Put another way it's much better than the "strategy" of suing everybody who uses fruit or 4 sided shapes in their products as a hedge against the lack of creative direction from the top.
* A music player
* A phone
* A portable computer
Not exactly the most innovative product categories?
Developers submitting stuff to the App Store could probably benefit from this too...
The only way to beat the competition is to make products that are too difficult and costly to replicate – they already use fairly exclusive materials for their hardware, sophisticated designs and have an unmatched retail chain - now they need to step up in the software department. They have the money but need the inspiration.
I don't know if it is still the case but a few years ago they were the most sued company in the world and prior to the iPhone they were getting hit with a ton of patent suits and trolls.
So, it seems that starting with the iPhone there was a shift in strategy when Apple realized they needed to patent everything possible as a defensive measure.
Perhaps it's lamentable that became a more offensive strategy, but it seems to be swinging back the other way under Tim Cook.
I also agree that it would be nice if they would step up their software game, but don't hold your breath. Apple makes decent OSes but their apps have never been known for their high quality.
There are some hopeful signs though. Although it gets plenty of hate, I think the the slow convergence of OS X and iOS is a good direction. Of course, with Ive now in charge of software design we can at least expect some more aesthetic polish in their software within the next year.
I think their biggest strength is providing a good platform (hardware and OS) for third party developers to shine. However, they seem to have a hard enough time just doing that (more on the OS side), so I wouldn't mind if they dumped more of their app development to focus even more of the quality of their OSes.
It may not affect their ability to design their products but it most certainly affects their marketing, image and business relationships. This goes double when it comes to lawsuits against major business partners (like Samsung).
I hope he delivers something more than polish - if he can make the human-machine interface more intuitive/seamless while toning down the visual cruft that would be great.
> their biggest strength is providing a good platform (hardware and OS) for third party developers to shine
Definitely. That seems to be their angle with the iPad mini vs the better spec'd & competitively-priced competition.
What, exactly? As someone who has used an iPhone 3, 4S, iPad 3, and many other mobile devices, I'm really struggling to think of a material that is "fairly exclusive" to Apple.
Not to mention that the A-series processor is Apple only, they get early access to the best screens, etc.
I think he means "fairly exclusive material usage". There's not many high-end smartphones from Samsung/HTC/LG/etc. that have aluminium frames and/or bodies. The new Nexus phone by LG does appear to use glass on the back though, which seems nice.
Elithrar's reply hit the nail on the head, but in some cases they do use some fairly exotic materials. For instance, the bead-blasted high-tensile stainless steel antenna array (iPhone 4 & 4s) and artificial sapphire crystal lens coating on the latest iPhone. Both required new manufacturing processes and a considerable amount of hardware to work at scale.
Given the nature of that particular 'perk' it was really hard to quantify it for the employee handbook. I came to believe that it was a sort of test, kind of like the tests in Starship Troopers where if you did something that clearly was going to be a Google product or feature then you got points for that, but if nobody could figure out what use it would be, you got penalized. And the option was like either +1 point or -10 demerits (i.e. very unbalanced).
So over my four years the strictures on what was or wasn't 'acceptable use' of your 20% time got more and more constrained. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the language had morphed into 'if your really a star performer we'll let you pick your next project' rather than the oft misunderstood 20% to do whatever you want.
If you're below the Real Googler Line, and most new hires are, your 20%T project is your 80%T project: appease your manager. Nothing else matters, not "performance" in the abstract or doing something great for the company. Forget all those distractions. If you're below the RGL, your job is to please your boss and serve his career goals. "Peer review" won't protect you, either, if you're at a lower level, because no one below Staff is taken seriously as a peer reviewer. (Remember, they aren't Real Googlers.)
The whole story around "Google culture" is based on what Google is like for people above the RGL, but it takes several years to get there, and it's next to impossible if you're not at one of the top 3 or 4 campuses.
The Real Googler Line used to be at the Senior rank, but now it seems to be closer to Staff (and some Staff SWEs seem to be below the RGL). That means that if you come in at the SWE 3 level, you're two promotions away from it, in a company where the average promote rate is about 10-15% per year. Unless you have a star manager who gets his reports promoted like butter, you're wasting your time.
Google needed to grow a pair and fight to protect its culture from all these transplant executives who brought in terrible ideas from other companies with shit cultures. It needed to man the fuck up and make open allocation an official, unassailable plank of the culture. Now it's too late.
Google claims to be a "peer review" driven company, but if you're below the RGL, then the odds are that your peers are too, and then they have no clout and can't protect you from a priapic manager looking to get some bad Perf on.
Senior SWE is the traditional Real Googler Line, but now it's closer to the Staff rank.
For example, I remember coming across someone working on touch R&D for Apple: http://murderandcreate.com/
From the page:
"In 2007 I started working in research and development at Apple on multitouch hardware. There I spent my time inventing and patenting new touch technologies. Now I lead the Human Interface Device Software Prototype group at Apple."
Ditto for certain groups at Google (cough android cough).
Either have a dedicated research group, or give people a pass at being 20% less productive at their regular job.
Here's a novel idea.. increase your workforce by 20%? I know, that's just crazy talk. :)
The side benefit is that they have geniuses working there.
This is an awesome post. I award you with an Indignation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtCiP8B2xpc#t=7s
Good thing Kenneth E. Knight introduced the notion bootlegging in 1967; well before the gnomes could ever get their filthy mitts near it.
Try not to let a few control-freaks on Wikipedia desecrate your language more than it already has. You owe them nothing.
Government-guaranteed monopoly profits?
Harder to achieve than it looks.
They also were forbidden from profiting from a large portion of the work that they did....
If that weren't the case, we wouldn't have GNU.
/sarcasm
Whenever there is discussion on Apple and "invention", I am reminded of this (somewhat) contrarian opinion piece by Gladwell:--
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_...
Punchline towards the end: Then Starkweather had a scheme for hooking up a high-resolution display to one of his new company’s computers. “I got it running and brought it into management and said, ‘Why don’t we show this at the tech expo in San Francisco? You’ll be able to rule the world.’ They said, ‘I don’t know. We don’t have room for it.’ It was that sort of thing. It was like me saying I’ve discovered a gold mine and you saying we can’t afford a shovel.”
He shrugged a little wearily. It was ever thus. The innovator says go. The company says stop—and maybe the only lesson of the legend of Xerox PARC is that what happened there happens, in one way or another, everywhere. By the way, the man who hired Gary Starkweather away to the company that couldn’t afford a shovel? His name was Steve Jobs
