
What Apple’s quiet failure can teach you about your business - jerianasmith
http://www.eno8.com/blog/what-apples-quiet-failure-can-teach-you-about-your-business/
======
redial
I don't call this events failures, I call them _tries_. And many, many tries
are required to learn and create a single success.

But maybe that is why I'm no _analyst_.

~~~
hasenj
I can't help but see this as a post hoc rationalization.

When Steve Jobs was at its helm, did Apple have failures that it needed to
rebrand as "tries"?

~~~
redial
Don't get me wrong, there are failures, Ping, or MobileMe being some examples,
but I think that is the result of not _trying_ (and learning) enough.

For example, it is said when designing the iPhone they tested (tried) two
different operating systems, one based on OS X and the other one based on
Linux. Even the hardware itself was first started as an iPad like device and
was later decided to shelve the original project and do the iPhone instead.
When you _try_ an idea you learn, and you might even learn that it is a bad
idea. I don't think of that as failure, the only failure is to not use what
you learned. I'd be worried if they, despite the knowledge gained and to not
be thought of as a failure by pundits, decided to be _courageous_ and go to
market anyway.

------
hkmurakami
Not sure why this is being called a failure when there was never an
announcement about its efforts. How many skunks works projects were attempted
and quietly folded in history?

~~~
BillinghamJ
They were quite public and arrogant about it

~~~
redial
Based on the last earnings call, they still are.

------
NicoJuicy
a seemingly rare defeat for a company that has done little-to-no wrong in the
last decade (save for maybe the Apple Watch depending on how you look at it).

\--> Google Maps vs Apple Maps?

~~~
oarsinsync
Took 3 years to turn that around

> Apple Maps is now used three times as often as its “next leading competitor”
> on iPhone and iPad

[https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-
numbers/](https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/)

~~~
adamors
It's still inferior to Google Maps tho. It's not outright bad, but for
directions/traffic Google Maps is still miles ahead (at least in random
European countries).

~~~
ghettoimp
Shouldn't it be kilometers ahead in random European countries?

~~~
neonhomer
I'd say that Google Maps is streets ahead of Apple Maps still. :P

------
TheOtherHobbes
Apple's quiet failure has more to do with forgetting key values than the fact
that the car market is incredibly difficult. (Of course it is, but that's not
even the main issue.)

Jobs era Apple had a clear focus on user benefits. They were part imaginary -
look and feel, styling, status - but part real, in the sense that when you
bought an Apple product you were getting a specific set of experiences and
possibilities which you probably felt were exciting, novel, and cool.

Cook era Apple has lost that. Apple Maps was me-too, the hardware is me-too -
competing with the old Apple against itself - and the new projects don't have
the old vision.

What's the novel, exciting benefit of Watch? Er...

Apple has missed some important markets, including home automation (currently
a mix of competing products that barely work together, and often barely work
at all), the indie content creation market (which it half-owned with
podcasting, but then gave away to YouTube), and social networking.

But the biggest difference is the shift from an Apple that tried to make
products to empower and delight people, including creators, to an Apple that
encourages passive consumption of its products/objects/services, because "we
make stuff and market it to you, and you buy it."

It's a lot easier to do the latter than the former. It looks like a subtle
shift but it's really a complete change in direction. And it has made Apple a
much less interesting company.

------
aleem
> I would rather commit seppuku than fail -- Elon Musk on failure

Project Titan is not a failure but it has suffered major setbacks, the credit
or blame for which lies with Tim Cook. It takes unrelenting passion and
fanaticism to wield the fortunes in your favour. Jobs had this and Musk has it
too.

If project Titan is not about building a car then it's just about components.
Apple has historically owned the vertical and there is little exciting about
being a component supplier. It's a losing bid. Google does mapping better than
Apple. It does voice recognition and AI better than Apple. The car
manufacturers desire a steely grip on their UX and design so Apple's strengths
there won't come into play either. Ive's own ambitions seem to indicate the
poor state of cars:

> “There are some shocking cars on the road,” Ive said. “One person’s car is
> another person’s scenery.” To his right was a silver sedan with a jutting
> lower lip. Ive said, quietly, “For example.” As the disgraced car fell
> behind, I asked Ive to critique its design: “It is baffling, isn’t it? It’s
> just nothing, isn’t it? It’s just insipid.” He declined to name the model,
> muttering, “I don’t know, I don’t want to offend.” (Toyota Echo.) [1]

I for one would have loved to see an Apple Car and disruption of the auto
industry. Am hoping Apple hasn't conceded on the bigger vision but it does
seem bleak at the moment.

    
    
       [1]: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come

------
svarrall
I'm not sure it can be classed as a failure. Pivoted maybe, but failure? In
what sense?

~~~
paganel
In the sense that they started out wanting to build a car and later on they
decided not to build it anymore after having realized what it actually
entails. I'd call that a failure, as in "failure to build a car which I wanted
to build". Pivoting doesn't change anything, we all move on after our
failures.

~~~
taytus
How can a company with literally mountains of cash plus the engineer power
Apple has, fail to make a self driving car? I'm not saying at all that is
something easy, but Apple is a beast in terms of resources. I confess that I
don't get it.

~~~
berntb
Afaik, Apple starts lots of development projects and a lot of them gets
"Steved". If the new product isn't enough better than the competition or won't
have enough profit margins... axe.

(Point is, the project might have been doing well and following the plans --
but Apple might have found that the target market niche was too small. Or the
margins might have been too low for Apple.)

~~~
dharma1
Very low margins generally in the car industry. It would have been a money pit
for Apple

~~~
gutnor
Premium is very premium in the car industry. It is one thing to find $3000 to
buy a laptop. It is expensive for a laptop, but it is in the realm of
purchasable by a large chunk of the population.

It is quite another endeavour to find $100K+ to buy a car, no matter how you
can rationalise it. The total market size for car at that price is probably in
the 6 digits cars worldwide and shrinking in the western world.

That falls quite far from Apple business model and expertise.

------
tdkl
Still better "failure" then Googles "throw shit at the wall and see what
sticks" with its products (or even multiple similar existing at once - see
messaging) that year per year slowly eroded the trust in the company.

~~~
worldsayshi
"throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" \- Is this really a bad thing?
You have to try things in the real world to get anywhere. Are there any
companies that can see into the future to see what works?

~~~
mcphage
> "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" \- Is this really a bad thing?

If you're one of the people who pay real money for a product that doesn't
stick, yes.

~~~
majewsky
But that can always happen to any product.

~~~
mcphage
Absolutely. So when I'm looking at a product, one of the things I ask myself
is, "does this company have a history of releasing immature products, or
dropping support for their products quickly?" Obviously it can't be foolproof,
but if either of those is a company's general MO, then it's more likely to
happen to a new product of theirs, than a company which rarely does that.

------
skywhopper
"given that computers are much better drivers than humans"

I can't tell if the author agrees with this premise or not. Clearly they are
not better drivers than humans or there would already be fully autonomous cars
on the road.

------
laurent123456
> Rather, it’s paring down its ambitions to focus on autonomous navigation and
> in-car entertainment — two things that make perfect sense for the market
> space as well as Apple’s existing expertise.

Entertainment, yes, but autonomous navigation is not really within Apple's
existing expertise. With so much competition in this area, including from
Google which as way more experience, I wouldn't expect cars to run Apple's
auto-navigation application (if they ever release one) any time soon.

------
dizrupt
Failure is the path to success

------
chiefalchemist
The crux of Apple's big success was built on the back of the music industry.
Obviously iPods gave birth to the iPhone. In any case, the fact is, Apple
needed a desperate victim, if you will, and without that situation to boost
it, it's commonness is showing through.

~~~
fzzzy
How is it obvious that the iPod gave birth to the iPhone? It is a completely
different operating system with a completely different user interface.

~~~
pilsetnieks
If anything, the Mac gave birth to the [concept of] iPad, which gave birth to
the iPhone, which in turn led to the real iPad.

------
Benjamin_Dobell
This is what happens when you're a design company masquerading as a tech
company.

Do they design beautiful products? Abso-freaking-lutely!

Can they develop complex software/systems? The evidence strongly suggests a
resounding, no!

They struggle enormously at providing solid cloud services, their websites
suck (particularly their developer portals), they can't write a functional USB
stack, macOS has more bugs than ever, even iOS' stability seems to be going
downhill.

Don't get me wrong, they have top-notch product designers _and_ UX designers.
But engineering has been second fiddle since the iPod launched. Self-driving
automobiles is entirely an engineering problem, design doesn't even come into
it.

~~~
brisance
Come on. Are you seriously suggesting that Apple is not a tech company? Have
you seen their chip designs? Do you know of any company that ships in volume
that has successfully migrated from two chip architectures which is still
around today?

~~~
pjmlp
If Steve Jobs hadn't returned to Apple, we would be talking about the Macs the
same way we talk about Amiga and Atari nowadays.

I clearly remember the not so good situation Apple was in around 1994, with
Copland failing to impress.

