Counting the two years that I spent helping to open computer stores in Canada's maritime provinces back in the early eighties, nearly twenty-two of my fifty-six years have revolved around Apple Computer. I was there in the wonderful early years and during the challenging times when the question was whether or not Apple would survive. I even managed to stay long enough for the good times to return if you measure good times by stock price. Of course there is a whole lot more to a company than their stock price.
That of course is the whole point of this blog. I still own a significant amount of Apple stock, and I would like nothing more than to see the company continue to be successful. Unfortunately, I, like many of the others who have left Apple before me, believe that Apple could be a much greater company with a few changes. Hopefully this blog might help create an atmosphere where at least the problems are discussed instead of being hidden.
I would really like to see Apple be more than just a footnote as the company that brought us the iPod. Unfortunately without some real change, a company with less than 2% market share will remain unappreciated in the computer space even if they double their share.
I did not leave Apple on terms that might be expected for someone who has been a real asset to the company. Because of that it has taken me eight months to get to the point that I believe I can provide some objective thoughts on Apple.
I did leave Apple as a great success. Unfortunately it seemed my success and that of my team was treated more as a problem which some executives wanted to go away than as a cause for celebration. This was the case in spite of our turning around Apple's US Government business with very limited resources. It had been a market that was declining rapidly until my team focused on it.
Much of our success depended on listening closely to customers which is not something that is well respected at Apple. Through some back doors we were able to get some of the customer requests acted upon. We also were successful as a very closely coordinated team while Apple believes fierce internal competition drives success. There were other reasons perhaps even some envy from other less successful divisions. One only has to look at the very limited success of the huge Apple K-12 Education team to wonder about allocation of resources at Apple.
My success with the US Government was only one of many successes that I had at Apple in nearly twenty years. Those last four years when I was privileged to lead a dedicated group of Apple enthusiasts who happened to also be great sales people were a magic time. It is a sad commentary on Apple that I am certainly not the first nor the last successful senior sales manager that has been shown the door.
I left Apple as Director of Federal Sales. That wonderful team I led managed to triple Apple's sales to the US Federal Government in just four years. It had been done at a time when the consistent message from corporation was that Apple was only interested in the consumer market.
Selling to the US Government which turns out is the best example in the world of Microsoft's monopoly was exceptionally challenging especially when Apple executives showed little interest in the regular travel required to develop the relationships that Microsoft and Dell consider part of doing business. In spite of the executive resistance to building those crucial customer relationships, many of the successful techniques used by the federal team could be used to lead Apple to greater success in a number of markets, especially the enterprise market.
Of course there are a number of high level folks at Apple who do not believe that Apple should be courting the enterprise market so it comes as little surprise that Apple is reluctant to approach the market with open arms. Anyone who has sold to the enterprise market knows that this is one market that needs to plan ahead and absolutely has to have a road map of future technologies.
Of course that is only true if you expect them to actually use your products extensively.
Perhaps the basic difference between Apple and a company like Dell comes down to Steve Jobs' philosophy on products which he recently let slip to Investors Business Daily. “You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.” I suspect Michael Dell might have a different take on that.
As many enterprise customers who have tried to work with Apple have found out, getting a road map of even technologies much less products just does not happen consistently these days at Apple. That was not always the case. I can remember an event near Washington Dulles in the early nineties when we invited fifty higher education CIOs to meet with Apple product managers who actually wanted customer input on current and future products. It was only one of many ways that Apple in what I consider the good old days listened to their customers.
Getting a road map implies that someone has a vision of where the product is going. While Apple is absolutely stunning at creating new product, it is really bad at building mature products of the type that an enterprise customer really needs.
The whole Apple culture is about getting new technology to market. Often as any historian of Apple will tell you, the technology is if not abandoned certainly left in limbo while Apple's limited resources go off chasing Steve's product du jour.
In fact if there is a grand vision of where Apple is going as company, I never heard it in my time there. My suspicion is that the reason that enterprise customers have a hard time getting a product road map is there is no longer one.
While the corporate culture of secrecy might be the reason given for not providing a road map, the reality is that existing products are driven by a product marketing process that allocates scarce Apple resources on a squeaky wheel process moderated only by internal politics.
Often a key feature needed in the education market might take the place of a key change needed for the business or enterprise group. Of course if the iTunes people need more resources, that ends up being a trump card. There is little listening by Apple executives of customer needs on the customer's home turf. If you want to approach the Cupertino lords, you must travel to Cupertino and even then though your feedback is collected, product marketing can feel justified in ignoring comments because fundamentally they believe that they understand your business better than you do.
Lest anyone believe that Steve's philosophy does not permeate the company, three or four years ago I heard a top executive at Apple say that “Customers don't know what to buy, we have to tell them what to buy.” Unfortunately that is not the case in the enterprise world. Not only do they know what they want to buy, unless you have it they will not buy it.
All of this does not mean that Apple products are not well received in some areas of the enterprise. What it does mean is that if Apple wants to get beyond their measly 2% market share that they need to start listening to customers in a big way.
I hope this blog will inspire some new openness at Apple. Communications within Apple are almost as bad as communications between Apple and Apple customers. One would think that some corporate blogs might be a quick way to get started on fixing this. Of course anyone with experience at Apple will quickly tell you that the idea of blogging and discussing products, even current ones, is unlikely to happen at Apple unless the sun starts rising in the west.
I have tried to find some Apple blogs but the only corporate ones have obviously been run through a huge mar com filter. There may be a number of employee blogs which I have not run across, but I did get a reference to one employee blog written last July, Redmond Blogs, Cupertino Codes, which makes fun of Microsoft's very successful effort at blogging. That's unfortunate since blogging might be just what the doctor ordered for Apple.
Attaching a new importance to communication with partners and customers might just be the perfect first step to getting Apple beyond the iPod. Apple makes really great products if they happen to fit your needs. While I certainly do not want Apple to try to be everything to everyone, I do want the company to open up and start really working with key enterprise customers who can eventually help halt Apple education market drop. Having a 2% market share just does not look good for the future to me.
Unless Apple really gets its computer stuff together, its going to be reminiscent of a big bus with an Apple logo caught sitting on the train tracks as the Linux freight train rushes through. Unfortunately Cupertino is so isolated and reluctant to listen to anyone but themselves they probably will miss the signals of impending disaster until it is too late.
Since I would like to have the privilege of using Apple products besides the iPod well into this century, this blog is my stab at exposing some of the challenges beneath that shiny Apple peel which turns out to be nearly impervious to outside view. Apple is rarely a humble company and often a pain even to do business with these days, but we need choice in the computer world and right now I would prefer to have three choices instead of two even if it means battling to get messages through Apple's arrogance.
You can find other articles relevant to Apple in my main blog View From The Mountain.
Have you seen the Blogs from the Sun execs, particularly Jonathan Schwartz, our COO? See http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ as it is exactly what you are describing. Clearly shows the open culture and willingness to listen (both to customers and employees) that you describe as desperately needed at Apple.
Posted by: Cole | February 23, 2005 at 08:13 PM