News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

February 23, 2007

ihnatko

Is the truth out there?

Posted Feb. 23, ’07, 4:27 PM PT by Andy Ihnatko
Category | Ihnatko

“Dear Andy,” asks a reader. “I wonder if you could help me with a personal problem. My boss propositioned me at the company Valentine’s party. He even went so far as to mention that he had a Wonder Woman costume right in his office ready to put on, and that if I wanted to dress as a superheroine, too, he could have a friend of his drop off a Catwoman outfit on just thirty minutes’ notice.

“I don’t want him to continue making a pest of himself. Plus, shouldn’t his wife be told that he’s not just a cheater, but a cheater who’s wearing a set of Size XXL star-spangled bikini bottoms under those pinstriped trousers?

“What do you think? Should I keep the secret, or spill it? — Selena in Syracuse.”

Well, Selena, I’d like to start off by applauding your fine instincts. My moral compass is an unfailing one; you were thus very, very wise to hand this one over to me, instead of your clergyman or maybe the guy who wrote Microsoft Office: The Missing Manual.

Onward to your problem. Secrecy, eh? Well, it’s a classic dilemma. Even huge corporations like Microsoft and Apple have to make decisions about Truth and the best time to reveal it.

When it comes to information about future products and directions, Apple protects it with remorseless tenacity. Microsoft does the complete opposite: they treat it like a family pet that they can’t be bothered to take care of anymore. They drive it out to the woods and leave it there to run around freely, telling themselves that all this is for the thing’s own good but in the end, not really caring what happens to it.

Case in point: the two companies’ digital music devices. When I reviewed Microsoft’s Zune player for my newspaper, I wrestled with how best to explain my overall user experience. I finally settled for comparing it to having an airbag deploy in your face. It was an imperfect metaphor, of course: an airbag works in your best interests. The Zune acted more like the patch of black ice that sent your car twiring giddily into the bridge abutment in the first place.

Poor sales tend to suggest that the rest of America agrees with me. But part of the Zune’s initial commercial failure is due to the fact that Microsoft, as usual, released the design and features way before they released the actual product. Big mistake; Microsoft gave consumers months and months to think about the Zune, and any carnival huckster will tell you that you don’t allow your pigeon to think for himself until after you have his money.

Yes, all summer long, folks obsessed over the Zune’s announced features, which seemed identical to those of every other music player on the market. They obsessed over the product photos, too: the Zune looked like what used to happen when the Soviet auto industry tried to make their own version of an American muscle car.

And more than anything else, people argued with each other. On message boards and on blogs and in comments on blog posts and just in general, they argued about precisely what sort of beast was in the process of slouching its way towards Bethlehem.

The huge discussion surrounding the Zune proved that there was tremendous interest in this thing. The volume and intensity of the chatter can’t be ignored: clearly, folks are very, very ready to see somebody out-innovate Apple. Possibly out of a natural passion to see The Next Big Thing, possibly just to see some competition brought to the marketplace, maybe even partly out of an adolescent, automatic rejection of anything that’s reached undeniable mainstream popularity.

Well, it doesn’t matter. Because all of that passion and energy burned itself through while Zune was still on the launch pad. If Microsoft had kept its big yap shut, the excitement that had fueled rampant, energetic discussion could have fueled actual sales, instead. Even the complainers might have become Early Adopters…and there’s nobody better-motivated to tout a product’s existing strengths and its great unexplored potential than someone who’s trying to convince himself that he didn’t just waste $250 on a piece of junk.

Meanwhile, if you were to judge solely from Apple’s formal announcements, and foolishly assumed that if they were working on something, they’d certainly tell us about it…it would seem as though the company has no plans to update or expand the iPod line. Ever.

Apple has spent so much time saying nothing about future iPods that I, for one, am sick and tired of hearing about them. “There will be an iPod/phone hybrid.” “There will be a model with a larger screen.” We all knew this, even before we actually knew it.

Yes, Apple has a warehouse full of tablet Macs and PDAs and other hardware that were designed and prototyped, but which never found a reason to ever be announced and produced. For all the apparent certainty of Future iPods, they could be crated up and stored alongside the Lost Ark of the Covenant without Apple suffering any loss of face.

For the two and a half years when it was merely a rumor, the iPhone had no announced specs and no announced release date. If it arrived in stores in 2010 instead of 2007, could Apple truly have been faulted for failing to make a ship date that never existed? If it proved to be nothing more than a thicker Nano with the features of a basic, free-with-contract phone, who would everybody have been upset with? Apple, who promised nothing? Or the rumor sites and industry analysts that printed speculation as fact, and themselves for swallowing it all?

The most important benefit of maintaining secrecy is this: by the time there’s a hard list of specs for people to scrutinize, there’ll be an actual thing for them to hold, to momentarily lust after…and to buy. If you don’t believe me, let me tell you what my life was like after I got a mere half an hour of playtime with a working iPhone. People treated me like John Glenn during the week after splashdown. At bars and restaurants, I would reach for the check out of courtesy, but I knew that it would be snatched up before I got even close. My hearty tales of tapping and scrolling and pinching and stretching had more than paid for those six cranberry-and-vodkas, in the eyes of my companions.

People fall in love for chemical reasons. Whether you’re choosing The Perfect Hardware or The Perfect Mate, you consider a specimen’s unique pluses and minutes, but you’re mostly just working to justify a decision you made within the first three seconds.

So, Selena: if the actions of a pair of multi-billion-dollar international corporations are anything to go by, honesty and straightforwardness are for suckers. I can confidently predict that if Apple were in your shoes, it wouldn’t blab what it knows about your boss.

…Until it was strategically and selfishly advantageous for it to do so.

So my advice to you is to keep quiet until the day when it’ll work to your immediate benefit to have a smoking, charnel-strewn crater where this man’s career once stood. Or to have a powerful and (perhaps literally) boot-licking lackey in the company who will do whatever you say, provided that you mime the clicking-together of a pair of Amazonian bracelets when you say it.

Ironically, it’s Wonder Woman and her Golden Lasso of Truth who can teach you — and Microsoft — the most important lesson of all. Truth is a weapon, best used against other people.

(Reprinted with permission from Macworld UK, February 2007 issue.)

Tags: , , , ,


Subscribe to a RSS feed for this comment thread.

Comments

Great piece, honestly. But, the analogy of releasing info too early should also apply to the iPhone shouldn't it? It's so very unfortunate Steve had to release the product so far prior to shipping - it's getting the heck beat out of it. If it had released right away, what an impulse surge that would have been. Now that I've seen it revealed and discussed to death, I have my own reservations. And, I am a wicked-early adopter... I practically wait at the store when the announcements are made. Maybe I should invest more? Nah!

Posted by: eagleroc [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 23, 2007 5:59 PM

Post a comment

(If you haven't logged in with TypeKey, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting. For quicker posting, set up a TypeKey account.)

 



IDG IDG NETWORK:   CIO   Computerworld   CSO   GamePro   GamerHelp   IDG Connect   Infoworld  
   JavaWorld   LinuxWorld   Macworld   Network World   PC World   PC World Canada   Playlist   Techworld