Some thoughts on the Mac Mini program

I seriously doubt that Apple pulling the Mac Mini test drive program is an indication of anything but Apple being Apple.  The Silicon Valley Sleuth starts out a post with the following comment.

Apple once again shows that consumers shouldn't trust the computer maker.

There are lots of a reasons not to believe the hype coming from Apple, but in general when Apple gets painted into a corner, they will take care of their customers better than many computer companies. Pulling a promo doesn't signify a major breach of trust. The post goes onto to say the following.

If there is a good reason to pull or postpone the promo, be honest about it. But give an explanation. Any explanation.

Now a explanation might be nice, it just isn't in Apple's character.  While why the promo was pulled isn't very important to most of us, except the people who took the time to skewer the Silicon Valley Sleuth, it does provide another chance to look at the creaky inner workings of Apple, and something to do since I can't be fishing today.

There are some likely reasons the promo was pulled, and I will touch on those later. Hopefully I can provide some plausible speculation about the promo pulling for Wes who asked me about it in a comment to another post, but it will be just educated guesses based on my time inside the mother ship.  First, I think some general background is useful.

In general corporations don't explain their mistakes. Apple of course doesn't make mistakes, see "Apple's infallibility complex."  Apple in particular doesn't feel the need to talk about things like pulled promos or anything that doesn't increase sales.  Behind the scenes someone at Apple paid for the mistake, but that is just corporate life these days unless you're in one of those rare corporations that encourages risk taking.  Apple isn't one of those.  It would be wonderful if corporations kept us consumers more in the loop, but admitting a mistake could create some legal liability similar to processor upgrade cards or the iPod battery issues that Apple has faced.

We all know that the message which comes out of Apple is very controlled.  After all as DrunkenBlog mentioned in a post entitled, Of Being Lapped by a Pizzeria, Apple has basically ignored blogs which would give the company a bettter connections with users.

f they can't find the gumption to deal with employee blog powder keg, perhaps they could take a cue from the pizzeria and just talk about what they do, while helping their users and developers do things better.

Apple is pretty unique in that its users are a larger and arguably a more effective sales force than Apple's tiny and often embattled sales force.  Acknowledging this would be a major victory for those who enjoying helping Apple sell more product and providing a better user experience for their neighbors, colleagues, and corporations. Yet a lot has to change before Apple believes that anything besides their brilliant marketing sells computers.  I followed another link on DrunkenBlog back to a February post.  "The Opaque Apple"  highlights one of Apple's greatest weaknesses, the lack of a real relationship with their customers.

Brand loyalty is important, and so is having a relationship with the consumer. As corporations become larger, and in a way more abstract from the products they push, creating relationships with the users and engaging them is key. Blogs are a way of doing this, as companies are starting to learn, but the big thing that blogs do is that it makes the company, or at least that aspect of it, approachable.

Actually Apple absolutely wants you to have a relationship with the company.  The relationship is a paying one and not a participatory one.  If Apple wanted more of a relationship with customers, they would have customer advisory boards, spend more time with customers in the field, and actually figure out a good way to have a dialog instead of a monologue with their customers.  If Apple believed that they needed users to sell other users, they would provide something better than the relatively lame reasons posted at www.apple.com/switch.  Apple wants to be on the stage with special effects, and as a customer your role is that of a cheering audience.

You can forget about Apple having blogs which get cleared through PR. I have talked about the difficulty of getting things through PR in some posts including, "Apple's Security Message."  Even though it was only a twelve page document instead of millions of lines of code, the Security document that Apple had out as a technical white paper for Panther, took six months longer for the PR folks to clear than it took to actually write the operating system.  In fact there still isn't a similar document for Tiger and the old one has disappeared along with the Federal web site.   There's no security white paper posted where it should be at www.apple.com/security.  Anoter side note on corporate conrol is it took a lot of complaining by the field sales force for Apple to even do a redirect so that the security URL actually works instead of sending you to the infamous "Looking for something on the Mac OS X site?" page.

When I asked some of my Apple friends why the apple.com/federal site had disappeared I was told that the corporate folks were redesigning the site.  Well that was about two months ago, so unless Apple is using chisels and working with HTML on stone tablets, my guess is that the site will never return or is stuck in the black hole of Apple PR since www.apple.com/federal still gets you to a hodgepodge page which certainly doesn't convey much interest on Apple's part in federal customers.

So against that background, we can expect no explanation from Apple on why the promo was pulled, and there's no need of holding your breath for Apple blogs.  For certain, Apple field employees, who are often the last to know anything important, haven't been told.

With my pre-Labor day ramblings as a warm-up,  here is my speculation on why the Mac mini promo was pulled.

There are only two organizations in Apple that can overrule something which has made it through the marketing and PR gauntlet.

Actually the most powerful of these is finance.  The other one is legal.

My guess is that the promo was pulled because of revenue recognition concerns.  This promo was happening at the end of a quarter and actually spanning two quarters.  The problem would be how to account for the revenue in financial statements and how to take reserves for potential returns.  Problems with reporting this revenue could easily have sunk the promo.  Publicly traded corporations are really paranoid about irregularities in revenue reporting these days.

The second potential reason is that Apple's very, very conservative lawyers (often referred to as "sales prevention") found some obscure reason to pull the plug.  The lawyers at Apple are often a huge impediment to almost anything which might make the company more competitive. The first time Apple submitted its only Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with a federal agency, the customer got thirteen pages of exceptions to the terms and conditions which anyone doing business with the federal government could easily explain are mandated by federal law and not subject to exceptions. Of course it was rejected.  Eventually Apple's lawyers in their continuing paranoia decided the only way to deal with the risk was to not have third party products available since they might be sued for Y2K problems with software from other companies. This was in 2004.

Worrying about Y2K in 2004 is something like worrying about a meteor that was supposed to hit five years ago, but didn't.  Of course not having third party products available basically made the BPA worthless.  In an interesting side note Dell which was so impressed with the potential for Apple sales at this account and so little worried about the legal risk, made the offer to put Apple's products on their BPA. Of course that would have been a really bad idea since it would have given Dell the names of all the Apple users.  It would have made the users very happy since they could have ordered practically everything they needed on one purchase order something they will never be able to do with Apple.

The other thing that could have happened to put the test drive Mac mini promo in a coffin is that Steve could have decided for whatever reason that it didn't fit what he wants to do in the next few months. A last minute Steve decision is always a possibility at Apple.  The only interesting thought that might come from this line of conjecture is that perhaps Steve didn't want to focus on computer sales when he has something else to announce, but I seriously doubt this is the case.

My bet is that finance pulled the plug, but unless I can get an insider to spill the beans, we'll probably never know.  The good news is that the promo doesn't really change much at Apple.  If you like the products and are willing to put up with Apple's particular consumer challenges, you'll probably still be better off than most of the world who has to put up with the challenges facing the Microsoft world. 

Then again according to this article, "Your New PC: Be Very Afraid," all computer makers still have a ways to go.

Computer makers are so accustomed to delivering unfinished products that you never know what's going to be missing from the box. Nowadays the manuals you get are little more than internationalized posters that leave you puzzled over which hole gets the plug from your speakers. And it's up to you to download all the software patches and fixes developed since the machine left the factory--an annoying experience over broadband, an infuriating one over dial-up.

A friend who bought a Mac mini not long ago was handed a disk with the then-new Tiger version of OS X and instructed to install it himself. Despite Apple's pride in the tight integration between its hardware and software, the company wasn't about to upgrade all the old machines on the shelves when a supply of free labor--customers--was readily available.

It is perhaps easier on an Apple, but can you imagine buying a car and being told to upload patches to  the software that is running your engine?  Of course forty years ago, who would have imagined we would be pumping on our own gas and paying for it at the pumps, getting money from ATMs, putting much of our office furniture together, and scanning our own groceries?

Of course your car isn't as different from your OS as you might think, at least according to this article, "Waiter, there's a bug in my Prius."

The typical passenger car has 70 or more computers that control audio systems, brakes, airbags and other functions.

Software for the average car can have more than 35 million lines of code, 100 times or more the code needed for an interactive computer game.

The hybrids, which control petrol and electric power sources, are even more complex.

Of course if computers hadn't become commodities and Apple was making as much money on each system as Toyota does on each Prius, maybe we could swing into the Apple Store and get our software patches installed like this article mentions for Toyota owners.  Of course Apple Stores are fewer and farther between than Toyota dealers.

Toyota has issued service bulletins, asking 2004 and 2005 Prius owners to bring their vehicles into dealerships to have the hybrid electronic control unit reprogrammed to eliminate an error that could cause the vehicle to limp along as though it has run out of gas.

Now that we're talking about cars, it seems like I remember Oldsmobile doing a thirty day money back guarantee just before they disappeared.

Maybe Steve decided that offering a thirty day money back guarantee on the mini would make it look like the mini is in trouble, which we won't know about either since Apple has stopped reporting numbers on specific products.  I wouldn't be surprised if the mini is in some trouble since you can get a complete Dell with a monitor for $299 or $438 with a flat panel these days.  It's hard to compete in that sub $500 market if you're trying to deliver lots of value to a market whose major consideration is price.  It would be just like Steve to remove what could turn out to be a successful promo just because it might send the wrong message.

Perhaps next week will bring something more interesting to write about than a pulled promo.

Comments

[MacFhearghalie]

Under Steve Jobs, Apple is really two companies. The inner core of trusted regular employes who are very a private and closed group with Mr. Jobs being the leader of the pack or emperor if you prefer , their number is small, but they are very loyal to the king. The other company is composed of temporary and lower level hourly people who are treated like cannon fodder or medieval serfs. they are ignored unless they offend the inner core royalty and are terminated for the slightest offense. Customers are brain dead pin heads that are provided by the Creator (Jobs) to worship the great king and his court. How do I know this? I worked for Apple, or on Apple contracts for 5 years as an eng. tech. in their service department, until they sold the service dept. to a really bad company called SCI, much as one would sell a bunch of unwanted slaves. I love Apple computers, the company on the other hand sucks.

[Roger Harris]

"Maybe Steve decided that offering a thirty day money back guarantee on the mini would make it look like the mini is in trouble," This was my first thought about the promo before they pulled it. I was surprised they ran a promo that might make it appear that Mini sales were weak.

roger

[ocracokewaves]

In response to MacFhearghalie, you're absolutely right to characterize Apple as two companies. I have used the feudal analogy more than once.

In my view, Jobs is King. His Senior VPs are his Lords, and the rest of his VPs are his Knights. The HR folks are the sheriffs who job it is to keep the serfs (read rest of the employees) in line.

Customers are nothing but wandering unenlightened tribes who need to subjugated.

I would disagree with your analysis only in that I believe the real inner circle is very small and goes little beyond VPs and their buddies or cronies. The rest of the company is valued little by the higher ups and as you have said are serfs subject to dismissal at the whim of any VP.

How many companies tell their sales force that they are worthless and that if Steve ran a few ads he could just get rid of sales people? You might find these posts interesting.

http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2005/03/the_abusive_com.html

http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2005/03/ethics_at_apple.html

http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2005/03/employee_develo.html

In fact in the last one, I said the following which you appear to validate.

"If anything most of the ex-Apple people leave with the thought, love the products, hate the company.'"

[Chip Winter]

Here's what I'd like to think happened with the 30-day trial inadvertent posting: I think the offer page was uploaded a week too early.
And it was pulled once the mistake was discovered.
The reason I'd like to think this was true is that it gives Cringely's predictions for this upcoming week some weight.
Cringely writes that Steve will most certainly announce an iTunes phone, as well as a movie download service "perhaps accompanied by a new Airport model and a Mac Mini free test drive."
I'm thinking Cringely knows what Apple will announce and wrote that last line without ever knowing or thinking the test drive was public, making it seem like he was very good at "predicting,"
But the full point of my mentioning this is that I think this gives the announcement of a movie download service a strong possibility.

[Terry]

While it would be nice to believe Apple is different from every other corporation this sounds like every corporation I have worked for. Because they make great products you expct them to somehow be more enlightened? Thats naive. Apples sales force does suck btw. I had an opportunity to test X Serves and had budget in hand and couldn't get anyone to call me back. This is at one of the largest oil companies in the world that had no Apple products but was moving away from Microsoft and towards Linux in a big way. I called them four times and noone ever bothered to call me back. If I call IBM, Microsoft, Compaq etc. they fall all over themselves flying people in and doing whatever it takeds to make the sale.

[ocracokewaves]

Perhaps it is naive to think that Apple might be different in the world of 2005, but Apple once was different. It was one of the neatest places to work. Among many of the people who worked at Apple, there was a deep commitment to changing the world of computing and building strong win-win relationships with their customers. Today's Apple is like most of the other corporations in the world, customers are for one way purchase transactions.

Your experience with Apple's enterprise sales force is unfortunately very typical. The only way that they get interested is if you are waving a big Purchase Order at them. Apple is one of the few companies where you have to have an inside track to actually find a sales person who will return your phone call.

While many of the other computer industry companies work very hard at testing their servers with customers before they ship, Apple's preferred method is to throw the product over the wall and hope everything works. You can get a test unit, you just have to know someone. However, the opinion of Apple management typically is that servers are so inexpensive these days that customers should just buy one for a trial. After all that's what is easiest for Apple, and isn't that the goal that everyone should try to hit.

[Michael Michalski]

"but can you imagine buying a car and being told to upload patches to the software that is running your engine? "

This isnt far fetched at all,the prius isnt the only car that has this problem. Last winter my new Ford Focus started having a minor problem starting. I would have to crank it over two or three seconds to start it when the weather was cold. The next time I took it in for an oil change,I told the dealer mechanic about the problem. When I got it back they told me they had updated the firmware in the engine computer as per a Ford service bulletin and that the problem should be solved. I havent had a problem since. Everything has a computer in it now and the complexity of the programs is such that these things will happen. We shouldnt be complaining about the updates in our cars and such that fix the problems,but about those companies that release computerized equipment and think that once they have sold it,their responsibility to update the firmware to fix problems is over.