Steve jobs will announce some new product while I sleep tonight. (My guess is it will have to do with computers.) They make a big deal of making the announcement of new product a Big Deal. Great secrecy is involved.
I have only seen one leak, as opposed to many right-on guesses.
How the heck can they keep a piece of hardware secret? Consider that at today’s event they will have (I guess) fifty copies of the new toy available for journalists. They will have a large number of posters and other promotional junk ready to go on display at Apple stores all over the world. Shipments will begin more or less at once. The new gadget has already been in production for weeks.
How can they keep it such a secret? The number of people who have signed non-disclosure agreements must be huge. You would think (and you would be wrong) at least some of those people would have leaked a photo or something. How about printing shops and their ruined copies? How about suppliers of parts?
It seems to work pretty darn well, but that seems counterintuitive as heck. How do they do it?
Apple’s engineers sign non-disclosure agreements, and they’re pretty good about keeping information compartmentalized within Apple itself.
The trade mags and reporters also sign agreements about when they will be allowed to run the announcements, and risk losing their invitations to the big events if they disobey.
Apple also engages in misinformation campaigns. Sometimes, they will expose a suspect employee to a well-crafted lie about an upcoming product, then see if said lie appears on the rumor sites like Apple Insider. If it does, that employee gets shown the door.
-The large i-Pod is now up to 80 gigs
-The Nano is even thinner and runs up to 24 hours on a charge
-The Shuffle is even smaller
I am guessing their strategy is to make the devices so small that we’ll keep losing them behind the sofa cushions and have to buy replacements every few months.
Actually, the rumor have been predicting this for almost two years now, even referring to it as the “true video iPod”. Along with the Apple cell phone, Apple PDA, Apple Tablet Computer, running Windows apps directly in Mac OS X, and a slew of other things, some of which will probably someday come to pass.
But the rumor sites are almost universally wrong when it comes to predicting these things. You can’t say “there will be a wide screen iPod next week” and then claim credit for success when one appears three years later. And the very real problem (as was demonstrated today), is that the rumors almost always make the REAL announcements look weak.
Apple’s stock drops at all of these announcements when they fail to announce the Star-Trek-Style replicator or whatever it is this week that the rumor sites predict. Apple announced some good (if evolutionary) products today, and were basically punished for not announcing the non-products that the rumor sites effectively invented out of whole cloth.
So maybe the better question isn’t “How does Apple keep a secret,” but “Why does Apple keep secrets?” This hasn’t worked out for them recently, which might be why they pre-announced the iTV – to keep speculation down so it wouldn’t disappoint.
What benefit is it to the employee/supplier/printer to leak this information? A bunch of nobodys on the internet can know the secret you know, a week before it becomes public. Big deal. (sarcastic)
What risks are involved in leaking information Apple wants to keep secret? Loss of job, loss of contract, loss of professional reputation, possible lawsuit. Big deal. (serious)
Every company that manufactures anything has announcements of their new products, without widespread leaking of what it is beforehand. Hell, in my own worker-bee job, I know when new things are being developed, new services, new products, price points, price changes, the whole thing. All they do is put “[company name] CONFIDENTIAL” on the top of the memos and files. Most of us are professionals who would rather keep our jobs than leak information to people we don’t know.
There are the occasional projects where management will ask for a particular set of information, without elaborating on the purpose. I had one of those where a piece of the business was being sold off. THAT is information people really want, and will pay money for, and lots of money is riding on it staying secret until it’s announced. Those projects are kept very close to the vest, the number of people involved is miniscule in comparison to a typical new product announcement.
I work for Sony and have been involved in PlayStation 3 development for the last few years. Security on the PS3 was very tight, particularly in the beginning. Developers who had access to the machine had to follow special procedures – the boxes had to be kept in locked rooms with key-card access to a limited number of need-to-know employees. It was made very clear that leaking ANY information about the new system was a firing offense.
I imagine Apple did something similar: Limit access to a smaller number of trusted employees. Make it clear that leaking anything will get you fired. Use only trusted vendors who have signed NDAs. Make it clear that you will sue them out of business if they leak anything.
Apple: Hey buddy, can you keep a secret?
Guy: Yes.
Apple: Ok. whispers in ear pstpstpst psst pst
Apple: Hey buddy, can YOU keep a secret?
Guy 2: Ummm,. Not really.
Apple: Nice weather we’re having yeah?
There are many benefits to keeping product releases a secret. A few examples:
[ul][li]The hype and rumor is good advertising. Building up to a big event leads to heightened excitement even if the actual release isn’t that exciting.[/li][li]You can avoid the problem of having products be obsolete before they’re sold. The vast majority of Apple customers don’t read the Apple rumor sites. Three days ago, if they wanted an iPod, they’d just go buy one (at full price). Imagine if Apple publically announced the updates a month ago, people will wait. But, since there isn’t a big build up, they won’t necessarily go buy them right at release, either. The iTV could safely be announced because it doesn’t compete with any of Apple’s current products.[/li][*]They keep their competitors in the dark. At least for the iPod and iTunes, Apple is trying to create a unique product experience that others can’t catch. No reason to give them extra lead time.[/ul]
[QUOTE=iamthewalrus(:3=]
[li]You can avoid the problem of having products be obsolete before they’re sold. The vast majority of Apple customers don’t read the Apple rumor sites. Three days ago, if they wanted an iPod, they’d just go buy one (at full price). Imagine if Apple publically announced the updates a month ago, people will wait.[/li][/QUOTE]
Yup. Remember what happened to Osborne Computer?
The first Osborne computer was pretty successful, and the company went to work developing the Osborne II. It was to be a huge improvement on the original Osborne. But they made the mistake of announcing it way too soon. People who might have purchased an Osborne I decided to wait for the Osborne II. The company’s revenue stream promptly dried up, and they had no money to contined development of the new model. They went under.
I work for AppleCare tech support, and we hear about new products the same way you do - rumor sites and announcements the day-of. So, yes, firsthand, the information is highly compartmentalized. Kind of scary sometimes when we end up supporting a product we haven’t been trained on yet!
Another anecdote: I was picked to support the iTunes Music Store (now just the iTunes Store) when it first launched. They got us in a room and told us we’d be supporting a new product, but they couldn’t tell us what it was. We had to come into a special meeting on Sunday afternoon behind closed doors where we got to see the store, play with it, etc. Then on Monday we trained in the email support system, and Tuesday it was announced. Apparently the AppleCare folks had to pull some strings even to show it to us two days before it was announced! It’s the dang CIA around here.
Were they punished for the evolutionary products or because the iTunes movie download wasn’t as extensive as hoped? Either way your point stands, but I got the feeling that people were pretty hyped with the “Its Showtime” lead-up and disappointed with the price and selection.
Apple stock didn’t drop after these announcements! I don’t think either is a long-term problem. The movie store will gradually get bigger (heck, the iTunes store has gone from 200,000 songs at launch to 3.5 million songs). And the improvements to both the shuffle and the nano are quite good - it’s just the video that didn’t get a huge improvement (but, eventually, will).
