Apple patriotism

I guess that I have come full circle.  The other day I noticed one of my old Apple shirts in the closet and decided to put it on since the day was a little chilly.

When I buttoned it up, I actually felt proud of the logo. That got me to thinking that working in a large corporation today is a little like a citizen living in America.  I am proud to be an American in spite of not being proud of some of things our government has done recently.

Just because our leaders seem to have done some very questionable things over the last few years does not mean that I am going to give up on being an American.

In the case of Apple, there have been some pretty bad managers over the years in the sales division.  That is probably nothing unusual for a large corporation though I am willing to bet that at least one of those bad Apple managers would rank in the top two or three anywhere he showed up.

Still because Steve does not like sales but pays attention to product development, Apple has turned out some very good products.

Other things could benefit from change. I know from experience that Apple does not pay much attention to what their customers want.  Apple builds to what Steve thinks customers will want.  Most times that has turned out pretty good for us customers.

As a customer I would like better warranties, more customer involvement in OS releases before shipment, more new products, and an Apple policy that allowed employees to have meaningful blogs, but I am not going to lose sleep over those things.

I still believe but really do not want to argue the point that Apple could be tremendously more successful and influential in the computer space by freeing OS X from the lock to Apple hardware.  The other day in Staples I was amazed at the variety of laptops that other companies offer. I would love to try OS X on some of them, and I would pay for the privilege and not ask Apple for support.  Still that's not going to happen either, and once again no sleep lost.

I joined Apple in 1984 when people really believed that Apple was one of the good guys and could change the way computing was going to happen.  I can speak to my case only, but Apple's tools and technologies have made a huge difference in my life.  I also think we, the collective Apple, made a difference too, but that is hard to measure.  Apple is still challenging the norm.  You could have an interesting debate on whether the difference made by Apple in the computer world is more important than the revolution they created in the music world. Even the way I posed the question is leading so that's not something I want to debate either.

I truly believe that Apple's software and hardware with my hard work has helped me to differentiate myself from the competition. Apple's products have been great tools.  What I can do with a computer is light years ahead of what many of the people who are in real estate can do. I credit Apple with creating part of that advantage.

I love the product and am proud of the places that I helped make sure Apple products got a foothold.

I am sorry that there are some managers at Apple that let personal vendettas drive their decisions. That happens everywhere I guess. Still It hurts me to see some good Apple people still being shown the door, not from lack of performance but from poor management from above. However, that's for Apple shareholders to wrestle with if the shares tumble, not me.

I believe that with better sales management Apple's market share could have been triple what it is today.  After all if my former federal team could triple Apple sales in the very Windows oriented federal market with almost no resources, how great could Apple have done if they had some leaders that motivated people instead of moved them out and had real resources devoted to sales.  I still talk to Apple sales people, and their biggest complaint remains Apple's sales management team.

But that's not my problem. These days I am again proudly wearing the Apple logo when I feel like it. I think my nearly twenty years in the field sales trenches earned me the right to be proud.  I am also working hard to prove that Realtors® who choose Macs end up being more successful and productive than the ones who choose to live in the Windows world.  I don't expect any thanks for that from Apple, but I will get lots of pleasure from it.

Apple's technology has helped me be a better photographer, a better writer or thinker, and certainly someone who considers a computer a tool not a computer.  Life after Apple has turned out to be a pretty spectacular sunset.

The one funny story about the Apple logo on the shirt is that some Apple corporate folks did not want us to wear it.  We got Lands End to make some nice long sleeve shirts for us with the logo, but we had to keep it a secret from some marketing people. Apple people, who for the most part really believe in the technology they sell, were really proud to wear the shirts with the Apple logo.  We even wore them at corporate to executive briefings without any problem. Yet deep in the heart of Apple marketing was someone who would have burned the shirts because they weren't blessed.

Now I get to wear whatever I want, even Apple shirts, sometimes even shorts, tee shirt, and sandals. They work well as a sales uniform for a real estate agent at the beach.  It certainly beats wearing a suit and walking through the tunnel to the Pentagon in near 100 degree Fahrenheit temperatures.

Life at Apple was no box of berries, but I am glad that I can be pragmatic about the situation now and still enjoy the technology as long as Steve hangs around and keeps the galleys moving forward.

As someone who uses Apple technology, the future outside of Apple looks as bright as this beach sunrise.  It just might be nicer outside Apple than it is on the inside. 

Comments

[Curtis]

" I am proud to be an American …" And I thought you were Canadian.

Good article.

[ocracokewaves]

No I was born in North Carolina, went to military school in Tennessee, college in Boston, and to Canada for 17 years because I wanted some land and Canada was the only place we could afford it. Our first farm cost $7K for a house, barn, and 140 acres with a view to die for.

http://tinyurl.com/3e5ecs

Eleven years of farming in the north was plenty for me. We came back to the states when the choice at Apple was move to Toronto or be a sales rep forever.

I'm an east coast person who needs to be near saltwater even on a rainy morning like today.

http://coastalnc.org/rainymorning

[ocracokewaves]

Of course the North Carolina coast is just a tad warmer than the Nova Scotia coast so I haven't regretted giving up our farm.

This morning in Cape Carteret we're 67 degrees and enjoying fresh local strawberries. Nova Scotia is about thirty degrees cooler and won't see any local berries until July probably.

[DBL]

I hope that this is a sign that you are finally getting over your personal bitterness that has, in my view, twisted your perceptions of Apple. Sure, Steve Jobs gives us what *he* thinks we want. But so what? That's the way creative people do thinks; otherwise, they wouldn't be so creative -- they would be focus group-running pencil pushers. Are their drawbacks to this approach? Sure there are. But that's what life is. You don't get something for nothing. You don't get enormous creative insight into new product designs without elevating your own ideas above those of the current customer base. I have always read you as a smart guy who listens to the customer which is a good thing, but who got hired on the wrong end of this creative conduit, and then got screwed by politics and personalities and whatnot. This caused you to completely overlook the fact that his blind spots are what enables someone like Steve Jobs to focus on things that most of us overlook and to create new product categories that should have been obvious to everyone but somehow weren't (due to OUR blind spots). You'll never get that out of a focus group.

[ocracokewaves]

I long ago gave up thinking I could please everyone with my writing or expunge all bitterness from it.

Someone will always find something that I have said as "bitter."

However, the experience at Apple whatever it was, is a part of my writing, and I offer my writing up for free on a take it or leave it basis.

I get plenty of notes from internal Apple folks telling me that my observations continue to be on track.

With Steve you get the products as take it or leave it, and they sometimes cost you dearly.

[John Muir]

I'm with DBL on this one, and I don't mean that in a bad way. We're both obviously regular readers to know your backstory, and "bitterness" in the abstract is not what draws us to your blog. It's the uniqueness of its view, frankly. An Apple oriented page which is neither fawning nor sensationalist. The track you had — as you do well to put across — and your continuing complex views of the company, its people and its eccentricities: these are good. They make interesting reading. They are in fact the very missing reflection which many an other bias can overlook.

With that said, the reason I'm chiming in with DBL is the idea of "blind spots", or human flaws in the widest sense. Everyone knows that Apple is as different from the rest of the industry as it is due to the one man who's dominated its history; as well as the present day. Now, most of us armchair critics out here don't know Steve but everyone has strong opinions about him and how he runs his ship. Indeed, I don't know if you read Fake Steve at all but whoever's behind that certainly does a good job of putting a voice to what the rest of us presume.

Anyway, you've said yourself that Apple is a product oriented company because that's what Steve is most into. The rest is allowed to do its own thing: which as with so many large companies is a slide towards empire building and a tendency for mismanagement, with or without the appropriate resources. No one wins from that. Yet Apple is still on a stellar streak thanks to the very hypersensitivity in product development which caught its attention in the first place. In fact the whole picture reminds me of the cliché about the price of genius. Where life excels in one direction, the others wither away.

The fact that Apple is so reliant on one man is its true weakness. The succession question is the real elephant forever in the room. It's as though what Apple needs is a counterweight to Steve, whose strengths dovetail with his own and who could also *somehow* actually get on with him well enough for the sky not to fall in! As soon as I write that however, I'm reminded of a certain Mr. Sculley … so I think this metaphor can come to a hurried end!

Wrapping up; it's good to hear your surroundings and success are bringing you a new perspective. We all know sooner or later that's what life's really about. But do keep the insights coming, whether some of us think them "bitter" or not. The big picture never comes down just to little things like that … not in this story.

[ocracokewaves]

Perhaps I came across a little harshly. I am not criticizing anyone for saying that I might be "bitter" or whatever. And by the way I am sure as you know there was plenty of "bitterness" when I left Apple.

You don't do anything with great success and passion for over twenty years (two years as a reseller) and then have someone say one day that you aren't representing the company well, and you have to go immediately.

You can't ever take away that moment which the newly hired VP and HR were afraid to even do in Apple offices. When you work for Apple, you sort of give them your soul. It takes away your weekends and in my case days upon days from your family.

It is still hard to believe some new VP who didn't know enough to call his Powerbook something other than a terminal fires you because you exposed unethical treatment of employees. You also know that firing an over 50 years old Director has to be approved at least at the Senior VP level or the Tim Cook level.

What I wanted to say is that betrayal of what I gave to the company will always be there.

Whether it colors or enhances what I write is up to you readers to judge. As you know I try to be as faithful to the facts as I can, but that perspective of being fired from a job you truly loved for made up reasons will never leave my consciousness.

What is the hardest is that I see Apple still doing it. One of the most hardworking, honest people I know got railroaded out this summer to make room for another buddy from Oracle. He left a great job at Sun to come to Apple, and I'm the guy who worked a year to convince him to come. I have to bear that guilt because if I hadn't sold him on Apple he probably would have stayed at Sun. He went through a year of hell similar to what I did.

His wife was dying with cancer when they put him in the vise and crushed him. My 93 years old mother was dying when they were trying to get me to fly to Ca. so they could fire me on the west coast. I guess Apple truly is a company with no graceful retirement. Out of hundreds of people I have seen go from Apple I only know of one retirement from the field, and he told me that they were coming for him.

That stuff will always color my writing, and I work really hard to try not to let it mislead me. I get all these requests to help people make contact with Apple, I probably should tell to go fly a kite, but I go through the motions and hook them up with the right people even though I know they will never get a call back.

In the end I really appreciate the understanding of my readers and always am thankful for the insightful comments that I receive.

In the last eighteen months I have only received a couple of comments that I didn't publish. One was someone who called me some pretty foul language for something I said so I like to think that the 1,600-1,800 subscribers and I are in a mutually beneficial relationship that is fairly stable.

I try to tell it as I see or hear it and my readers tell me if I'm missing a point and then we might debate a little but what I hear back is remarkably civil.

To close, a book that influenced me greatly was Marc Bloch's unfinished "Historian's Craft." It talks a lot about the impossibility of taking away all your prejudices and the filters that color the way you see things.

So I guess what I wanted to say is that the bitterness whether it is really gone (and it probably isn't) is part of the writing and I can continue writing with the hopes that some folks like it enough to keep coming back. The notes from employees still at the mothership, skewed as it may be, always help.

I think we are at an interesting time with Apple, as users I hope we will continue to see computer advances that mean something to us and not just to the bottom line.

The challenge as you have said is that this really is a company betting on one person. I would add they seem to assume his immortality, and I worry almost as much about him just not wanting to play the game anymore.

Thanks for the continued comments.

[John Muir]

Well put.

Ironic that the most human-focussed computer company can be as inhumane as you describe to its own people, but then life would seem to love her ironies.

[DBL]

You know what? I'm not too worried about the succession issue. Don't get me wrong -- losing Steve Jobs would be bad for Apple. But not as bad as the first time we lost him. Losing both him and Wozniak kind of made the company sort of shiftless and left the public not understanding or remembering what was good about Apple. With Steve Jobs's enormously successful rethroning, and the media finally constantly, acutely aware that there is something very special about Apple, I don't think we can ever return to the state where a leader like Michael Spindler will be seen as good for the company (by the shareholders or anyone else).

I believe that forevermore, Apple will be seen as a company that needs something much more than a caretaker at the top, and that CEOs will be chosen accordingly. Before the
"resurrection", a lot of people felt that the reason Apple was faring poorly is that they were not enough like Microsoft. I don't think they'll ever feel that way again, even if Apple's fortunes change. Will all the chosen successors rise to the level of focused innovation that will drive Apple forward? Probably not. But the "Apple formula" is now known; it is set in the public mind. It's been taught. Now it just needs to be applied.

[Dave Price]

In your article you stated "I am also working hard to prove that Realtors® who choose Macs end up being more successful."

You should set up a website for this purpose (macrealtor.com is taken). I have found most realtors to be non-technical Windows tree-huggers. To Apple's credit, they have featured recently on apple.com a couple of real estate success stories.

Becoming the country's most well-known Mac-using real-estate guru (with a huge following) could be one way of showing Apple they made a mistake asking you to leave.

[Judilyn]

I think we must have worked at Apple at the same time. I worked there from 1986 to 1994, and was Bill Coldrick's secretary. The Federal Group was in our Department, but I didn't meet very many people from the East Coast.

I came on board after Steve had left the first time, and was gone by the time he returned. I am glad for that. His rep was pretty scary!

I still have some of the shirts, too. My husband was wearing one the other day that was dated April 6th, 1988, and commemorated something or other. That was also John Sculley's birthday!

Judie Ashford