Comments for Jon Gruber's "Apple’s Secrecy" on www.daringfireball.net

Jon Gruber posted an interesting piece about the NY Times and Apple's secrecy. You can read it here: http://daringfireball.net/2009/06/apples_secrecy.

Mr. Gruber does not post comments on his blog. If he did, here's mine.

You seem to be connecting Apple's success with their penchant for secrecy with the following conclusion:

Yes, Apple is far more secretive than most companies, but they’re also far more successful. Measured by profit and revenue and growth, wouldn’t it make more sense to argue that most companies should act more like Apple, rather than the other way around?

I don't think it's possible to credit Apple's secrecy with their success. Don't get be wrong, I'm a big fan of Apple. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro. I'm listening to The Style Council on my iPhone. Until recently, I owned a large amount of Apple stock. It's a great company from top to bottom. Great products, great people.

But I do think that Apple's secrecy about Steve Jobs' health has not helped. It's created a huge amount of ambiguity about succession at Apple, especially with regard to their long-term product direction, which my gut tells me is where Steve Jobs adds the most value. Sure, he can be gone for six months and the company does not miss a beat. But without him, I doubt the company's ability to create that next great thing we all want in three years, or five years. I also doubt Apple's ability to stay focused and simple.

Here's a mini-example. The 13-inch MacBook Pro. Why did it start as a MacBook and then become a MacBook Pro? As a MacBook it not fit in with the rest of the line in look - plastic, colored bodies. It was more clearly a Pro in look and not in power, aluminum body. And then they switched it to a Pro. This is confusing. Something you'd see at Dell or Acer, not Apple. It revealed a lack of product discipline that's rare for Apple.

Without Steve Jobs, I would fear that after two-years or so, we'd start to see this lack of discipline that we see at other companies, too many products, confusing names and features.