Apple: Do evil
- March 19th, 2008
- 2 Comments
Wired has a long, long story about a strange, strange company: our favorites, Apple. The piece is actually quite good and offers a bit more than the average “iPod good, but they sell nothing else” line most reporters use when they basically can’t get anyone at Apple to talk to them. Leander Kahney does a good job of seeing Apple for what it really is: an intense marketing machine producing cool products in a commoditized marketplace.
At most companies, the red-faced, tyrannical boss is an outdated archetype, a caricature from the life of Dagwood. Not at Apple. Whereas the rest of the tech industry may motivate employees with carrots, Jobs is known as an inveterate stick man. Even the most favored employee could find themselves on the receiving end of a tirade. Insiders have a term for it: the “hero-shithead roller coaster.” Says Edward Eigerman, a former Apple engineer, “More than anywhere else I’ve worked before or since, there’s a lot of concern about being fired.”
But Jobs’ employees remain devoted. That’s because his autocracy is balanced by his famous charisma — he can make the task of designing a power supply feel like a mission from God. Andy Hertzfeld, lead designer of the original Macintosh OS, says Jobs imbued him and his coworkers with “messianic zeal.” And because Jobs’ approval is so hard to win, Apple staffers labor tirelessly to please him. “He has the ability to pull the best out of people,” says Ratzlaff, who worked closely with Jobs on OS X for 18 months. “I learned a tremendous amount from him.”
Most importantly, he talks about Steve-o in the context of management, something we forget when we fawn over the iPhone for 23 out of the 24 hours in the day. Jobs is, for all intents and purposes, a dick. But, sadly, the products he and his team makes are second to none.
How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong [Wired]
RP (Who am I?)
8 months ago
Dude, I like crunchgear, but I have to wholeheartedly disagree with your thoughts on this article. It’s crap man.
I have to admit, I lean toward the apple fanboy side, though I don’t own a mac, but the comparison to Google is feeble(I believe there are more similarities than differences that can be drawn), the idea that Apple is evil(he really needs to check out Webster for a definition) is lame, and that the most relevance that can be pulled from the article is that Apple and Google are both successful, in different ways.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that Jobs is unconventional, but obviously Google is too, and using either to stand as an example of a typical Silicon Valley is ridiculous.
I really just think that he’s trying to stir up some attention for his Cult of the iPod garbage.
baceman007 (Who am I?)
4 months ago
I’m sorry, why is this article crap? This article is right on target. The problem is that IT, including Apple, is a very dirty business in general. Apple tries to sue bloggers, hides problems like the Seagate Macbook hard drive issue, resells free technology they basically just polished from the open source community (aka ARD is mostly VNC, etc.), and like this article points out could treat their employees better. There is a post on the blog baceman007.blogspot.com about how a store actually censored a private e-mail list on their employees just for bitching about a few Apple things like most employees do from time to time. There are many posts on digg on how Apple mistreats people in general, just look at the iPhone scandal where they gouged both some of their most loyal and new customers all within a few months. The truth is that we all need to stop buying stuff from companies that behave this way. MS is not the only questionable computer company out there, many argue that Apple is worse, but let’s keep in mind that proprietary computing is a bad idea in general. It makes us constantly paint ourselves into a corner and spend obscene amounts of money on technologies, that in some cases, the big guys just polished and started charging us for. Proprietary formats actually ruin data integrity since the format may not ever transfer to something new. Sure our proprietary overlords usually allow us to update our documents but is that really a good position to be in, paying tons of money and hoping not to get screwed? No good employee should have to worry about being fired over BS or because Jobs is having a bad day. That’s nuts, but I guess as long as Apple has mindless masses willing to protect them for reasons that they probably can’t define, or they just have their facts wrong on, I guess Apple will be around a bit longer. Unconventional is ok until your company starts doing things that are borderline unconstitutional, or maybe in a country that wasn’t overrun by corporations, unconstitutional. I take attacks on blogging as an attack on free speech. In the end they just make crappy electronics, a decent OS, and some good computers, but electronics are all just tools we use to make our lives better. Why are we buying tools from a company where employees, even good ones, can be fired at the drop of a hat or at least feel that way? That’s just crazy. There is hope though. 90% of people can move to some distro of Linux like today. With that 3rd party companies would support Linux more and we can have control of our information again. It’s time to stop rewarding scum for making something for us that used to be free, and then charging us for it. The good news is that most of the stuff you need is good and free. Unconventional, that term here just gets on my nerves….. Are we really at the point where we’ll just blow off evil behavior from corporate dictators by saying that they’re just unconventional? I think that in many years to come the last 30 years will be looked at as a corporate dark age in computing where we just we’re smart enough as a society, etc. to move to free open source stuff. Sure there are a small percentage of people locked into proprietary computing, but most of us can switch so what is everyone else waiting for? For example, Ubuntu is easy to install and use. It runs on well on inexpensive hardware, and there are tons of apps. for it that you can get right through the updater.