Ever since the return of Steve Jobs, Apple hasn't been about faces. Withe the exception of Apple's media events where Jobs, Phil Schiller, the occasional product manager or VP would take the stage, Apple's people have been mostly hiding in shadows.
When you interact with Apple's web page, you don't interact with people. You read news items or carefully crafted PR, search databases, buy with 1-Click™, or, at best, interact with other users in the support forums. It's all cool and impersonal.
Even video introductions for products show screencasts, and feature professional voice actors.
Under Jobs' tenure, "About" boxes of Apple's software products stopped listing the names of individuals (perhaps for fear of making the jobs of headhunters too easy). Even O'Reilly's Learning Cocoa book was, somewhat ridiculously, written by "Apple Computer, Inc." Not by people.
But that trend has been changing lately. First, there was the iPhone guy. Then Steve Jobs started to blog. And now we have the Leopard guy.
Why?
Jobs has "blogged" on the following occasions so far: when he delivered his open letter to record industry executives; when he addressed criticism by environmentalists and envisioned a greener Apple; when he announced a rebate for early iPhone customers; and finally, when promising an iPhone SDK (no link available, the announcement is simply a text-only item in Apple's Hot News section).
The first "blog post" is unique in that Jobs expresses a personal opinion and attempts to influence decisions by executives of an industry by summoning the power of media. It isn't something a company or a CEO does routinely, it certainly isn't business as usual, thus its unusual format is understandable and warranted.
However, the other items could easily be replaced by traditional Apple press releases. They do not really contain anything special that would necessitate their unorthodox format. There doesn't seem to be anything inherently suggesting a need for personal communication from Steve Jobs in those messages. Yet Jobs has chosen to present them as personally signed pieces of communication.
Again, why?
Similarly, the two new faces Apple has attributed to its iPhone and Leopard products (without names, though) mark a strange departure. None of the demos we see from these two guys would suffer one small bit, none would be any less informative or useful if we saw no faces, only narrated screencasts and close-up shots.
Yet Apple has decided to add those faces.
Why?
Is it just some PR stunt that Apple's advisers have come up with?
Or is Apple maybe concerned that it's growing too big and scary? Is it adding a human touch in order to counterbalance a (perceived or real) mean streak in its operations? The buy-me-twice ringtones, the options scandal, the monopoly accusations?
Or is Steve Jobs simply growing more vain, mellow or sentimental with age? Does he maybe think more and more about his image, his perception – maybe his legacy?
By the way. Did you notice how that Leopard guy really looks and sounds like Steve Jobs doing a keynote? By the time he talks about Quick Look, his voice could be mistaken for Steve's. He could be nicknamed Steve Lite. It's almost spooky.
Maybe this is what Jobs means when he keeps talking about Apple's DNA.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Apple, Jobs developing new, human side?
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Honestly, I'm just sick of everyone in this stupid Edelman/PC Mag/Twitter story
This made news, I guess, because Twitter was involved. Do you remember the time when bloggers started explaining how they first heard of Twitter, and what the hell it is anyway? Me neither. You know, all bloggers have always known all about Twitter, so this is why they just started dropping its name whenever they felt the time was ripe. You know, me too. That Twitter. I'm not going to admit that I only got around to first reading about Twitter some three weeks ago. As a blogger, being well-informed is what I'm all about, and I always know about everything. Even if I don't say so.
Anyway, here's the story. Edelman PR is a company representing several tech firms. Its senior vice president Steve Rubel gets a free subscription to PC Magazine, and throws it in the trash. Tsk, tsk. Worse, he chooses to tell all the world about it via Twitter, even though his company routinely begs the editor of that very magazine in his trashcan if he could pretty please write about its clients.
I'm going out on a limb here, but my guess is that this may have been caused by Olympic-sized stupidity, and/or psychopathic tendencies that are not uncommon among senior vice presidents.
But anyway, PC Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jim Louderback learns this, and throws a hissy fit like I've last seen in fifth grade. He's taking his ball home:
Should I instruct the staff to avoid covering Edelman's clients? Ignore their requests for meetings, reviews and news stories?I know Louderback meant this as a rhetorical question, but the answer actually exists: no.
Duh.
Louderback is an editor. His job is to know what matters to his readers, and then instruct his reporters to write about those things.
I somehow doubt that many PC Magazine readers think along the lines of "I wish they stopped covering all the companies who happen to be the clients of that PR firm whose senior vice president wrote something nasty the other day."
Or is it just me?
Yet his childish rant goes on:
I did a quick search through my recent email, and found that over the past few weeks Edelman staff pitched me about news and new products from Palm, MarkMonitor, Mozilla/Firefox, Microsoft (hardware and Xbox), Eyespot.com, Vulcan Flipstart and Dash Navigation. Heck, they even pitched me yesterday on the release of Adobe's new Creative Suite 3, which has to be relevant to at least some of the 11 million folks we reach across our magazine, web and video properties each month. And then I realized that this was probably just the callous act of a rogue Edelman exec, and it didn't necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the company. Still, it made me wonder. And in the future, if I'm on the fence, I'll probably be somewhat less inclined to take a meeting with one of Edelman's clients.OK. So if it weren't for Edelman, PC Magazine would never have covered Palm, Microsoft or Adobe.
Riiiiight.
And if some psycho at the same Edelman, a PR firm that no PC Magazine reader has ever heard of, says something nasty, the magazine will stop covering all these companies.
Here's the slogan of PC Magazine: the independent guide to technology.
If I were a subscriber, I'd cancel now.
And Twitter about it.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Gates: Vista sucks, dunno how to fix it
OK, I've just read the infamous Bill Gates Newsweek interview, where the man tells some of the most embarrassingly bold-faced lies ever heard.
As the interview went live, like, five decades ago in internet years, it has since received most of the flak it deserves, for example, by the excellent Macalope.
However, I would like to reflect on a few things now, when the dust has more or less settled.
It has been covered that the interview sounds like a frustrated rant about Apple and the Mac, even though the whole piece was supposed to be about Vista, the brand new shiny Windows version that should have licensed the "65 million years of adventure in the making" slogan from Jurassic Park (at least, in internet years). Yet I find it noteworthy that in the interview, it was Gates who brought up Apple first:
The number [of violations] will be way less because we’ve done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn’t done any of those things.Boom! He is talking about Windows security, and suddenly, he has to leash out against Apple, apropos nothing.
When did Microsoft become the underdog? Is it the beginning of the end? Is Microsoft growing tired of playing catch-up to Apple in just about everything except sheer volume? Is Bill Gates relapsing into the state of mind of his youth when Apple was the big guy and Microsoft was the poor wannabe? Does he fear that his company is going full circle after all these years?
But the real shocker comes later. When asked whether there will be another major version of Windows in three or four years, Gates has a staggering, unbelievable thing to say. I had to read it like four times, just to make sure I'm getting it right, and not missing a comma or a word somewhere. Here's what the chairman of Microsoft is saying about the latest and greatest version of Windows, the ubiquitous operating system that powers (yeah, right) 90% of all PCs worldwide:
Absolutely. We'll tell you how Vista just wasn't good enough, and we'll know why, too. We need to wait and hear what consumers have to tell us. We don't know that, otherwise, of course, we would have done it this time.There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Microsoft knows that Vista isn't good enough. But it has no idea how to make it better. So check back in about three or four years.
Um... If you're this bad about what you're doing, Dear Microsoft, and even your chairman knows… shouldn't you just quit?!
This is not humility or modesty. This is a flat-out admission of incompetence.
Looks like Microsoft has no quibbles about manufacturing the operating system for people who don't care. Hm. Maybe they should trademark that and use it as a slogan.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Vista's 157 thousand new PR jobs
A 14-page IDC report (download PDF here), commissioned by Microsoft, says that Vista will create "157,000 new jobs."
Mac fans could (and do) take cheap shots at this number. "Yeah, right. Vista will suck so bad that you'll need 157 thousand people to answer tech support calls."
But these shots would miss the point. They would imply that someone seriously investigated how exactly Vista would effect the IT job and spendings market. Instead, here's what the study does.
- It forecasts that IT spendings, thus also the IT job market, will grow in 2007 in the United States.
- It then predicts that the ratio of "Vista-related" spending* (thus also jobs) will grow.
- As a result, 157 thousand out of the 400 thousand new jobs will be "Vista jobs."
- Then it concludes that all these jobs would be single-handedly created by Vista.
If you buy a Dell, erase Vista from it, and install Linux, IDC says you'll still contribute to Vista spending. If a company replaces all of its five-year-old PCs with new ones, it will contribute to IDC's idea of Vista spending. If you're a software vendor, and your software happens to be compatible with Vista, you're contributing to Vista spending, and if you increase your sales, even more so, according to IDC.**
But it gets better. According to the report, "For every dollar of Microsoft Windows Vista revenue in the U.S., IDC expects $18.00 to be generated in revenues by other companies in the Microsoft ecosystem. " A graph shows that these 18 dollars are made up of $9.75 in hardware sales, $4.60 in software sales, and $3.65 in services.
Here's the deal. You buy a PC, it will have Vista installed, and you'll pay a hidden charge for it. If you're IDC, you'll interpret it as wow, a one-dollar income for Microsoft has just created a ten-dollar hardware sale. But then in IDC's world, gas spendings probably lead to car purchases, just as hangovers lead to parties.
But there's another approach. How about, "for every ten dollars of hardware sales, Microsoft receives a one-dollar tax"?
Because, you know, I'm sure all that hardware would run something, even if Vista, or Heaven forbid, Microsoft weren't around at all.
Well, IDC's gig as Microsoft's court poet must have blurred its vision:
While it is easy to think of Microsoft as simply the world's largest software company, it is more than that. It is an economic force that has a direct, positive impact on the countries in which it operates.Full disclosure: this blog has never been sponsored by Microsoft.
*IDC must have meant to say Windows market share here, as most versions of Vista haven't even shipped yet, so it would be pretty bad for Microsoft if Vista's current, virtually non-existant market share grew one percentage point between now and a year from now.
**Someone should do the same math with Tiger (as well as Leopard). Mac OS X market share has increased lately, and I'm sure all those extra users would never have bought any kind of computer had Tiger not been released.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
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
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.
Who wouldn't just love to read such a blog?
*[NAME CHANGED]
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.