Apple in a nutshell
Yesterday in Apple’s Speacial Event, where they announced the updated iMac and the new (and highly talked about) video iPod, there were two things said that I found exceptionally telling about how Apple views the world differently than just about everyone else. The first was when Steve announced the new iMac, and talked about the built-in video conferencing, and even how the LCD can be used as a “flash.” At the end he made the aside that “oh yeah, there’s a bunch of other technical things improved,” and ignored it to a large extent. This is the final understanding that specs don’t matter that much any more. It’s nearly impossible to buy a computer that’s “too slow” for what 95% of the population uses it for. Specs don’t matter, functionality does.
The second thing was when the iPod was announced, Steve said “the 4th generation iPod has been our best seller ever, which is why we’re getting rid of it.” Risk. That’s what it’s all about. Take your “best selling” item and change it. Now, Apple didn’t do anything as revolutionairy with the full-size iPod as they did when they changed the Mini to the Nano and reshaped the market for flash and small hard-drive players, but they see it as continually re-inventing themselves.
You don’t get to the front of the pack by following your competitors. It should be blatently obvious to everyone, but it seems to miss most people. If “everyone is doing it,” that’s a damned good reason not to.
This entry was posted at 9:19 am on 13 October 2005 and is filed under Mac, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
There must be a context you are thinking of where specs don’t matter, but I’ve seen very negative aspects of that specs-don’t-matter attitude from apple. Specs are, after all, a contract between parties; if there is only one party, they don’t matter, and if there is more than one, they do, unless some of the parties themselves don’t matter to you.
I had the non-pleasure of working with apple on the whole iTunes-podcast spec fiasco, and it was clear that apple had given the technical work of determining that spec to people who either were woefully unprepared to do it, or just didn’t care, presumably because the organization didn’t encourage them to care. The first version of the spec they sent demonstrated that the authors didn’t know how xml namespaces worked. The next version showed that they hadn’t read the rss spec, which they violated. A few iterations solved the grossest problems, but still produced something which muddies the waters for the whole internet syndication community and is basically stupid in the bargain. They largely refused the help of other majors players in the rss community who would have helped them do better, for free; and then, taking a line from Winer’s book, I suppose, they have changed the spec several times since without announcement (and apparently each spec has been out of sync with itunes’ actual behavior).
With the brilliant folks they’ve got working at apple, if they do this badly on a spec, I’m sure it is because management doesn’t care about specs; but if you don’t care about the contracts you make with the community, ultimately that means you don’t care about people. Nothing to brag about, in my opinion.
Someone might not care, but I hardly ascribe that issue to anyone above mid-level management. In fact, I believe Sam Ruby did get Apple to do a better job at XML after it was pointed out. Honestly, the whole pod-casting, RSS, world is a disaster of enormous proportions, started with Winer’s inability to think of anything but Dave Winer.
At the end, how was this related to the iPod and iMac?
Obviously my comment didn’t directly concern those products—I was responding to general statements you made about apple’s world view. My point is that apple may have achieved a great deal by going it alone and not getting tied down with specs and the ensuing inertia of the relationships they bring, that there is a negative side to that. I doubt that the stunningly embarrassing performance of the itunes podcast launch is fundamentally out-of-character, although it may be an extreme example; I’d rather interpret it as the dark side of the very aspects of their corporate character that make them shine in other contexts.
+1 on RSS and Winer.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Steve really appeared to be having fun up there. I think the best part was the comparison of the remotes. Granted – the media center PCs do a bit more than the iMac… But still – six versus 43 buttons. Even if Apple added number buttons to make it work for watching regular TV, that would still be 16.
I remember watching a friend try to show off his new entertainment system. It took him over twenty minutes and a combination of four remotes (filled with buttons – more than 40) to get the movie and the sound and everything going in sync. I watched that and thought “damn – there’s a market just begging for simplification” How often do you go to someone else’s house and have no idea how to change the channel or lower the volume of their entertainment system?