Let's not forget about what happens when a company which had been open internally starts locking things down. Suddenly, you can't get access to certain parts of the code depot, the people working on that project clam up, they stop being verbose in their code reviews lest it leak information, and they stop writing snippets about what they've done in the past week. They ask other teams for resources, but won't say why. You thought you had made it past the final wall of secrecy by being hired, but then they went and started putting up walls inside after years of having things be open. Pretty soon, instead of just one "us", there is now "us" and "the special ones who get to know".
Then they call you to the big auditorium one day for a big reveal, and you find out it's called Wave. We all know how that turned out.
Then they call you to the big auditorium one day for a big reveal, and you find out it's called iOS. We all know how that turned out.
You can't pick on secrecy just because a company made a bad product under it, just like you can't laud it just because a company made a good product under it. You have to accept it as a tool of the trade, and hope the people in charge know what they are doing.
Is this really only about keeping secrets for surprise launches? I have a hard time seeing how that alone could justify so extreme an imposition on people.
We're talking about police-state levels of secrecy and compartmentalization. This obviously has a huge cost, so assuming the policy is rational it must have an even huger value. Valuable as surprise launches may be, are they that valuable? Or is there more to this, in which case what is it?
Apple's success is inarguable; I'm not dismissing what they do but taking for granted that I don't understand it. But the author's claim that it is all about occasional theatrical events seems incommensurate with the depth of the phenomenon and how ironclad it is.
Yeah, but imagine how exciting it would be for your project to be picked as the "one more thing" at a keynote. I can see that as a big incentive for people.
I've never worked anywhere that was even close to the size of Apple, so I can only comment on my imagination after reading this. But I can't tell how I would feel about being at a company so strictly compartmentalised. Can anyone who has worked at an analogous company shed some more light on your experiences?
I've worked at several companies that are more than twice the size of apple. I never knew very much of what was going on. It's not so much that the companies were secretive, but that there was no way I was going to know everything happening in my own division (which had thousands of employees), let alone everything in a dozen other divisions. It would have been easy for someone to keep one product a secret from most of us because most of us wouldn't have even known to ask.
I think many big companies could keep secrets like apple does (look at mergers and acquisitions which are often kept quiet). Most of them don't keep new products secret, though, because they value the constant dribble of press releases rather than the big bang surprises.
For the vast majority of Apple's customers the first glimpse of a new product will be through a news item or television advert. I think the theatrics Jobs employed at the keynote were symptomatic of a highly prepared and charismatic individual, and not the cause of secrecy at Apple, as suggested by the article.
For the vast majority of Apple's customers the first glimpse of a new product will be through a news item or television advert.
And the vast majority of people writing those news items will frame their descriptions of the product based on the anchoring that Steve Jobs employed during the keynote.
Exactly, putting on a good show at the product launch is what creates the media buzz. And advertising through the news is also likely to reach customers in a much more accepting state than if they are watching commercials on TV and have a wall up. You can't buy advertising like that, but Apple gets it for free, mostly because of SJ's showmanship.
Having to deal with confidentiality and secrecy on a daily basis in my product design job one thing is immediately clear.
If I am designing a widget which requires a pin I need to talk to a supplier about the pin. Typically the supplier will ask me what the pin is for. I could tell him exactly about the product or a subset of the product functionality and that would give him a pretty good idea of what the pin needs to do and he and I could draw up the specification for the pin together. This is lazy and potentially shifts the design of the pin away from the desired design and more towards what is already possible (this is how suppliers tend to work - they need to use their existing machinery as it is less risky than developing new machinery and processes). This is not how iPhones and ultraslim lovely shiny Macbooks are developed. The uncertainty on the part of the designer allows the supplier to steer the discussion.
If I've done my homework correctly and worked out what diameter the pin should be, material, hardness and the shape of the tip of the pin I could tell the supplier all of those things and he would be none the wiser about the product. He can still supply me with exactly what I need without him having to know about the rest of the product. This is a good outcome.
If I don't know the diameter of the pin I should order 15 different diameter pins and test them all until I get the right one.
What it means is, as a designer I need to own the process of finding out those parameters about the pin which means I am richer because I own that information and the process of discovery regardless of who is supplying me with pins. It also gives me the power to go to any pin supplier and get the same thing which also keeps my costs down. Double win (even if I've developed the new pin making process there should be nothing to stop me taking that process somewhere else as long as my contracts are in place before we start talking).
Secrecy has many advantages as well as the surprise WWDC factor.
I don't understand why Apple imposes a secrecy tax on itself, given how modest the benefits seem to be. I guess there is more benefit to doing it for hardware, and they try a bit harder for hardware secrecy than software, but it is of negative value for online services (look how badly they screwed up ping and MobileMe).
There is also ego-boos for "those in the know", especially those at the very top that make the policies. Never forget that companies are made of people, and people have their own goals and biases that don't necessarily benefit the company.
Seems like the compartmentalization issues described could be solved by code names for everything. "Are you working on Unicorn?" "No, I'm working on Puppy."
Also, more generally, code names mean you don't have to figure out branding at product conception time.
If you're calling it "Walrus" internally, and assume that everything about it will be based on that name, and at the last minute, marketing decides that "FurSeal" tests better, then you're screwed.
If "Walrus" is just an internal mnemonic, then engineering and marketing can both beaver away and eventually release "Anthem". Or whatever.
The problem with that is that if someone leaked what a codename related to everyone would be exposed. So if I could tell you everyone working on Unicorn, and then someone let slip that Unicorn was code for iPhone suddenly everyone on the iPhone team would be known.
I'm not so sure about this whole "tell a great story" shabang. Sure, it's a part of the whole picture, but I am definately sure that Apple has a lot more to gain to keep things under the lid as long as possible, then to just "tell a great story". Means to an end, so to speak.
Is this at Rands? That's not what I gathered at all. To me, Rands was concluding that Apple is secretive to surprise the whole world, not Apple employees.
I don't think it's possible for a company the size of Apple to have all employees know the secret and not have the world know the secret. Google proves, time and again, that when most employees know what's going to launch that it leaks. I wish it weren't the case, but it is.
Then they call you to the big auditorium one day for a big reveal, and you find out it's called Wave. We all know how that turned out.