

One More Thing - filament
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/07/22/one_more_thing.html

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rachelbythebay
Let's not forget about what happens when a company which had been open
internally starts locking things down. Suddenly, you can't get access to
certain parts of the code depot, the people working on that project clam up,
they stop being verbose in their code reviews lest it leak information, and
they stop writing snippets about what they've done in the past week. They ask
other teams for resources, but won't say why. You thought you had made it past
the final wall of secrecy by being hired, but then they went and started
putting up walls inside after years of having things be open. Pretty soon,
instead of just one "us", there is now "us" and "the special ones who get to
know".

Then they call you to the big auditorium one day for a big reveal, and you
find out it's called Wave. We all know how that turned out.

~~~
pdeuchler
Or, conversely:

Then they call you to the big auditorium one day for a big reveal, and you
find out it's called iOS. We all know how that turned out.

You can't pick on secrecy just because a company made a bad product under it,
just like you can't laud it just because a company made a good product under
it. You have to accept it as a tool of the trade, and hope the people in
charge know what they are doing.

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gruseom
Is this really only about keeping secrets for surprise launches? I have a hard
time seeing how that alone could justify so extreme an imposition on people.

We're talking about police-state levels of secrecy and compartmentalization.
This obviously has a huge cost, so assuming the policy is rational it must
have an even huger value. Valuable as surprise launches may be, are they
_that_ valuable? Or is there more to this, in which case what is it?

Apple's success is inarguable; I'm not dismissing what they do but taking for
granted that I don't understand it. But the author's claim that it is all
about occasional theatrical events seems incommensurate with the depth of the
phenomenon and how ironclad it is.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I don't think it is the 'occasional theatrical events' so much as what it
leads to: millions of dollars of free publicity.

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apawloski
I've never worked anywhere that was even close to the size of Apple, so I can
only comment on my imagination after reading this. But I can't tell how I
would feel about being at a company so strictly compartmentalised. Can anyone
who has worked at an analogous company shed some more light on your
experiences?

~~~
jtbigwoo
I've worked at several companies that are more than twice the size of apple. I
never knew very much of what was going on. It's not so much that the companies
were secretive, but that there was no way I was going to know everything
happening in my own division (which had thousands of employees), let alone
everything in a dozen other divisions. It would have been easy for someone to
keep one product a secret from most of us because most of us wouldn't have
even known to ask.

I think many big companies _could_ keep secrets like apple does (look at
mergers and acquisitions which are often kept quiet). Most of them don't keep
new products secret, though, because they value the constant dribble of press
releases rather than the big bang surprises.

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andy_herbert
For the vast majority of Apple's customers the first glimpse of a new product
will be through a news item or television advert. I think the theatrics Jobs
employed at the keynote were symptomatic of a highly prepared and charismatic
individual, and not the cause of secrecy at Apple, as suggested by the
article.

~~~
_pius
_For the vast majority of Apple's customers the first glimpse of a new product
will be through a news item or television advert._

And the vast majority of people writing those news items will frame their
descriptions of the product based on the anchoring that Steve Jobs employed
during the keynote.

~~~
aggie
Exactly, putting on a good show at the product launch is what creates the
media buzz. And advertising through the news is also likely to reach customers
in a much more accepting state than if they are watching commercials on TV and
have a wall up. You can't buy advertising like that, but Apple gets it for
free, mostly because of SJ's showmanship.

------
aerotrain
Another story of keeping secrets at Apple - [http://www.quora.com/Apple-
Inc-2/How-does-Apple-keep-secrets...](http://www.quora.com/Apple-Inc-2/How-
does-Apple-keep-secrets-so-well/answer/Kim-Scheinberg)

------
tonylemesmer
Having to deal with confidentiality and secrecy on a daily basis in my product
design job one thing is immediately clear.

If I am designing a widget which requires a pin I need to talk to a supplier
about the pin. Typically the supplier will ask me what the pin is for. I could
tell him exactly about the product or a subset of the product functionality
and that would give him a pretty good idea of what the pin needs to do and he
and I could draw up the specification for the pin together. This is lazy and
potentially shifts the design of the pin away from the desired design and more
towards what is already possible (this is how suppliers tend to work - they
need to use their existing machinery as it is less risky than developing new
machinery and processes). This is not how iPhones and ultraslim lovely shiny
Macbooks are developed. The uncertainty on the part of the designer allows the
supplier to steer the discussion.

If I've done my homework correctly and worked out what diameter the pin should
be, material, hardness and the shape of the tip of the pin I could tell the
supplier all of those things and he would be none the wiser about the product.
He can still supply me with exactly what I need without him having to know
about the rest of the product. This is a good outcome.

If I don't know the diameter of the pin I should order 15 different diameter
pins and test them all until I get the right one.

What it means is, as a designer I need to own the process of finding out those
parameters about the pin which means I am richer because I own that
information and the process of discovery regardless of who is supplying me
with pins. It also gives me the power to go to any pin supplier and get the
same thing which also keeps my costs down. Double win (even if I've developed
the new pin making process there should be nothing to stop me taking that
process somewhere else as long as my contracts are in place before we start
talking).

Secrecy has many advantages as well as the surprise WWDC factor.

------
rdl
I don't understand why Apple imposes a secrecy tax on itself, given how modest
the benefits seem to be. I guess there is more benefit to doing it for
hardware, and they try a bit harder for hardware secrecy than software, but it
is of negative value for online services (look how badly they screwed up ping
and MobileMe).

~~~
billswift
There is also ego-boos for "those in the know", especially those at the very
top that make the policies. Never forget that companies are made of people,
and people have their own goals and biases that don't necessarily benefit the
company.

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ceejayoz
Seems like the compartmentalization issues described could be solved by code
names for everything. "Are you working on Unicorn?" "No, I'm working on
Puppy."

~~~
k-mcgrady
The problem with that is that if someone leaked what a codename related to
everyone would be exposed. So if I could tell you everyone working on Unicorn,
and then someone let slip that Unicorn was code for iPhone suddenly everyone
on the iPhone team would be known.

~~~
mekwall
And how does not having code names for products ruin the great story more when
the product is known? It wasn't about secrecy, remember...

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mekwall
I'm not so sure about this whole "tell a great story" shabang. Sure, it's a
part of the whole picture, but I am definately sure that Apple has a lot more
to gain to keep things under the lid as long as possible, then to just "tell a
great story". Means to an end, so to speak.

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gamzer
Spoiler alarm! If you haven't seen The Empire Strikes Back, be careful.

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jacksonmohsenin
Is there a list anywhere of all the 'One More Thing' announcements?

~~~
ek
Wikipedia has what it claims is a partial list here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenote#.22One_more_thing.......](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenote#.22One_more_thing....22)

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majorapps
So do you really believe that the whole secrecy thing is just so Steve Jobs
could surprise Apple employees at WWDC?

I believe sir you are suffering from choice-supportive bias.

~~~
MattLaroche
Is this at Rands? That's not what I gathered at all. To me, Rands was
concluding that Apple is secretive to surprise the whole world, not Apple
employees.

I don't think it's possible for a company the size of Apple to have all
employees know the secret and not have the world know the secret. Google
proves, time and again, that when most employees know what's going to launch
that it leaks. I wish it weren't the case, but it is.

------
chewxy
Theatricality and deception are powerful agents for the uninitiated. But we
are initiated now. So we watch.

