on company matters, it would also need to set up a censorship division pre-approving any and all blog posts. Not that employees would deliberately disclose classified information, but perhaps they might not always appreciate how a seemingly innocent little detail could open up a whole can of worms.

Unless Apple wants to stop spoon-feeding its official position on all relevant matters to the press, and wants to lose a lot of its control on what gets out from inside its walls, it couldn't easily just start sanctioning employee blogs.

But how relevant would these blogs be anyway? If they couldn't talk about future directions or even too much of the current or recent events, really, what purpose would they serve? They would perhaps put names or faces to products and teams... Well, except that Apple doesn't encourage that either. Apple stopped crediting its engineers by name in any of its products' About boxes, perhaps in order to thwart headhunters or competition in their attempts to get hold of its key people. And really, can you blame Apple when its key weapon against the Microsoft juggernaut is delivering innovation, which does require secrecy?

So I think Apple's authorized blogs could do nothing other than re-hash Apple's PR, and provide some decidedly uninteresting details. Posts could go on like this:

So I walked out of my office on the [CENSORED] floor, said hi to Karen* in next door's office, and talked to her briefly on how hard it was to implement the [CENSORED] functionality in [CENSORED]. She agreed, and we went on discussing a similar problem in [CENSORED] over lunch. The [CENSORED] was delicious, by the way.

*[NAME CHANGED]

Who wouldn't just love to read such a blog?

One comment on the Masked Blogger's site (which the Blogger themself embraces) blows the whole question of Apple employee blogs ridiculously out of proportion:

"Here’s a question for Apple’s PR: what happens when only anonymous employees can blog? Hint: your PR will be controlled by anonymous people!"

This is wishful thinking. Apple still controls its PR, and it will take some serious unauthorized blogging to defeat that.

I really don't think blogging could add too much to Apple's PR efforts. The only thing that Apple could easily achive on the blogs front would be renaming Apple's newsletters and public releases as "Apple Blog entries," but that wouldn't do much. So why bother?

If you think there are areas where Apple could be more communicative and still maintain its secrecy, please let me know. Perhaps developer resources could be a good candidate, though Apple probably has its reasons to enforce some secrecy there as well, since that's where most of the innovation starts.

Read More...

Summary only...