The First Rule of Apple
Another topic I’ve been meaning to write about—partly because I think it ties into a lot of interesting business issues and partly because, like all webloggers, I feel the irrational need to apologize for the fact that I don’t post every day—is the problem of being a weblogger at Apple. The problem can be stated briefly like this: what happens when the culture that produced the “I’m blogging this” shirt meets the man who used to be known for keeping a “Loose Lips Sink Ships” poster on his office wall?
On the face of it, this issue seems easy to resolve: just don’t say anything confidential on your weblog and you’ll be fine! But the problem isn’t that simple because sometimes it’s hard to draw the line between what needs to be kept secret and what doesn’t. What if I was to remark, for example, that I’d been pulling a lot of late nights at work, or that I was going to be delaying a planned vacation, or that I was being trained in a new programming language? Those things aren’t secrets in themselves, but they might hint at things like product delays, release dates, or strategic directions.
Additionally, the “grassroots” nature of weblogging creates significant problems for companies who need to manage communication with their customers, and Apple is no exception. For example, I had considered doing a post this evening about the newly released 10.2.8 update—a project that has occupied a lot of my time in the last month—but ultimately thought better of it. As much as I would like to formally make note of the first milestone in my time at Apple, there are two things I worry about:
- The possible misperception that I am making an official announcement for the company.
- The possible deluge of feedback that would result. David Hyatt’s “Surfin’ Safari” experience is instructive here, as is a recent post by Louis Gerbarg (he’s one of those really smart Apple people I’ve been talking about).
This is not to say, of course, that a company like Apple couldn’t gather useful information through the blogosphere (Eric Blair’s post about the 10.2.8 installer this evening is a good example). I’ve always liked the Cluetrain Manifesto, and thought that its ideal of breaking down the corporate “firewall” and enabling direct communication between business and customer was admirable. Now that I work for Apple, however, I see two problems with it:
- In the “innovation” business, proprietary information is incredibly valuable, which means some level of secrecy is always going to be necessary. If you doubt that, just think about how quickly Buy.com came up with a cheap knock-off of the iTunes Music Store, and then imagine that they had been tipped off six months earlier.
- The software development process—particularly the development of something like an operating system—is incredibly complex and calls for careful tracking of bugs and changes. The comments page on a weblog just isn’t going to cut it.
For these reasons, I’m going to have to agree with Louis and the majority of other Apple webloggers, at least for the time being, that the best policy is to think of my job at Apple a lot like Fight Club—and not talk about it.