

"Is Apple the Worst Company Ever At Public Relations?" - inglorian
http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/07/is-apple-worst-company-ever-at-public.html

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martythemaniak
Well, one way to look at it is that they have no need for any public relations
of the kind he talks about. One consequence over the endless fawning and
hyping over everything they do is that people are willing to let everything
slide and will still buy and hype their products.

Anyone remember the iPhone launch when people asked about an SDK? Jobs said
there's no need for one ("the web is your SDK!" or something along those
lines) and people started parroting that line whenever this valid criticism
was brought up. Now that they have an SDK, albeit one with ridiculous and
draconian restrictions, people are still parroting Apple's lines: You can't
have background processes because of security[1]! You must submit to the App
Store because Apple knows better than people what they should be allowed to
have!

Think I'm being hard and unfair towards Apple? Then just imagine other
companies doing what Apple does and ask yourselves what the reaction will be:

-What will happen if BlackBerry's email service goes down periodically and loses your email?

-What will happen if Microsoft demands 30% of all developer revenues for their products and limits the distribution of applications?

[1] Choosing security over liberty... where have I heard this line before?

~~~
modoc
"-What will happen if Microsoft demands 30% of all developer revenues for
their products and limits the distribution of applications?"

Of course you don't mean across the board. You mean for a specific closed HW
device via a specific channel right?

Sort of like games being sold on XBox live?

From three days ago: "Microsoft announced today that user-created games will
be sold on Xbox Live through a new Community Games section starting this fall,
with developers taking 70 percent of the revenue."

So yeah, let's see what the outraged reaction looks like. So far I think it's
been happy developers. But yes, I suspect that you are being hard and unfair
towards Apple. Time will tell if there is a huge user backlash and revolt
toward Microsoft.

~~~
martythemaniak
That is only user-created games, not _all_ games. Companies still have the
option of doing regular development and controlling their own marketing,
distribution, revenues etc.

For your comparison to be valid, you'd have to consider the industries you're
talking about. Microsoft operates within some pretty standard console industry
practices - charging (relatively) small amounts for tools/licences etc. What
they do is what Nintendo, Sony, etc all do and thus are neither bad nor good
in this respect.

Now take a look at the smartphone market (major competitors being RIM and MS):
APIs are pretty open, allow much more integration, users have much more
freedom of choice, developers have freedom of distribution, speech etc.

Apple may be better than traditional cell phones, but they fail in comparison
with their peers in this respect.

Just to give you an illustration, the last two projects I did had mobile
components. I could not do an iPhone version of the first one for lack of
background processes, and I can't do the second for lack of APIs that allow
access to the phone's system settings. Meanwhile, a friend of mine is
developing a horribly crippled medical device monitoring application, because
the iphone allows bluetooth pairing for audio devices only.

None of these problems exist on the BB, Android and likely WinMo. So no, I am
definitely not being hard on apple at all.

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aasarava
Apple is doing the minimum that the market will let it get away with.
Fortunately for the company, that bar is pretty low by the alternative:
Microsoft.

This is a pretty good example of the power of branding. Customers (on the
whole, not necessarily individually) are willing to overlook poorly
functioning applications, lost data, expensive hardware, DRM, near-instant
depreciation, lack of APIs, and so on because the positive feeling that brand
imparts balances out the negatives.

As martythemaniak points out in his comment, if Microsoft were to try some of
these things, the press and blogs would be all over it.

At the least, this sort of behavior from the big players in a market has one
upside: It creates an opportunity for an upstart to come in and compete on
service.

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boredguy8
If you want a good look into Apple, develop a long-term relationship with a
sales rep. Within 9 months, assuming you're actually purchasing product, you
will be colossally jerked around. (Shipment delays, EOL on products with 1-day
notice.) The longer you work with this person, the more their frustrations at
the system will come out, and you'll actually start to feel lucky when things
go as planned.

Then watch as the sales rep (assuming you have a good one) struggles to help
fix the situation. But they are as powerless as you are. And they weren't told
any sooner than you were.

So then you go to the Apple support forums to see if anyone's figured out a
way around the problem. Except the thread that had decent activity and a few
decent leads disappeared.

But it sure feels good pulling out my Mac in an airport.

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demandred
OP is fairly articulate and intelligent, but would be greatly appreciated if
he would stop trolling with his titles.

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papa
Obviously they are not (despite their myriad problems). But nice link-bait
headline anyway.

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akd
Stockholders say: "no"

