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journal: think
Should you talk too much, or not talk at all?
Note: this article was first posted Tuesday August 30, however it was incomplete and was somehow accidentally posted on the site. The following is the completed article in its entirety. -ed
When was the last time you were in an online chat with Phil Schiller? Chances are you only know of Schiller from the demos he gives at Apple Keynote presentatations. Which is appropriate, seeing as he’s one of the Top Men at Apple, and is its second most recognizable face.
Here’s another question: What kinds of technologies are Apple working on for Mac OS X Leopard? Do you have any clue? Does anyone outside the OS X team?
The answers to those questions illustrate the fundamental philosophy behind Apple PR: Don’t Say Anything. Don’t talk about future products under any circumstances. If someone else brings up the subject, don’t respond. Sit on it until there is absolutely no choice but to reveal it, then make a big spectacle of the revelation. And if someone ruins the surprise for you, sue their asses and never talk to them again. Keep them starving for information, so that when you release that little morsel, they will think it’s the ambrosia of the gods.
Microsoft has a different strategy. The software giant prefers to whet people’s appetites with steady, carefully orchestrated releases of information all through a product’s development cycle. They show things off as soon as they have things to show, building anticipation by telling folks all the stuff they are building and asking folks to imagine what they will be able to do with the technology.
I, for one, prefer Microsoft’s strategy.
Let’s revisit those questions I asked at the start of this piece. When was the last time you were in a chat with Phill Schiller? For that matter, when was the last time any Apple executive engaged its average customers in a direct fashion? Well, just last week, J Allard, did just that, participating in an online chat with fans of the upcoming Xbox 360 game console in which he answered questions and addressed some concerns we had about the console. Now, I’m not suggesting this was anything other than a PR move - very little new info was given and the answers were in marketing-speak, but he did deliver unique insights into the console which helped assuage our concerns. The simple fact is J Allard, the man we’d previously only seen in keynote addresses and promo videos, was suddenly chatting with us in the most direct fashion one could reasonably expect. It was surreal, it was unique, and it was an incredibly shrewd PR move.
The second question: “What kinds of technologies are Apple working on for Mac OS X Leopard?” No-one knows. All we have to go on are rumor sites and speculation based on vague indicators. Apple will likely talk about a few new features at next year’s Worldwide Developer Conference and it may even release a beta. But it will lock everything down under impenetrable NDAs so none of us will know how those new features work (aside from what Steve Jobs has shown us, of course.)
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been surprisingly candid about all of its high-profile announced products. It regularly releases information about new features in Windows Vista, so much so that we already have a very clear view of what Vista is going to be, over a year away from its release. But it goes beyond simply announcing a new feature. Once a feature is announced, the floodgates of information open, with Microsoft and its employees posting tons of data ranging from technical documents on MSDN, to developer blogs, to video interviews and demos on Channel 9, to customer scenarios, to newsgroups and so on. As a geek, it’s fascinating for me to be able to explore a newly-announced feature indepth like that. I can read about a new feature on a tech news site, then go over to Channel 9 to get a demo of the feature in action, then find a developer blog to discuss the thinking behind the feature, then visit MSDN to get implementation details, and finally check a Microsoft newsgroup to discuss the feature with like-minded individuals.
With Apple, all I get to do is speculate about a feature and watch the Steve Jobs demo over and over again.
Of course, Microsoft’s PR efforts are just that; PR. Microsoft isn’t competely open and transparent. They still try to maximize the impact of feature or product announcements by waiting till the right time, and they do keep a tight lid on unannounced features. They disguise the flaws in their products as any good company should. But the very fact that they release all this information and allow all of the discussion to take place is quite unique in this industry and is something that none of Microsoft’s competitors do quite as well.
Microsoft’s strategy isn’t perfect. There are numerous incidents where Microsoft’s candor has backfired on it. We’ve all seen the culling of announced features from Windows Vista, as Microsoft tries to get it out on time. We’ve also seen Microsoft announce a feature that its competitors would replicate and ship before Microsoft, claiming the feature as their own (Spotlight, anyone?) And we’ve seen features that wound up not being all they were touted to be. But on the whole, Microsoft’s PR strategy of being extremely candid with announced products gets a thumbs up from me. I wish more companies would be similarly candid.
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| UnnDunn | comments | views |
thinkback
Microsoft’s approach does have one big downside. Stuff they show off tends to look a lot different when finally done, maybe missing features, maybe being more bloated. And that backfires on them. If they held off a bit until they have something decent to show that they know will make a huge chunk of a final product then they’d get rid of a LOT of problems
| Aug. 30, 2005 | |
| 4:52 pm |
Both methods serve their markets. MS is an IT driven market where people need years to plot out their upgrade path, how many users to move when, budget strategies for getting new purchases approved, MS fulfilling IT’s checklist of new things they want or just “sound good,” so MS has to be sure many if not all are on board with the direction they are going in - like bureacrats and lawyers - they like NO SURPRISES. They want not just a road map but that map should be on the exact paper they specified and the exact scale they require. MS will do anything to sell I.T.
Apple on the other hand serves a more elastic non-bureacratic buying public. While there are corporate and higher education sales, they tend to be more specialized requirements - getting a Mac approved is like getting a giant telescope approved versus a desktop magnifying glass - and sales tend to be a handful here and there as Apple learned from experience in the 1990’s - when you preannounce - people will stop buying - especially at the high end. Of course, the Intel announcement couldn’t be a surprise but speed/feature upgrades - most people will put off buying the high end model knowing the bump is coming - MS also never actually ships what they announce on time nor does it work properly until 6-12 months later so IT is not concerned MS’s real ship date and announce date is not the same.
It also makes Apple’s offerings more enticing that no one really knows exactly what’s coming - just something is stirring and the castle gate appears to be opening. It works well for Apple but would not work for MS’s audience who are either IT buyers or mass buyers who don’t really care whether it’s an HP 6452G versus a Dell 89344r but that they’re both $499 and that it has Windows installed.
The way Microsoft handles future product information is excellent for businesses. They need the information up front to plan the switchover. Even when the product is released business can take a long time before making the change. Like to WinXP. Business is careful, slow, conservative and doesn’t like surprises.
Consumer products are a different arena. Marketing reigns. Surprise and spectacle are fuel for product launches. And Jobs loves to play the showman. Impulse buying plays a large part. Apple is still mainly a consumer company.
But there is another reason behind the secrecy. When I worked at the ol’ MultiColored Fruit Company back in the ‘90s Apple was more informative on what they were working on. Specs, demos and schedules of cool future products were freely given. Then an interesting phenomena would happen. Another company (I’ll call it The Big M) came out with a very similar product several months before Apple released theirs. It was buggy in the extreme, but they could crow being first and being the innovative one. This was frustrating.
It is really hard for your competition to copy you if they don’t know what you are working on. This gives Apple many months head start on anything they do. Especially if it is out of the blue. All this generates marketing buzz even if “oh, it’s only another iPod”. Like the music event next week.
So, do you really need to know what’s in Leopard? Do you need to plan ahead like a business? And will it make a huge difference if you got it later. Think about if Tiger made that much of a difference to you. Is is Need To Know Crucial or just Nice To Know Curious?
Otherwise, just sit back and wait for the marketing firework show.
MS strategy: over-promise, under-deliver
Apple strategy: don’t promise, just deliver damned good stuff
I personally like Apple’s strategy better. The over-paid morons (CTOs, CIOs, etc) just lie when they say that MS really has a reliable roadmap. Action means more to me than marketing. In other words, Apple’s steady release of OS upgrades and security patches are worth more than all of MS’s press releases put together.
Apple’s strategy is somewhat better, we all had very hight expectations for Vista, but most of that has become vapourware so when it does come out it will be quite underwhelming. If MS had done what Apple does, and not told much of anything about Vista we would be impressed because we never knew what to expect.
| Aug. 30, 2005 | |
| 9:40 pm |
When was the last time you were in an online chat with Phil Schiller?
Oh, a couple months ago.
| Aug. 30, 2005 | |
| 11:01 pm |
Bah, this post isn’t finished. I hit “Quick Save� not “Publish�. Stupid ExpressionEngine. >(
Are you planning on finishing it?
| Nick | Aug. 31, 2005 | |
| 12:07 am |
When was the last time you were in an online chat with Phil Schiller?
Right before MWSF ‘05… and you?
| Aug. 31, 2005 | |
| Arden | 1:15 am |
Your assesment is somewhat wrong. Apple released information on Tiger and OS X months in advance of their release. Why would anybody need more time. Going from OS 9 to OS X was even more time, like years of developers and the public knowing what was coming. You may just not have been aware. Soon enough we’ll start seeing more info on Leopard. They probably do it so the MS does go copying it.
This is just flat out wrong.
Look at XP Beta 1 and compare it to XP Beta 2. They are completely different. So Windows users had no idea what Windows XP was until very close to the ship date.
The same is true with Tiger. We were shown Tiger in June of 2004 and it shipped in 2005 and there really weren’t many surprises when it shipped.
Spotlight comes from BeOS, hence the reason Apple hired BeOS engineers years ago. The Mac OS already had live updating search that didn’t require manual indexing, years ago. Spotlight is an evolution of a pre-existing Mac OS feature.
And if you believe that Apple stole the Spotlight idea from Microsoft’s announcement of a feature in Vista, you should then conclude that maybe announcing features years before you ship isn’t such a great idea since your competitors will copy them and beat you to the punch.
Leopard will ship in late 2006. You can bet that Mac users will see it well before that.
I agree that it’s not a good business practice to announce features for Windows Vista only to have to tell everyone that you can’t get those features done in time and axe them.
While Apple does sometimes release information and beta software well before the release of a product, oftentimes it is restricted to developers who are forced to sign NDAs, so average-joes like me never get to hear or talk about it.
And Apple doesn’t have things like developer blogs or Channel 9.
| UnnDunn | Sep. 01, 2005 | |
| 7:07 am |
“so average-joes like me never get to hear or talk about it.”
That’s why Think Secret exists. 
| Nick | Sep. 02, 2005 | |
| 9:54 pm |
>Look at XP Beta 1 and compare it to XP Beta 2.
>They are completely different. So Windows users
>had no idea what Windows XP was until very
>close to the ship date.
Go look at Winsupersite and you’ll see that most of the major new features in XP were present in Beta 1 or at least public knowledge. Beta 2 and the RC’s basically consisted of interface refinements.
>Spotlight comes from BeOS, hence the reason
>Apple hired BeOS engineers years ago. The Mac
>OS already had live updating search that didn’t
>require manual indexing, years ago. Spotlight
>is an evolution of a pre-existing Mac OS
>feature.
That’s wrong on so many levels. While Apple hired Dominic Giampaolo, they didn’t have him resurrect the Be File system. Spotlight is not similar in anyway to the BeFS implementation. It’s a desktop search service baring an uncanny resemblence to Indexing Service 2000/2005 (in Longhorn 4015-4074) and other desktop search products like GoogleDS and Windows Desktop Search.
there’s no way in hell that Giampaolo was working on Spotlight (the implementation that was released) well before the PDC in 2003 or Winhec in that same year. The bugs are too numerous and the implementation is too incomplete for any alternate scenario.
>And if you believe that Apple stole the
>Spotlight idea from Microsoft’s announcement of
>a feature in Vista, you should then conclude
>that maybe announcing features years before you
>ship isn’t such a great idea since your
>competitors will copy them and beat you to the
>punch.
Which is why Microsoft said they weren’t going to so off their new UI and many of the end-user features until Beta 2.
| Sep. 03, 2005 | ||
| 8:40 pm |
So what is so different about Tiger then? Did people have to pay for the upgrade? What they did? Then they got ripped off!
Apple strive on hype to sell, it had always worked and that’s how they survive.
MS works with a million developers with backward compatibility in mind so transparency is a must for such a huge project.
The fact that Windows is no longer wholly a Microsoft dominated operating system shows how dependant MS is on 3rd party developers. Its about spreading the workload and sharing the technology.
“Go look at Winsupersite and you’ll see that most of the major new features in XP were present in Beta 1 or at least public knowledge. Beta 2 and the RC’s basically consisted of interface refinements.”
That doesn’t really negate what my whole point was—which was it is inaccurate to say Apple is being all secretive and Microsoft is not. The Tiger that was shown to the world last year looked almost identical to what shipped.
“That’s wrong on so many levels. While Apple hired Dominic Giampaolo, they didn’t have him resurrect the Be File system.”
Who said he did? Are you purposely misrepresenting what I said?
Dominic was hired by Apple in 2002 as a file system engineer.
Apple didn’t copy Spotlight from Microsoft.
“Which is why Microsoft said they weren’t going to so off their new UI and many of the end-user features until Beta 2.”
Which is why I think this editorial isn’t really accurate.
[qoute]Who said he did? Are you purposely misrepresenting what I said?
You said that Spotlight comes from the BeOS and that’s why Apple hired BeOS engineers. That’s not true at all.
You said the Mac had live updating search without indexing. I have a Mac running both Tiger and Panther yet I don’t don’t see it at all. Windows has live updating search though.
Apple didn’t copy Spotlight from Microsoft.
The did and they even admitted it at WWDC 2004. Go look at those posters and listen to Jobs say how they were trying to beat Longhorn to the punch.
Even look at the way Spotlight groups items, uses a sidebar for sorting critera, and has search fields in the open/save dialogs. It was basically pulled directly out of build 4015 or so.
| Sep. 06, 2005 | ||
| 6:25 am |
“You said that Spotlight comes from the BeOS and that’s why Apple hired BeOS engineers. That’s not true at all.”
Spotlight was Dominic’s baby and he comes from BeOS and was hired in March of 2002.
“You said the Mac had live updating search without indexing”
No I didn’t. I said it didn’t require manual indexing. It didn’t.
“Go look at those posters and listen to Jobs say how they were trying to beat Longhorn to the punch.”
The posters that say “Redmond, start your copiers?” What does that prove?
“Even look at the way Spotlight groups items, uses a sidebar for sorting critera, and has search fields in the open/save dialogs. It was basically pulled directly out of build 4015 or so.”
I’m looking at the screenshots of 4015 on Paul’s site and I don’t see Spotlight.
“Even look at the way Spotlight groups items, uses a sidebar for sorting critera, and has search fields in the open/save dialogs. It was basically pulled directly out of build 4015 or so.”
Let me just say that I thought up the idea of a search field in an open/save dialog independently of Apple or MS. It’s not an original idea.
| Nick | Sep. 06, 2005 | |
| 3:39 pm |
1.
I do appreciate the fact that MS is up-front about products, but some of the fun of following Apple is the surprise and drama (and rumors) surrounding it.
“When was the last time you were in a chat with Phill Schiller?”
(I’m not telling).
When I found out what his AIM screenname was