I'd go further, and say that Apple is significantly worse than many other corporations in our industry, in terms of how they treat their people, how they treat their customers, and how they view the world and the ecosystem in which they operate. When Apple has power, they abuse it. When they don't have power, they fight tooth and nail to obtain it, while playing the underdog card.
And, there are corporations in our industry that are not "heartless...like all the others". If there weren't, we wouldn't have a higher standard to compare Apple to in order to see their many shortcomings; rarely are those better companies as successful as Apple (which is a great disappointment to me, as a believer in free markets), but many exist. There are, of course, many worse companies, as well. But, Apple certainly isn't a good one.
Apple was only about one thing Fulfill Steve Jobs's vision. Throughout history men who made others work for their dreams with a religious zeal and discipline always did good. Note: they did good, and not always the ones who worked for them.
That is why dictatorship looks so good from the outside, because you can see the results. But internally someone somewhere is living in most miserable conditions to make things happen. You will see this pattern in every authoritarian and dictatorial set up.
Those stories from his biography on sending the most hardworking and performing person on his team on vacation just to deny him bonus. Denying stocks to most early employees who deserved it. Doesn't reflect good on Steve Jobs's part.
AFAIK the story on the Apple IPO was that he didn't intervene for a good personal friend which was only working half time and so was not eligible for stock.
That is an assholish move! But it was also in a sense fair for the other full time working engineers.
Aside from that, the early Apple stories about Steve are showing that he not only was a dictator, but a clueless twenty-something kid. How to lead a company Jobs learned later at Next and Pixar. Not that he wasn't then also famously difficult, but he did manage to attract very good talents and have decade long working relationships with them.
> I'd go further, and say that Apple is significantly worse than many other corporations in our industry, in terms of how they treat their people, how they treat their customers, and how they view the world and the ecosystem in which they operate.
As an Apple customer, shareholder, and ex-employee, I'm curious: what facts do you have to back up that assertion?
Apple may not be the best employer in terms of benefits – most teams don't have break rooms full of free snacks, you actually need to pay for the on-site laundry service, salaries often aren't competitive with those of Facebook's and Google's – but I and many others found it to be a fantastic employer.
I believe customers have spoken w.r.t. how they feel about Apple's treatment. They're selling products like crazy, the Apple Stores are consistently lauded for fantastic retail and support experiences, and Apple Care's led or been near the top industry satisfaction ratings for over a decade.
Finally, regarding the world and ecosystem, Apple aggressively adopted product builds that are more recyclable or more environmentally friendly to produce. They were among the first to reduce the size of their packaging so they could use fewer planes and ships to move product, cutting down on fossil fuel usage and shipping costs. Heck, they've effectively eliminated software shipping impact by moving everyone to their App Stores.
Is Apple perfect? No. Are they "significantly worse"? I'd like to hear some facts that back that up... from what I know, they're often significantly better.
Also, genuinely curious: what do you hold up as an ideal corporation, and why?
I don't know what it's like to work at Apple, so I can't speak to whether Apple mistreats its US employees. I did visit Apple back in 1993 and its employees then were treated very well, but things may be much worse now. You know how it is. Just look how badly Pixar treated its employees under Jobs. (That was sarcasm by the way.)
We know from interviews and research that Apple treats its employees in China better than most of its rivals. And we know from customer satisfaction surveys, year after year, that Apple's customers seem to like the way Apple treats them -- at least compared to how rivals treat them.
When I had to provide credit card information to install FREE application from iTunes, and send copy of ID to Facebook to get my account unlocked (because of their obvious system-wide bug), all in one week, I gave up.
I'll finish these Facebook apps I am contracted to build, wrap up iOS apps also under contract, and stick it to the man.
I'm confirming that out of 3 iPhone users I've asked just now, 1 cannot download any apps since he doesn't have a credit card and the 'None' option is not present, and 2 other could only select 'None' AFTER they've provided the credit card information in the first place. I also belong in the second category.
Unfortunately I think Android is trying to follow in Apples footsteps. Anecdotally, after they upgraded the Market to Play (quite a few WTF experiences when that happened), they now ask for a lot more information (e.g. address) when updating credit card information. Also they made an unforgivable mistake for me in that the credit card entry on 4.0.3 was buggy - so I gave up and have stopped buying apps - I really have trouble trusting companies that make it hard for me to give them my money.
At least with Apple one can still get an iTunes card to purchase apps, without registering ones credit card. Especially important since an iPad sends your appleid in cleartext HTTP headers when connecting to the internet...
You don't have to provide credit card to create an iTunes account. There is a "no payment" option and Apps can/have to be bought then with gift certificates.
I personally encountered experience where no such option was provided. If you google around a bit, you might find I'm not the only one, and I kinda think that ain't a bug.
Also, the Facebook requiring me to send them copy of my ID might also not be accidental.
I used quite a time ago a secondary iTunes US account without credit card. And now at least in my (german) account I can also edit the payment option to "none". But perhaps this is a regional thing required by law or necessity here (very few people have credit cards because our banking system doesn't suck and money transfer is easy).
But I honestly don't know if you can change it on an existing US based account to "none". Like in the other reply I can do it in my german based iTunes account (Keine = None)
> I'd go further, and say that Apple is significantly worse than many other corporations in our industry, in terms of how they treat their people, how they treat their customers
If they treat their customers so badly, how come they consistently rate at or near the top in customer satisfaction surveys?
Or they just want broken stuff fixed. Twice I've had things fixed at the local Apple store with no questions asked, no BS script that they had to walk through, no blaming me. It was just 5 minutes of, "Yup that doesn't work correctly" followed by "Here's a new machine."
I dated someone who worked for Apple, and many friends have also passed that way during their careers. Likewise, many friends have worked for Google, facebook, SGI, Sun, Intel, IBM, HP, and many smaller tech companies; I've also done my fair share of contracting for tech companies, both big and small, over the past couple decades. I know what our industry looks like. Again, Apple isn't the worst, but it is very far from the best.
I'll also note that it pleases me a whole lot to know that better companies (like Google) can compete, and even win sometimes, against a cut-throat company like Apple. I wish more companies could pull off the Google model; HP was once among the best employers in the valley, but that hasn't been true in a couple decades.
I'm just saying that this little "inspirational note" is just more marketing from a company that excels at marketing and branding. They also excel at other things, too, but they're still merely making luxury consumer goods; they aren't curing cancer, or even making the world's information accessible in ways never seen before. If you want to change the world for the better, I don't think working at Apple is the way to do it.
That sounds terrible! If working for Apple really is that bad, I would expect a huge portion of their employees to quit, and soon. Especially the ones who are highly valued in the industry and could get another job right away -- those folks are gonna be streaming for the exits any day now!
Bridging on your comment, I can't even imagine how they treat their suppliers, vendors, business partners etc.
The other day I read something about this young Chinese lady who works on iPad's assembly line. She was petrified when some guy showed her the final outcome of her assembly line, a finished iPad. She had never seen one until that moment.
If you had studied a little bit about the history of business administration you might know about Elton Mayo's "Hawthorne case". Well, if you analyse the Chinese girl case according to Mayo's theories, the immediate conclusion you can make is that Apple is a very "dehumanized" company.
And, there are corporations in our industry that are not "heartless...like all the others". If there weren't, we wouldn't have a higher standard to compare Apple to in order to see their many shortcomings; rarely are those better companies as successful as Apple (which is a great disappointment to me, as a believer in free markets), but many exist. There are, of course, many worse companies, as well. But, Apple certainly isn't a good one.