Simple Simon Saint James

There was an article over at MacNet2 that a friend (known as Mark M) called my attention to, that was sort of the traditional Mac/Apple bashing. http://www.macnet2.com/more.php?id=606_0_2_0

Normally, I ignore trolls and true “advocates”, but sometimes they just go too far. Personally, I don’t always agree with Steve Jobs or Apple, but as Edward Burke says, “All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing” — so rarely, I’ll choose to act rather that tolerating mistruths or things that I see as “evil”. So I decided to respond point by point to the author (Simon Saint James), and try to offer a little counter balance to what I saw as a rather unbalanced piece. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if the author was unbalanced as well.

Disdain

The article accuses Steve/Apple of having disdain for its customers. This is a very immature view of a company that makes its money off of keeping customers. Ultimately, Apple is a business — it needs to balance profits, with giving customers everything they want at a profit point that would put them out of business. This means they must balance features, quality, support, time-to-market, sex-appeal, marketing and other things that are the complexities of running a business. Pundits and armchair CEO’s usually think this is an easy task, and spew their recipes for success — and feel that the others are contemptuous of them if they don’t see the obvious wisdom of the one true path. But that’s just arrogance and often ignorance. We may all disagree with some choices made (I know I do), but to assume that is the same as contempt for customers, seems to be taking a binary view of the world/company, and doesn’t seem very insightful about Steve who is still a sales/marketing centered person at heart.

Steve may want to convince you he’s right, and make you see things from his point of view (the infamous reality distortion field). He may even want to sell products that he wants to build (art), and figures that customers will see his genius for what it is. But that’s a huge ways off from disdain. Apple insiders that have worked with Steve tell me that Steve is very open to input… to a point. Once that point is crossed, and he’s made up his mind, he is extremely resolute — and you are sort of left with the choice of doing things his way, or seeking opportunities elsewhere. But that’s not disdain. Determination? Vision? Ego? Maybe a personality quirk of many good leaders (as well as more than a few bad ones). Disdain is more how Simon treats all Mac users who disagree with him.

Steve does respond to customer demands, and does listen to the market (especially up front). Once his mind is made up, he may not be as flexible until very strong evidence proves him wrong — but Apple and Steve have adapted quite well on some things. That’s not disdain as much as self-assuredness and determination. Would you really want a flakey, touchy-feely CEO that couldn’t stick with an idea or products long enough for any to ever succeed? With the Cube, Apple sort of learned fairly quickly that they’d over-priced the little booger, and pulled it. With Rhapsody, Apple realized that Carbon (backwards compatibility) was a necessity — so they adapted. And there are many other examples of adaptation, when forced. So calling Steve/Apple arrogant is probably fair. As would be calling Microsoft, Dell, Intel, IBM, Oracle and most of those leaders arrogant as well. Are they all showing disdain for their customers too?

OS X

To see OS X’s reason for being as a way to milk it’s customers might be true. But only if you see Dell or Intel not building Pentium 12 machines today as a way to do the same. The same for Windows 2050, Photoshop 14, and so on. Companies build what they are able to. They add features, and charge customers for new sales or upgrades. Apple is not unique in this “evil conspiracy to screw customers”. Last I checked, it was called “business”.

There are many business models. The author claims that offering $129 upgrades, with no upgrade path, it is part of the evil conspiracy again. Yet, I far prefer Apple’s business model to more complex software licenses like Oracle’s or Microsoft’s (especially for their Server stuff, but Office is not always a walk in the park either). Upgrading can be incredibly complex and expensive propositions. Apple took a simpler approach; one price upgrades with some very limited site-licenses (volume discounts). No complex checks. No software installs that need to first verify a previous version is installed, with intrusive network serial number checking, and so on. I hardly call a simpler and often less expensive upgrade path an evil conspiracy; but the author (Simon) does. Whatever.

The same with feature sets. Most people consider lots of new features in each release value. Simon sees it as proof that Apple is making his life difficult. Microsoft, Linux and many others have version dependent Applications, tied to version of the Operating System (or tied to versions of Libraries that come with versions of the Operating System) and change things version to version or add features — but when Apple does it, its the evil conspiracy.

To a point, I understand what Simon is saying — the new Apple (since Jobs took over), is far more willing to ship now, and fix later. But they took that business model from all their competitors like Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Dell, and others, that were doing better in the industry than they were. I don’t always like it; but it doesn’t take much common sense to understand it. So sure, Apple upgrades more now than they used to. I also feel like Apple’s little beta tester at times — but I feel like Microsoft, Dell’s, Intel’s, IBM’s, and others little beta tester at times too. The new Apple also ships products sooner than they used to, respond to problems sooner, makes more money, grows the platform, adapts quicker, and I’m much happier as both a stock owner and customer. I definitely swing between liking the quicker response time, and disliking that they aren’t as much better than Microsoft as they used to be. But it would take some serious drugs to only see the bad in Apple and the good in Dell or Microsoft.

Mistakes

Simon whines about Apple refusing to admit mistakes. Um, admitting mistakes is often accepting liability. It is also not in the character of arrogant CEO’s, or arrogant anyone’s, to admit they are wrong. If Simon doubts this, let’s see how quickly it takes him to apologizes for going “over the top”, and retract his article. How many times have you heard Balmer or Gates get on stage and tout the stupidity of their previous decisions? Has Michael Dell publicly apologized for his outsourcing fiasco?

Sure Apple has had recalls. They had them before Steve left, they had them before the return of Steve, they had them after he came back. Dell has had them. HP, Gateway, IBM, Sony, and so on. Personally, when you compare the complexity of computer hardware to the complexity of cars, and the far more frequent recalls on cars, I’m amazed at how few the recalls are on Computers. But more of the evil conspiracy. Oooh, scary, Apple is resistant to admit mistakes that will cost the company the money. That wouldn’t be managers trying to cover their butts, or typical humans dodging responsibility and pointing fingers; it’s a conspiracy.

iPod

Simon goes on to complain that something that the iPod, which has sold millions of copies and has created whole new words and a culture around, is really a giant rip off. Why? Various things; battery and support issues, iTune’s proprietary nature, and so on. Gee, Apple was reluctant to lose lots of money on support on a device, in a new segment of the industry, that had the thinnest margins and lowest per unit profits of just about any hardware product they had ever produced. Who’d have thunk?

Have you ever tried to get a VCR or DVD repaired a year or two after you bought it? Good luck. Consumer companies don’t usually offer the level of service and support that even bad computer companies do. Instead of Simon seeing it as Apple maybe being cautious while starting into the consumer marketplace, it too was part of the evil conspiracy.

Simon complains that there are probably tens of thousands of unhappy customers, compared to the many tens of millions of iPods made, I’d consider that an incredibly low percentage and extremely high satisfaction level. Compare that to car buyers, or people who bought Dell’s or Gateways, and then we’ll see if he has a point. I know I bitched and whined and some areas I got burned by Apple. But I’d be a tad clueless to think that represents all customers or even most — or not to remember the times I was burned by Dell or Microsoft as well. Or BMW. Or my home builder. Or my contractor. Or a boss. Or a Woman. Or….

Intel Switch

In the Intel section you see some of Simon’s real bias. He slips in that he is unhappy because Mac OS X is finally approaching the productivity of OS 9. I think we see what is really going on. Here’s someone who was mad that things changed and he had to go from OS 9 to something else, and is now ranting cathartic about everything the company has ever done since Jobs took over. Hey Simon, things change — welcome to the real world. I like many things about OS 9 too; but I’ve mostly gotten over it. Some things are better in OS X, some things worse; unfortunately, that’s called progress. Get over it. Breathe deeply and then let it go. Wine about specifics — but concluding that because a company makes some bad choices that they make no good ones shows the wisdom and insight of a suicide bomber.

In truth there are many business and technological reasons that can justify the switch. We can’t know all the things Apple gets out of the deal — but we can make a long laundry list of possible upsides as well as a smaller list of downsides. But instead of seeing Business as business, this too is part of the Evil Conspiracy by Jobs to obsolete machines. Are you seeing Simon’s pattern yet?

I don’t always agree with with Apple — but I’m sure Apple is not daft, and knows that refreshment sales are going to go up in a year or so. Yet, they are also smart enough to realize that sales may take a lump in the short term too. And if the future machines aren’t really better in the marketplace, then Apple is a worse place than they are now. So obviously, Apple believes they’re going to get something out of the switch to make up for the risk.

Michael Dell

Throughout Simon’s article, there are a few comments to point out how good Dell has been, and how evil Steve/Apple is. Which begs the question, “what has Dell done”? Dell is the Walmart of the computer industry. Discounting machines that other people make, by virtue of their name, size and negotiating position. They are king of the supply chain. That doesn’t make them bad — but on the other side, what have they really done? They don’t engineer; they repackage. Dell is known for having worse support than Apple and lower customer satisfaction. They have had more hardware recalls, and more quirks. I’ve had problems with multiple machines bought from Dell in batch, where they changed parts mid run, and so two “identical” models aren’t identical, with both models having different problems. That’s better? Have you called Dell’s support? I kept getting some guy in India named George Washington (ask their last names sometime, the Americanized one’s are quite amusing), that would read off his script and could not adapt to anything that was off script — like everything I needed or I wouldn’t have called. While I’m not always enthused with Apple’s help, I never wanted to put my fist through a wall as badly as after I dealt with Dell.

The Bottom line

Most people that want to give themselves credibility on a topic that they may deserve none, start by telling everyone their credentials. “I used to be a Mac user and advocate… but now I’ve changed”, and they go on to tell you their conversion. This is a the same as saying “I used to be a sinner, smoker, jogger…” or whatever behavior they are about to criticize. This author was no different. Simon starts out this way, and then gives us a lecture about all the virtues of switching from Apple/Macs, without any of the reason or balance in why not to.

I don’t care about zealots history or false credibility, it is their present bias and insight that I care about. This person is a convert; and we know how zealous the converts can be. The author (Simon), has some business or part of his business in switching Mac users to Windows, or in the anti-Mac market. Now there’s an objective observer if ever I’ve seen one. He feels that switching to Dell saved him money; probably because he’s either in a segment where it has, or because he’s not looking at all the costs fairly. But then he goes on to tell us that we are all fools for disagreeing with him, without him knowing our needs or our business. Simon says, “Switch”. But what are his real complaints?

Apple has forced upgrades. And who doesn’t? Apple has limited models/choices. And who doesn’t? Steve is arrogant? Name a CEO who isn’t? Heck, name people who aren’t? They are called “self-image challenged” and don’t make very good leaders. In fact, look at writers that criticize CEO’s, or writers that criticize other writers if you want to see arrogant egomaniacs. Apple has questionable support. Compared to what? Dell? Microsoft? Gateway? Come on, rent a clue. There are certainly areas and ways that Apple is falling down, and other ways that they cream the competition. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be millions of return customers for Apple’s products. Apple’s are too expensive. Compared to what? If you want a machine with the features that Apple offers, then Apple is often very competitive. And you can’t get machines with the style, elegance, security, and so on, in the Windows world. Many people are willing to pay for that. To Simon, that’s too much. There is only one true path to him, and that is the one he’s taken. But customers vote with their wallets.

So in the end, you are left with a choice. Either you believe Simon as the one true visionary that has seen the light, and all of us are fools if we don’t follow him to the promised land — or you believe the tens of millions of satisfied customers, investors, and employees of Apple that to at least some degree, disagree with what Simon says. I know where I stand, and it isn’t with Simple Simon, who’s logic that went through the sieve even faster than the water in the nursery rhyme did.