The 'extreme secrecy' would be an advantage if they actually managed to surprise their customers. The reality is, over the last couple of years they haven't really created something groundbreaking. Why would you want your own employees to not know that the next big thing they're working on is a minor product update. Also, despite the extreme secrecy, every product announced since the iPhone 5s has been leaked in advance. Factory photos, hands-on reviews of cases, photos of chips, etc. In other words, their employees suffer from the secrecy, but the outside world (who they want to surprise) aren't that excited about their launches and already know in advance what's coming up. So... what's the point really.
While at Apple, I once had to get director approval to get an unreleased version of iTunes for some feature I was working on. It took a couple weeks to plinko up the management chain.
When I finally got the build the interface was a slightly lighter shade of grey. It was fucking stupid.
Apple is a victim of their own success. It's a dilemma really. Their culture vs public interest.
I am sure they are exploring new spaces like VR, AR, cars, etc but they haven't finished a decent product yet so they don't announce it. They are the opposite of Google, where they announce every new project only to kill it later (Ara, Fiber, Glass, etc).
They don't really like to announce a product before it's ready. The root is their hardware background. They need to nail the product in the first iteration or it will fail. Move fast and break things don't apply to them.
On Apple's culture: Ship has sailed. Tim doesn't have the gravitas to ensure a new 'Wow!' product is going to ship. He's a damn good manager, but not a superb innovator. Unfortunately, Apple is at it's heart, a 'Wow!' company. I suppose Apple has 'topped off' now and is a mature business state. This is a good thing though! More room for innovations!
And GOOG-411 (didn't have a smartphone yet when they killed this, it was still useful), Google Labs (public access to experimental features in Gmail and other services), Buzz (jk nobody misses that), Reader, Code Search, Q&A, iGoogle portals, and plenty of others.
Didn't know that Google Labs was shut down. Some of the Gmail Labs were useful - and some have probably gone mainstream by now. The one that reminds you if you use a word like "attached" in your email, but have no attachment, comes to mind. I tried at least half a dozen of them, may have only kept using one or two. Still, the Labs idea was good.
"Wow!" products usually don't happen overnight though. Take the iPhone for example! Apple was playing around with ideas for tablets, handhelds, PDAs, and other stuff for decades before they launched that. A lot of "what if" prototypes were made and dead end projects ensued.
Google kinda had the right idea with 20% time, I think. In order to make truly ground breaking ideas, you have to have a little bit of margin for playing with ideas. If you make your entire business about trimming fat, making synergies, and maximizing the efficiency - squeezing it out of everyone involved, you're no longer an innovator, you're just an assembly line.
I sometimes get the impression that all the secrecy, and leaks, and rumors, etc. are a game they play to generate anticipation and excitement about their products. There is no surprise when they announce, but we are all awaiting the big event anyways.
> It also generates billions of dollars of free marketing as everyone creates stories and pictures and live blogs at the keynote.
Also the hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars that this speculation generates on tech sites (that follow Apple news and rumors) through ad revenue and affiliate revenue.
The trash can Mac Pro was not leaked in advance (and by leaked I don't mean speculation that Apple was updating the Mac Pro, but actual pictures of it). Also I believe photos of the Watch didn't emerge ahead of time. Know why? The Mac Pro was built in the US, same for Watch prototypes.
People complain about leaks, but in reality the only things that leak from apple are products that are shipping immediately after announcement. New MacBook Pro, one model shipped day of. iPhone 7 - two weeks later (And pretty much every iPhone before it.) Apple Watch was announced months in advance of its actual release. Same with the original iPhone (And iPad as well IIRC.)
It is pretty much impossible to control leaks when you are manufacturing at that scale, there are just too many low wage workers in the chain that have no stake in the product. The Mac Pro also had the advantage of being a really small run in comparison to the iPhone.
Both of those are also not as mass-produced as the iPhone though; I mean they churn (churned?) out a million of those a day. That means there's thousands of people that get to see parts of it before the announcements, spread across multiple factories, and with people having financial incentives to smuggle pictures or even parts out of the factory and sell them to the media outlets.
The Watch was. Quite a bit. There were even photos of it on the wrists of various people before it was announced. It was another example of those not-a-secret secrets
When you can't control secrecy that much, you do exactly what they do - you submit multiple false leaks! And you are terribly not right that they do not surprise anyone. They do. The fact that you are technology guy that is somewhat informed doesn't change the fact that the ordinary user like my mother doesn't get surprised.
They could surprise your mother without the layers of secrecy, assuming you use as an example of someone who doesn't read tech blogs and finds out about products when they're advertised or discussed in broadsheets
selling abandoned property you found ? no thats not a crime. If this is such a serious "crime" , why wasn't Gizmodo charged for possession of stolen property ?
You know what's a crime ? The fact that Apple has expedient access to the police when they negligently lose a $400 phone at a bar, instead of being told to "fill out a missing property report online" like everyone else when they call to report something missing or "stolen".
> selling abandoned property you found ? no thats not a crime.
Is that true? I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure you have to own something in order to sell it legally... and I don't think you get to claim ownership of every "abandoned" item you "find".
If it wasn't a crime, there wouldn't have been a conviction.
And getting the police to act on information you provide yourself is not the same as filling in a report online asking the police to find your missing phone.
