Applepeels

Apple's Sincere Interest in Security

Apple has come out with a strong statement about privacy.

Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesn’t come easy. That’s why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.

Tim Cook
CEO, Apple Inc.

If you read the whole statement, it sounds great as long as you are a customer of Apple and not just an Apple employee like many of my friends.  Now I will admit that for much of the nearly twenty years that I was at Apple I worked as if I had very little personal life.  Apple, the company, took up an oversized portion of my life.  My history at Apple included far too many weekends and nights when my family and children saw little more than the back of my head.  Apple as one the leading early technology companies worked hard to build that culture of long hours for the company.

I was well paid for my time at Apple, but I think it is worth asking one question.  What would Apple do if the company believed that information about a leak about Apple products was on a locked iPhone?   If Apple is as concerned about a person's right to privacy as they would have us believe, would they leave it alone?

No one should forget that Apple is one of the most secretive companies on the face of the earth.  I well remember when the iMac was released.  I was the ranking Apple manager in the Apple Reston, Virginia office.  The boxes of literature about the iMac showed up at the office with the dire warning that if they were opened before Steve spoke, that people would be fired.

One of my favorite examples of Apple's zeal to find any and all leaks happened at FOSE in 2001.  A reporter for FCW published a story, Apple Not Making a Federal Case.  In it he said "To the obvious frustration of the federal team members, they were prohibited from speaking for this story."  The witch hunt that went on for the obviously frustrated federal team members was impressive.  I was questioned multiple times. I knew who made the comment and laughably he was someone on the NEXT team. I did not give him away because he did not say anything and he was as dedicated an Apple employee as you could find.  He is still at Apple.  I hired him a year or so after the FOSE event as the NEXT team started to vaporize.

It can easily be argued that Apple was just protecting its business interests, but you can only say that with a straight face if you never worked at Apple.  We had many executive briefings at Cupertino where you reached a point in the briefing that all of Apple's field sales people would be asked to leave the room as the Apple executives told customers things which the field sales people were not permitted to hear.  Imagine how easy it is to be an account manager and your account knows more about the product you are selling than you do.  I guess trust is hard to earn since I had employees who had worked at Apple for over twenty years that were asked to leave the room.  Again some of them are still at Apple.

It was pretty clear that Apple executives did not trust their own employees to keep a secret.  Perhaps you might think my employees weren't trustworthy?  Many were ex-military and had clearances before coming to work with Apple.  The reason often given as to why Apple would not work towards getting clearances for our team?  Steve had some questions that he did not want asked.  That's fine also but we were tasked with selling to the federal government and often it felt like we had one or both arms tied behind our backs.

I also knew some of the folks in Apple's security organization who were tasked with tracking leaks at Apple.  All emails were fair game.  We always assumed that Apple read every email that we sent.  We did not know any secrets to leak and often joked that we got our product news from MacSurfer.  I will never forget the Friday executive briefing we had at Cupertino with a NASA CIO.  He complained bitterly that you could not connect an Apple display to the Powerbooks that he was deploying.  We trotted out the Powerbook product manager who did a great presentation but would not touch the question about hooking the Powerbooks up to our displays.  The next Monday Apple rolled out a Powerbook with an Apple display connector.  Late that afternoon I got a priceless tongue in cheek email from the NASA CIO.  He said if he had known how fast an executive briefing could get product changes, he would have scheduled one much quicker.

Perhaps the most interesting example came as I left Apple. Now Apple had no employee handbook, and every employee that I knew had personal email accounts on their Apple laptop.  As the federal team, we needed to have digital certificates for our email to communicate with our cusotmers.  With that came the ability to encrypt emails.  If you are a technology driven person, you play with technology.  I had a friend at a Pennsylvania college who also had a digital certificate so we often encrypted messages between us just because we could do it.

When Apple asked me to hand over my laptop, they generously let me remove my tax files and personal correspondence.  I provided them with the password to my computer and the key to my Apple email account so they could see all the email there if one happened to be encrypted.  However, then Apple demanded that I provide them the key for the personal email account that I used mostly for communication with my friend in Pennsylvania.   I am sure there were employee emails there because it was not unusual to email my personal email account on the weekend if I didn't answer my Apple one.  I at first resisted just on a matter of principle, but Apple threatened to withhold my vacation pay and severance.  I finally gave them the key, I had nothing to hide, but it has always bothered me that I was forced to hand over my personal email key.  I had paid for the key myself. My biggest worry was that once Apple had my key that they could send emails as me. Of course I revoked the key as soon as I got to another computer and then I got a new key.

That was nearly twelve years ago. The person in charge of sales at that time, Tim Cook.  I am sure that given what I have seen since then, I would never keep any personal files on a company computer.

So please pardon me if I am a little skeptical of Apple's interest in preserving the privacy of anyone.  The sincerest held belief at Apple is making money from selling products.  That's is fine, I have nothing against Apple making money because they make some very good products and I use one daily.  However, let us not put Apple on a security pedestal without asking Tim if he would try to break into an iPhone if they thought someone at Apple was saying something the company didn't want said.  My guess is that they already have a way to do it.

My personal take on the whole security issue is that if a judge can be convinced to issue a search warrant, my whole house gets searched including my computers.  What makes a smartphone so special that potential evil can hide on it undetected? Granted we live in a country with remarkable rights of free speech and others are not that lucky, but a locked iPhone is not going to slow most repressive regimes.  They just make up the evidence anyway.

If you want more details on my life, click this link.  If some some first hand Apple history appeals to you, read my book, The Pomme Company.

Apple's Big Misstep In Education

I am not surprised by the recent articles about Google unseating Apple in the classroom.  Back in the spring of 2013, I wrote an article, It is not the Pixel that should worry Apple.

It could be argued that Apple's business has been built on education and education is still a key market for the company.  The iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone are the current hot products for Apple and in general are well received in the education market. However no product stays at the top in education forever and Google attacking Apple's education pond is a much bigger problem than Google coming out with an arguably over-priced Chromebook (The Pixel).

I come at this as someone who spent about half of my nearly two decades at Apple selling to the education market.  Back in the last days of the Apple II, I made one of the largest single purchase order sales of Apple IIes.  It put an Apple IIe in every fifth grade classroom in Nova Scotia.  I went on to be higher education account executive of the year in 1992 and then led Apple's most successful higher education team over the five years that Apple treated higher education as a separate market.

I got ripped out of higher education during one of Apple's many reorganizations in the mid-nineties but education stayed close to my heart.

For years Apple believed in the power of computers in education to create consumers of Apple technology.  We used to take great pride in higher education that we sent college students home every Thanksgiving with full instructions as to what their families needed in the way of computer technology.

In the dark days of Apple, when it was hard to find a decent reseller of Apple products anywhere, you could discover many wonderful places to buy Macs on campuses well before Apple Stores ever showed up at the mall.  Apple at the time was a real partner with campus resellers.

When I was director of federal sales at Apple, I can remember being flown to California twice to take part in education briefings.  Schools in the period just after 2000, were worried that using Macs to teach their students would make them ill-prepared for a career in the business world.  My job was to tell them about all the successes that the federal team was having at NASA, NIH, and the many federal labs. The not so subtle message was "Do you want your child just to learn how to use Microsoft Word or how to think like a scientist?"  It was a powerful message and well received by many schools.

Apple is changed company since those days but Apple is still about convincing you that you need the next glitzy device.  At Apple I heard Steve Jobs say many times that we were not an enterprise company but rather one that sold products that are sometimes very useful in the enterprise.  He often followed that message with a comment about the heart of Apple being education.

So what happened?  It would be easy to say that Apple became enthralled with its own gadets and maybe that is part of it. However, I think it was a much more subtle change and I have to put the blame on Steve Jobs and not Tim Cook. Tim Cook might be guiding the good ship Apple, but Steve Jobs put it on this course.

One of the biggest things that changed after Steve came back was how Apple interacted with its higher education and large business customers.  There were changes with the K-12 customers but perhaps not so dramatic.  If you were at Apple in the early nineties, you would probably agree that Apple and many of the thought leaders in higher education agreed that computing had the power to transform education.  At one time Apple invested in many higher education projects.  Apple also listened to higher education customers and worked with them to deliver exactly what their students needed for a college computing environment.  There was a tremendous synergy between Apple and its higher education customers.  We gave them special pricing, told them what we were going to do before we did it, and often protected them from their own mistakes.

Much of this changed when Steve came back.  The first to go were customer meetings with publishing professionals.  Steve did not enjoy customer meetings when he was not on a stage.  While the higher education meetings continued, it was clear that Apple was not listening seriously.

The Cupertino briefings kept going for business, higher education, and K-12 customers but the amount of useful planning information that came out of the meetings declined.  It was not unusual for Apple to pay the way of some K-12 executives to come to a Cupertino briefing but the true education partnerships were gone.  However, the briefings also brought out another change that was close to Steve's heart.  Apple sales people were excluded from customer briefings when non-disclosure information was discussed.  Apple would often tell customers something that they were unwilling to tell their own sales people.

That might seem fine on the surface since no one likes sales people, but when you are company such as Apple which in essence walls itself off from its own customers except for the tiny scripted interactions that take place in an executive briefing, you need consistent, reliable feedback from your sales people as to the directions that customers are headed or the issues they need solved.

By not trusting its own sales people and giving up on customer advisory boards that often fueled Apple's own imagination, I believe Apple has become disconnected from some core elements of its customer base. Having some arrogant, perhaps even toxic sales vps has not helped Apple with its education customers. One of the worst ones is gone, but I suspect people are still trying to repair the damage that he did.

The second thing that I believe hurt Apple is the inability of the company to get web services right.  While today's iCloud is better than it was, it is way too confusing compared to Google's Drive and Docs which just keep getting better and better.

The web has been an afterthought for Apple for as long as I can remember.  Your web data has often been tied to a particular device just like your iPod.  I remember a strong push from some of us in Apple's enterprise groups for a home directory that would work from USB thumb drives. I actually saw prototypes working but Steve shot it down because he thought people would screw it up.

Google has always abstracted the data from the hardware, Apple has always tied the data to a device in the hopes that you will buy a new one.

You can use Google Docs from just about any device including Macs of all stripes.  Just try using Apple's cloud services from an Android device. Of course I have found Apple's cloud apps are often hobbled like the inability to do notes in Pages or presenter notes in Keynote.  Actually you cannot even upload files from an old Mac to Apple's own Cloud drive.  You have to use DropBox.  How many schools have you visited where old Macs and in fact any old computers that they can find are part of their educational computing program?

While Apple was diddling around with the complexities of NetBoot, difficult to manage one to one laptop deployments and trying to convince educational customers that first the iPod, then the iPad was the greatest thing for education since chalk, Google went out and solved some real customer problems and gave educational users a way to use computers without a lot of hassle.  They also gave them a keyboard, a way to collaborate, and they made it very inexpensive.

Apple makes very nice devices.  On Black Friday, my wife and I were in Best Buy.   I wanted her to have a look at a MacBook.  Since I work for a company that uses Macs, I thought it would be nice for her to get a Mac so I would have one in case I needed to edit some Pages documents when we are traveling (and yes I have used Pages on the web).   She spent some time with a MacBook Air and then went over and tried a Chromebook.  Her question to me, "Why would anyone with basic browsing and email needs spend more than three times the money on a MacBook?" I had no answer.

For education customers the question turns out to be, "Why would I spent double the money on an iPad that doesn't meet the needs of my students as well as a Chromebook which is much easier to manage?"

It is a good question and most educational institutions have figured out the answer as we can see from the education sales figures.

That is it from the Crystal Coast where being on the beach is more attractive than being in Best Buy on Black Friday or being an Apple education rep at any time.

Is The Enterprise In Apple's DNA?

Reading a sampling of this week's articles about Apple heading into the enterprise brings to mind Yogi Berra's famous comment "It's like déjà vu all over again."  As one Apple employee told me, we never stopped going after the enterprise.

There is a grain of truth in that as I will explain later, but if you read a few of this week's Apple enterprise articles, you will find that the newest Apple push is based on partnerships with other vendors and developers.  When I see articles touting partnerships like the one with IBM, I have a hard time thinking beyond what a longtime Apple employee told me a few weeks ago.  "You cannot say Apple and partnership in the same sentence."

Considering my long history at Apple in enterprise sales and that I still have some whiplash from Apple's enterprise efforts, I think a few comments are in order.

The gospel according to Steve Jobs says that Apple is a consumer company which makes great products, some of which work very well in the enterprise.

My last few years at Apple I led what might have been Apple's most successful enterprise team.  It was something of a skunk works project, but we did exceptionally well in one of the toughest enterprise markets in the world, the United States federal government.  We had some high level support including Tim Cook, Bud Tribble, and Fred Anderson. 

We were able to get operating system level implementations that made Apple products attractive to a number of agencies and especially to scientists who were tired of dealing with what at the time was a never-ending assault of viruses and malware.  We got as far as getting OS X approved as part of the federal government's enterprise architecture. Apple did an OS level implementation of smart cards.  Smart cards are requirement if you are going to do business with the federal government.  A couple years after I left, they even published a manual about how to implement smart card services on your Mac.

Apple in 2000-2004 period championed CDSA, or Common Data Security Architecture, as the middle-ware building block for smart cards.  The theory being it would be easier for everyone if security devices and providers across difference architectures wrote to the same middle-ware.  I have not followed this closely but I know that you can still use smart cards with a Mac.  However, Apple has switched how they do it all as of Yosemite and there are some questions as to Apple's direction with their security implementation.

With that as a background, here are my thoughts on Apple and the "new" enterprise push.

First Apple has done many enterprise pushes and perhaps all have shown some degree of success but the ill-fated attempt just after 2000 to get into the enterprise with iMac kiosks.  The only thing thing that push accomplished was to get a lot of enterprise sales people fired.

Since the early nineties, all of Apple's enterprise sales pushes have had a few common characteristics.

1. Lots of strategy.
2. Few actual Apple feet on the street.
3. Apple has continued to go its own way.

I still remember the Apple-DEC alliance announced in 1988.  Most of us selling to the enterprise hopped on a train and went to DEC Word in New York City.  DEC was to provide the integration support and people to get Macs into the enterprise.  I cannot remember any sales bump from the DEC alliance.  Perhaps the third time alliance with IBM will be the charm.

In talking to Apple folks, the theory is that Apple is just building the hooks into OS software mostly iOS and that the enterprise folks are going to run with this on their own with help from IBM and a sales bump to Apple.

It is obvious that iPhones are doing well in American corporations.  A new iPhone, much like a fancy Mac was in my days of selling at Apple, is a pretty nice corporate perk.  iPhones are tied down more than the Android world so there is some appeal to the corporate IT folks.

However, there are some substantial cultural barriers at Apple.

1. As my example with smart cards illustrates, Apple often changes course for what seems to Apple like very good reasons.  However, those changes are sometimes not communicated well and often the benefit is more in Apple's mind than to the customer who sometimes just wants things to work without having to jump through some new hoops.
2. Apple really does not know how to listen to customer needs. It used to be a big part of the company's culture before Steve came back. It disappeared then.  If you saw the procedure Apple uses to determine what features make it into an OS release, you would have a hard time not laughing.  I hope but doubt it has changed much.
3. Though the Yosemite Beta program  is certainly a step in the right direction, I doubt we will see pre-release versions of iPhones being sent out to enterprises to make sure that new software and/or hardware does not break their software.  Apple is built on surprise and secrets which are not favorites in the enterprise world.
4. Enterprises really like companies that keep working on something until they get it fixed.  Apple would rather invent something new than fix something old.  That is truly part of the company's DNA.
5. Enterprise sales are often built on long time relationships between executives and Apple does not do this well.  One of our biggest challenges in selling to the federal government was that no Apple executive would say in public that the enterprise was important to Apple and that Apple would stick with its enterprise products.  Beyond that Apple executives do not like to travel far beyond the safety of their offices in Cupertino. You have to make the pilgrimage to Cupertino. Enterprises want you to come to them.  Unfortunately not enough comes out of Apple executive briefings to compensate for this Cupertino-centric approach.

The history of Apple is littered with failed enterprise products from Apple's AIX based Network Server to the more recent Xserve and Xserve RAID products that were abandoned in 2010.

The whole Xserve with the RAID product was supposed to a major push into the enterprise.  They were great products but Apple had done little preparation for the selling and support of the products.  They shipped the products, the field sort of figured out how to sell them and the diehard Apple customers helped us through the many product challenges.  Apple actually did a training for the sales people after the Xserves had been selling and the people doing much of the training were the people in the field who had figured out the product's limitations.  Apple was never willing to commit enough system engineer resourses to adequately support the products.  Apple also made a major server architecture change to Intel.  Changing processors pulled the rug out from under one of the largest Xserve customers who was using the Xserve product mostly because of the small heat footprint of its PowerPC processors.  One might want to ask the VAR who got stuck with lots of outdated PowerPC Xserves about the reliability of Apple as a partner.

As to Apple listening to customers, I can still remember giving Tim Cook's Quicktime movies of enterprise customers talking about the difficulties they were having getting Macs to be good citizens on their Active Directory networks. After those made their way through the organization, I can remember Avie Tevanian flat out telling us that the customers did not know what they were talking about when they said Macs were not good Active Directory clients.  In his mind there was no problem.

The solution to that problem was that I took one of my field system engineers and had him spend months writing an Active Directory plugin that got rolled into OS X.  The employee is still writing OS software for Apple.

I was recently complaining to an Apple employee about all the incompatibilities between different versions of Pages.  He assured me there were no problems. Yet I told him we live with problems almost on a daily basis because so much of our work over the years is in Pages 09 and there are always litle problems if we open the sixty page documents in newer versions.  He said that Apple certainly did not expect enterprise employees to move to Pages but it was fine for small businesses.  As someone in a small business, I might question that assessment.

Unfortunately the problem is not really Pages.  It is Apple's attitude that it is okay to release a product that is not backwards compatible and then not even work at fixing it.  If iPhoto can die for a "better" product, what changes might Apple spring on the enterprise just because it is going to make something better for Apple.

I am not holding up Microsoft as the perfect enterprise company, but the kind of we-are-going-to-fix-it attitude that took VISTA and made it into Windows 7 helps enterprise customers stay the course.

It is entirely possible that Apple's DNA has completely changed and this enterprise push will be the charm, but pardon me if I remain a skeptic for a couple of years.

For more on the world of Apple enterprise sales, check out my book, The Pomme Company.  Of course this is not my first post on Apple and the enterprise.  Feel free to visit, Once more into the trenches on Apple and the Enterprise or Lingering regrets from Apple days.  I also stumbled across this post, Why the Apple-IBM tie-up is doomed to fail, and how it could succeed, by Jean-Louis Gassée.

As with most things Apple, time will tell better than any of us making guesses, but at least I have history on my side. That is my take on Apple and the enterprise from our spot which is almost as far as way from Cupertino as one  can get and still be in the United States.  

Our November Transformation at the coast is a much better prospect than hopping on an airplane and heading to one of the Apple Sales Conferences that are happening this time of year.

However, I will look forward to hearing how this new enterprise push is positioned internally.  It should be entertaining.

 

Classic Apple Style

All the brouhaha about the iPhone 6 will probably settle down well before Apple is ready for you to buy another product.  The one really classic thing that I saw is this statement in a Slate/Business Insider article, Is Apple Accident-Prone?

We asked Apple for comment, but its spokespersons were silent at the time of writing

If you have ever lived inside Apple, you can relate.  Seven years ago I wrote an article, Not a great Apple innovation: the robotic spokesperson.  Memories from my career at Apple came flooding back with that 2007 kerfuffle over iPhone batteries that resulted in all the "no comments" coming out of Apple.

Though I do not agree with Apple's relentless pursuit of thin and light over reliable and still great, bending of Apple products is not new.  Some of the very first Xserves that shipped had cases which bent after they had been in the racks for a while.  Apple fixed that and I am sure that they will stand behind their iPhone 6 products as people learn not to sit on them.

The bigger and more serious problem for Apple is that it does not adequately test its software products and its hardware.  The company is so devoted to secrecy that broad testing is hard to do.  Consumers who buy the products end up being the product quality assurance folks.  It is not a great way to run a company but Apple has such dedicated fans that most of them are willing to do just about anything needed to have an Apple product in their hands even if it is a not-quite-final version.

A secondary and almost more worrisome challenge is that Apple does not have a good regular channel of communications with its customers.  The company has always limited the number of people that could talk to the press but beyond that the company is afraid of talking to anyone whose views might show up on the web and/or in print.  Things have to get to a crisis mode before Apple responds.  Other companies know there are better ways of interacting with customers especially those that truly love the company.

The really big chink in Apple's armor is that it is a Cupertino company pure and simple. Apple has little interest in being a truly world company.  Most of the world does not have a lot of money and Apple is only interested in those places with the most money.  Folks might think Apple is a technology machine but it switched over to being a money machine long ago.  Apple has few customers who worry about their disposable income.

A few years ago I helped someone who was having trouble getting his MacBook Pro repaired.  He had paid for three repairs at various Apple Stores and his computer still did not work.  I got Apple's Executive Relations to intervene.  Even after promising to expedite his repair, they could not get his computer repaired. They refunded his money for the repairs.  How did the problem get fixed, the guy went out and bought a new Apple MacBook Air.

Why should Apple worry about a few iPhone 6s that are bending and a Software Update that does not work?  Their customers will forgive any sin and buy another product to prove their loyalty.  Tim Cook must be smiling in spite of all the bad press.

That is it from the Crystal Coast where we spend more time anticipating the great fall weather than we do worrying about Apple's latest product snafus.

Not so fast Apple, iCloud is part of the problem

Apple was pretty quick to point the finger someplace besides themselves in the recent celebrity photo brouhaha.  It is an Apple tradition that there are never problems with Apple products or services.  The only problems are with how customers use Apple products.  Remember the Apple response that customers were holding their iPhones wrong?

I will admit to being a long time critic of Apple and its cloud efforts. Part of the reason is that I worked at Apple for so many years and was in the cloud with them from the start.  Because of Apple's many tries at getting the web right, I am certain I still have broken website links and lost photo albums not to mention abandoned webpages that I trusted Apple to host.

Still I am going to point the finger at Apple because Apple has never understood the web and the latest implementation of iCloud shows that basic lack of understanding of the web and how most people use it.

Back in 2012, I complained about about Apple's cloud world and said this.

Adding photos to your Picasa web albums, Google drive, Dropbox or your Microsoft Skydrive is much easier than fooling around with your photostream.

I could have also said deleting them is much less of a challenge.

So here is the real problem and it is Apple's problem and not something that users can fix on their own.  You cannot administer and manage the photos on your iCloud account from a web interface.  In fact you cannot even use a web interface to see what photos are in your iCloud photostream.  You have to find the Apple device that put the photos there and delete them from that device.

Just think how backwards that is from the way that the web and other cloud services work?  All services that I have used allow me to log into my account and manage my content from the web.  If I see a photo album that I do not want to be on the web, I can delete it.  I hate to break the news to Tim Cook and his developers but the web usually outlasts Apple devices.  I had the problem when I was at Apple.  One of my Apple devices would disappear and it was impossible to manage what the device had put on the web.

It is the fatal flaw in Apple's web strategy.  Apple is a device centric company and putting a web interface on something means that you could manage your iPhone photos with a Windows or even a Linux computer.

A basic computing rule that web centric companies have figured is that your data should be device independent.  I should be able to manage my web photos or content with any device not just one manufactured by Apple.

This becomes very important when devices die or when you decide to switch to another platform. Of course Apple does not want you to switch so they put you in a walled garden where it is inconvenient to switch.

I am not exactly sure how the hackers got the photos that were on iCloud, but I suspect the photos just synced to whatever Apple device they used to get into the account.

By protecting its users from actually seeing files in iCloud, Apple has actually made it much easier for the wrong files to end up and remain on the web.  Now I am not defending anyone who is crazy enough to take nude pictures of themselves but in making it so easy for photos to get on the web with an Apple device and so hard to tell what is actually there, Apple bears some responsibility and can help fix the problem.

Apple owes users a web interface and a way to see what photos it is storing on iCloud.  I think Apple's brilliant software team could figure that out if Tim Cook told them to do it. Isn't it about time that Apple got the web right.  While they are doing it maybe that could fix that document black hole that they have promised to fix.

That's my take on it from the summery Crystal Coast.  Come visit, the best of the beach season is yet to come and our warm salt water will help you to stop worrying about what pictures are in your iCloud account.

For more recent articles about Apple, check my ReadWrite author page.

Tim Cook's Excuses Uninspiring

I just read David Smith's ReadWrite Article, Why Apple's iPad May Have Peaked.  Many readers know that I have a long history with Apple and did work with Tim Cook when I was director of Apple federal sales team. I have also credited Tim with being one of the three people who helped to save Apple.   Almost exaclty two years ago I said that Tim Cook might be the right person for Apple.

Unfortunately in the two years since I wrote that I have seen little evidence that Tim is the guy who can take Apple to the next level.  I was very disappointed that Tim basically blamed changes in channel inventory for the iPad's disappointing results.  The arguments are weak and typically would have been dismissed not very pleasantly in a Jobs led Apple.

Most people think Apple's success hinges on making great products, but Apple's got where it is by defining new categories and changing the way we interact with devices.  Since Tim Cook has been at the helm, Apple has fallen into the game of trying to beat other devices on specifications. There have been no new categories.

Steve Jobs always said that trying to out spec another manufacturer was a losing battle.  What we have seen under Tim Cook basically proves that Steve was right.  Retina displays and the thinnest and lightest computers provide only a momentary victory because other manufacturers quickly catch up and pass you.

Tim Cook is a numbers guy.  There is nothing wrong with that, but his leadership has yet to to inspire the rest of Apple to find the next great thing which helps redefine computing.  Apple is a money machine and certainly is not going to disappear, but the disappointing iPad results are a clear warning that the mother ship definitely needs some attention.

The reality is that Amazon and others have products out there that cost less and have arguably better specs than the iPad. Others are eating the iPad's lunch and it is not a light channel inventory that is responsible for weak iPad numbers.

Unfortunately Apple's top down culture might need to be turned upside down before the next great thing can come out of Apple.

That is my nickel view on Apple from North Carolina's Crystal Coast.

 

Hard to put a rosy shine on the Apple

I am sure there are diehard Apple fans who believe nothing is wrong at Apple and the company is hitting on all cyclinders.  I doubt that is the case.  Unfortunately like all large companies in a very competitive global market, Apple is finding the road to continuing success a road with some twists and turns.

In spite of the challenges, I am not going to join with Doug Ehrman, a contributor to Motley Fool, and suggest that Apple would be better off by getting rid of Tim Cook.  I actually thought Ehrman's arguments were particularly weak. The idea that consumers will give Apple a break if they are searching for a new CEO is a fantasy.

One of the biggest challenges for Apple in the nearly twenty years that I was there was the revolving door management.  The reality is that you will never replace Steve Jobs.  Tim Cook plus almost anyone is still no Steve Jobs, but I firmly believe that Tim needs to find some new leaders with a passion for technology.  He needs to stop listening to whomever is whispering in his ear currently and find some folks who can bring some excitement back to the company.  There has to be more to innovation than thin, light, high resolution screens, and prices that are higher than anyone else in the industry.

There are some serious problems with Apple.

1. Obviously Apple has not been nimble enough to respond to the Android challenge in tablets and smart phones.  Going to court also has not worked.
2. Apple's strategy of taking industry standard parts and demanding unbelievable margins in computers to add to their cash horde is unsustainable in the long run.
3. If Apple is going to be a premium product, it needs service where there are no hiccups like my iLemon. Even Tim Cook's Executive Relations team which had initially promised to solve all my iMas's problems gave up on it and gave me the remarkably sage diagnosis that it was broken.  Guess what? Computers that cost $1,900 and are less than two years old should not break.  I had five other people all with similar iMac problems contact me.  That included one Apple employee who was afraid to push the issue.
4. Apple needs a culture change.  If you can find someone who worked at Apple and is willing to talk, you will find that Steve Jobs created a company culture where risk taking was discouraged.  You will also find that aside from developers, Apple has isolated itself from customers who might at least provide some serious feedback which is not tainted by the famed reality distortion zone.  I am not talking about people talking to their local genius bar.
5. Apple still does not understand the cloud and their new beta of cloud based software is almost embarrassing.  iWork beta in the cloud cannot import RTF files. (note hyper links are now working)
6. Pre-announcing a new product like the new Mac Pro and not shipping it is even worse than the fiasco that Steve Jobs created in 2003 when he preannounced the G5s in June and was unable to ship any until the end of July.
7. I use both Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion.  I find Windows 8 more stable and more usable. I cannot stand the dumbing down of OS X and apps like iPhoto which I have stopped using.
8. If you are going to have the best products, quit doing stupid things like putting the SD slot on the back of a huge iMac screen.  Make sure your products are also the best to service.  Having to pull the huge LCD panel to get to a hard drive should not be the first choice.
9. There are companies like Lenovo who believe they can deliver high quality and reasonable prices. If Apple is going to be the Lexus of the computer world, they need to fix problems when they find them instead of creating angry customers.  Otherwise consumers will figure it out.
10. Apple has always been proud that they ignore the competition and make their own way. That may no longer be possible.  They need people who can figure out what the competition is doing right and help Apple get ahead of the curve.  I see no evidence that Apple has people like that currently.

What's is still right with Apple

1. They have some very passionate customers, but even there their patience is limited.  We had an Apple user visiting with us recenlty  He was very ticked off that his photos which should have been in the iCloud and on his iPad were missing in action.  His comment to me was that it was becoming too complex to be an Apple customer. I promise that I did not coach him.  As far as I could tell he had everything set correctly and the photos were just not there.
2. Apple has a core of great products.  They need to get better not just thinner, lighter or weirder.
3. They have a strong developer community.
4. There are some very hard working and bright Apple employees.

What does Tim Cook need to do?

1. He has to decide what the new Apple is going to be. It will not be Steve Jobs' Apple.
2. Innovation has to once again become a core value at Apple.
3. Apple can no longer afford to screw up the cloud.  Go buy Dropbox or someone else who has a good cross-platform cloud model and then add some Apple value to it.
4. Get OS X back to being the best OS out there.  That I prefer Windows 8 and Xubuntu Linux to Mac OS X Mountain Lion should be an embarrassment to Apple.
5. People still use devices for the software.  If you cannot figure out how to create great software, you better start throwing some more support towards open source.  While Picasa might not be as pretty as iPhoto, try editing a few dozen photos with each and tell me which one does it easier and better.  I already know the answer.

Why am I still rooting for Apple.

1. I love nicely designed hardware and I still think Apple can be the best source of this.
2. I want competition. It is the way we get better products.
3. Twenty years at a company even if the last two were the pits still makes you root for them a little.

For those who have just found my Applepeels blog, it, like me, has been around for a long time. There is more about me at this link or it you want to explore my non-Apple writing a little more try this link but it comes with some upfront apologies if my page does not resize properly in your browser. 

At one time I had over a thousand pages of posts on Applepeels. Apple never challenged the accuracy of a single one of my posts.  However,  much of the older Applepeels content is now found in our book, The Pomme Company.

And for those who might care, the book is now available in paperback. It is expensive because of the large number of color pictures, but on the other hand, the Kindle version is very inexpensive.  Print production costs are what they are.

Just to be clear so potential readers understand the book's content, there are no Apple secrets in the book.  It is about working at Apple.   However, no other person that I am aware of who was at Apple for nearly twenty years has written an unchallenged book.  Every Apple employee who was part of the history and who has read the book and communicated back to me has commented that if anything I was too kind to Apple.

Little of what I saw has changed according to reports from people still at Apple. I did work with Tim Cook so my comments are not idle speculation.   If you want to see what it is like to be in Apple sales, the book will meet your needs. The book will most definitely show you a side of Apple that few people aside from Apple employees have ever seen.

 

It is not the Pixel that should worry Apple

Google's Pixel has certainly generated plenty of publicity.  I have read more in a shorter time about the Pixel than any other Google hardware product.  If nothing else Google seems to have learned how to get some free publicity on a product.

Some articles like the one on CNET, Google laptop shows Apple a thing or two, argue "that cool hardware is the first step in luring consumers to a new operating environment."  Then David Pogue at the NY Times writes that " The Chromebook Pixel is lovely, polished and just a little bit silly."

The truth has more to do with what you want out of a computer than what someone on the web writes, but it is not the hardware that I would worry about if I were in Tim Cook's shoes.   The Pixel is certainly a nice effort at hardware that has made the industry take notice, but it really is not the biggest danger for Apple.  The Pixel does not fit the needs of many people unless you happen to be among those of us who have mostly moved to the web.  Certainly, the Pixel shows that Google can create a compelling hardware product, but there a few pieces to the puzzle missing including price and USB 3.0.

However, most writers are completely missing the point.  It is not the Pixel's hardware that is an immediate danger to Apple.  The issue is that Google is making enough progress with the Chrome OS in one of Apple's strategic businesses that they feel comfortable putting out a device that is very attractive but likely will not sell in substantial numbers.  It certainly should be a wake-up call for Apple.

Beyond that Apple should be more worried about the Chrome environment as detailed in this article, Google In Education: Chromebooks Now Embraced By More Than 2000 Schools, than the hardware specs of the PIxel.

It could be argued that Apple's business has been built on education and education is still a key market for the company.  The iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone are the current hot products for Apple and in general, are well received in the education market. However, no product stays at the top of education forever and Google attacking Apple's education pond is a much bigger problem than Google coming out with an arguably over-priced Chromebook.

It is certainly time for a little dose of reality when it comes to tablets of any stripe in education.  Let's be honest and admit that writing a paper on a tablet without a real keyboard is just not a lot of fun.  Once you put a keyboard with a tablet you have essentially gone with something that looks a lot like a laptop and in Apple's case probably puts the cost per student pretty close to what you would pay for an inexpensive Windows laptop. 

It gets dicier for Apple if the keyboard comes with an even less expensive Chromebook with software designed with the web in mind.

This article, Why Three Districts Chose Chromebooks Over Tablets,  talks about production devices and consumption devices.

Tablets, especially iPads, have received a lot of attention recently.  They’re great for some things, but I still think of tablets as consumption devices and laptops as production devices.  Some kids can type on a tab but if teachers want kids to write a lot and to produce media, they need a keyboard.  Chromebooks have the instant on and long batter life of tabs but with a full keyboard and the functionality of a laptop.

A less apparent difference is that Chromebooks are fully web-centric and are not locked in to one family of mobile apps.  When instructional resources, portfolios, and communication streams are all web based, they are available any where on any screen.

My own use of tablets confirms that they are not what you want to use if you are producing a lot of content.  However, I wrote much of my most recent book, A Taste for the Wild, Canada's Maritimes, using Google Docs. I had no issue when I moved the document to Word for final formatting to get my book on the Kindle Store.

What is so powerful about Google Docs and many of the applications that run in the Chrome browser or OS is that I can use them anywhere.  Google Docs work on the Mac, Windows, and Linux.  While I am not certain that I see the need, I can certainly look at and edit any Google Docs document on my first generation Kindle Fire tablet and for that matter on my Android smart-phone. 

The Google document is divorced from the hardware. The whole Chromebook concept is web-centric and that just happens to be where Apple needs to improve its game. iCloud is just not a suitable environment for collaboration as currently structured. To be blunt, Google understands the web, sharing, and the whole suite of web services that Apple just cannot seem to get right.

Google Drive is a much better-designed solution for collaboration, sharing, and working.  Apple's inability to get the web right for its users is likely the company's biggest weakness currently.  They have tried many iterations and keep misfiring.  I have been writing about Apple's challenges on the web for over six years, and unfortunately, I have been using their web services for even longer.

Google's web-centric Chrome OS should worry Apple.  Getting web services right is a lot harder than it looks.  I just do not see Apple's abandoned Pages and Numbers as real competition to Google Docs.

If Google is getting its software in shape to match its already strong understanding of web services and sharing of all things on the web, I think Apple needs to rethink its web strategy yesterday.  I still believe the heart of the problem lies with having a leadership at Apple that does not have a real vision for where technology should go beyond the next gadget.  Apple loves to make gadgets.  But what happens if the learning or work environment around Apple's gadgets does not look as good as the solution environment around another company's gadgets,  Apple will be in serious trouble especially if the other company has already figured out how to make gadgets almost as nice as the ones that Apple produces.

I would suggest this quotation is very worrisome for Apple.

Having said that, I’ve spent the last week using the Chromebook Pixel not because I felt like I had to, but because it’s a joy to use. It’s been the machine that I’ve picked up rather than my MacBook Air, out of choice, because using it with the web services that I use every day is a brilliant experience. I love the feel of its keyboard. I love its pixel-free screen. I love its purity, it’s single-minded devotion to the web and just the web. I don’t love the fans, which just kicked in and (compared to the almost-silent Air) sound like a small but irritating vacuum cleaner being used in the room next door.

But I do love the Pixel. And I am really going to miss it when it goes back....

If part of the reason for the Pixel was to prove that Google can create really good hardware design, it’s done its job: The Pixel is the best laptop I’ve used that didn’t have an Apple badge on it (and it’s better than quite a few laptops which did). It’s a different concept, it’s not fussy old Windows, and it’s making me want to be at least occasionally unfaithful to my beloved Mac. For a first attempt at hardware from a software-and-services company, that’s pretty damn good.

Isn’t competition great?

It comes from Ian Betterridge's article, A Mac user’s view of the Chromebook Pixel.  I have a lot of respect for Ian and his opinions.

I also have to agree with Ian.  The Pixel is a very attractive laptop, especially when combined with Googles services and the software that has developed around Chrome.  I don't see an iMovie but there is not much missing in the Google world. Undoubtedly schools will find Chromebooks a compelling solution that is less expensive to support and manage especially when compared to expensive Apple products.  I would argue Chromebooks certainly serve the older grades better than iPads.

It looks like a perfect storm for Apple when there are already doubts about the man at the helm of the spaceship in Cupertino.  This time the doubts are more than just the ones that I have already expressed. 

I still maintain Apple needs a leader, not a manager, and the leader needs to be someone who lives and breaths technology not someone just in it for the money.

 

Do Apple Employees Need A Witness Protection Program?

I am rarely surprised about what comes out of Apple, but this caught even me a little off guard.   Some of you know that I have a long history with Apple .  I have seen things that I still have a hard time believing.  However, my recent experience with Apple's unreal world is a reminder of just how weird things can get for you if your paycheck comes from the folks in Cupertino.

In October of 2001, I was named manager of the year for my team's outstanding performance in the federal market.  A friend took a picture of my team at the awards banquet.  I have always treasured the picture and been very proud of our accomplishment since we were covering the worlds largest IT market with a handful of people. 

I wanted to include the picture in my book and took the time to ask each person in the picture for their permission to be in the book.  It wasn't a controversial photo.  No one was nude or holding a Windows PC.  Much to my surprise three of the five current Apple employees declined to be in the photo.  I edited the image so they are unrecognizable.

One person admitted to being afraid of the consequences of being in the photo, and I respect that.  Two came up with excuses that were plain laughable.  

You can try to appreciate the situation by working through this.  For a moment imagine worrying about being in a photo taken eleven years ago when your team was the tops at Apple.  Then think about worrying about the photo being in a book that you didn't write and which you haven't even seen but which is basically a historical account of someone else's career in the fictional Pomme Company.  Then remember that none of these employees are even named in the book.

If you have that scenario in your mind, you now know just how much control Apple exercises over its people.  The whole episode reminds me a little of the "Minority Report."

When a former manager of mine who is in the picture heard about the incident he asked, "What is the story with these people? Are they in a witness protection program?"

He has been gone from Apple for almost ten years, and I exited a little over eight years ago.  We have both returned to a normal world where you aren't afraid to open a box of literature before a keynote speech.  I don't miss folks worrying about someone from the press tricking them into answering a question.

The culture of fear runs deep in Apple sale's division.  If you want to know about life at Apple in sales, you can now read my newly published book, "The Pomme Company."

Some friends have said my book should be required reading for people wanting to join Apple's sales force.

The book has taken a little over a year and was interrupted by a note from Apple's legal folks warning me to adhere to my non-disclosures.    That is actually easy to do since most of us at Apple heard no secrets.  The joke used to be that when we wanted to find out what Apple was about to announce we would check out MacSurfer.

My book is about my somewhat amazing journey.   I went from running a cattle operation in eastern Canada to being the director of federal sales for Apple.  The journey actually started just after we dispersed our cattle and I started selling Apple II+s for a small company in Fredericton, New Brunswick.  It ended with me as director of federal sales sitting on Capitol Hill with Avie Tevanian in a cyber security hearing.

My career at Apple transformed my life and that of my family.  I'll be interested to hear what people think of the book which is priced at $5.99.  It has lots of pictures of historical interest to people interested in Apple.

Most of all if you want a peak at the Apple culture that I saw, my book will be a cure for your curiousity.

Tim Cook, the right person for Apple's evolution?

New products have been the heart and soul of Apple for most of its history.  The recent comments by Forrester Research chief executive George Colony have received a lot of discussion. 

It is easy to jump on the bandwagon that Apple will decline without that next great thing and the vision of Steve Jobs.

I would disagree with Colony's analysis for a number of reasons.  My first thought is that it is impossible for any company, even an Apple, to turn out hit after hit. Setting the expectation that this is the only way Apple can be a great company is to consign Apple to a future which won't be very bright.

The Apple of today is really the result of three straight home-runs by Steve Jobs, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.  The Apple of tomorrow does not have to be defined by products that break the mold every time.

There is no guarantee that even if Steve left Apple with that next great thing that it will be another product hit.  Despite what has come to be popular wisdom, even Steve had some less than successful products.  You might want to remember back to Steve's wonderfully designed PowerMac G4 Cube for just one example.

Tim Cook might be the person who finally turns Apple into an adult company.  It doesn't have to be a company that declines like Sony has.

I have already heard some thoughts from Tim which indicate that he might be right for this moment in Apple's history.  His comments on the convergence of tablets and laptops are on the money.  I just hope he is strong enough to keep Apple from making its OS X operating system look too much like iOS for the wrong reasons.

Apple has a tremendous amount of momentum, and there is plenty that can be done to grow Apple's business.  Despite what the technology press and analysts would have us believe, computers besides tablets are not dead.  There are plenty of people who will be using laptops and desktops for years to come.

Just as Microsoft is envious of Apple's share of the smart phone and tablet markets, Apple should be eyeing the huge numbers of computers that still ship with Windows around the world.  As the world of technology matures, finding new markets with that next great product might be beyond any company's ability.

However, getting beyond a 10% market share in the world of computers could be within the grasp of a Tim Cook led Apple.  One of the weaknesses that I saw in the leadership of Steve when I was at Apple was the ease with which a market or a product could be sentenced to a slow death as resources were drawn to that next great thing.

My experience with Tim Cook showed me someone who is willing to tinker with things until he gets them right.  It happens to be one of the things that I have admired about Microsoft.  That patient ability to keep working on product until it meets customer needs is what has kept Microsoft alive and still making money.

So what would I like to see Apple do to begin its journey to sustainable growth?

Obviously Apple has to keep churning out new iPhones and iPads, but Apple needs to resist the temptation to load them up with features that distract from their core functionality.  You can make something better without feature creep.  That is part of Steve that Apple needs to keep in the minds of its product designers.

At the same time, Apple needs to focus substantial resources towards making OS X the absolute best operating system for computers on the planet.  At one time it was.  It no longer is the best.  There are things that Windows 7 does better, and I find Windows 7 is more reliable.  Apple should not make OS X look like iOS just for the sake of doing it.  If there are good reasons fine, but don't mess more things up like we have already seen in recent updates to iPhoto.

Apple should not depend on Microsoft screwing up with Windows 8.

Next Apple absolutely must focus on style with reliability.  I should not be sitting here saying that my last three Mac laptops are dead while my last three Windows laptops are still running.  There is no reason why Apple cannot deliver its absolute drop dead gorgeous products and have them be ones that have spectacular reliability.  You can build a company on reliability and customer satisfaction.  You can lose a company if your products don't stand the test of time.

I really don't care if there is another laptop a little thinner than mine if my laptop lasts five years instead of two.

Next, the world of desktop computers is a wasteland.  The iMac and the Mac Mini have not revolutionized it.  They also haven't taken Apple very far into the world of two digit market share. 

There is a product somewhere between the iMac and the Mac Mini with a feature or two from the Mac Pro that could own the desktop world.  While it might not break completely new ground, it could be a home run for Apple.

Things will have to gradually change at Apple under Tim Cook's leadership for all this to happen, but I think it is very possible that Apple has not yet seen its peak.  Maybe the stock won't be as high, but the company could find a spot in the list of companies who have survived the loss of their visionary leader.

It would be good for all of us consumers of technology if Apple could not only survive but thrive.  I really couldn't care less if Apple comes out with a television, but I would be really ecstatic if Apple re-invented the desktop computer and delivered it with the world's greatest operating system.

There are lot of challengs out there for Apple. Android and Amazon will be fierce competitors, but Apple already has a lot going for it and should not face the decline that so many expect.

With that I am back to enjoying spring as it continues to unfold here along the stunning waters of North Carolina's coast.  With warming weather I plan to be back out in my kayak and anchored on the oyster rocks once again.