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What Apple’s quiet failure can teach you about your business
- NicoJuicy 10y agoa seemingly rare defeat for a company that has done little-to-no wrong in the last decade (save for maybe the Apple Watch depending on how you look at it). --> Google Maps vs Apple Maps?
- oarsinsync 10y agoTook 3 years to turn that around > Apple Maps is now used three times as often as its “next leading competitor” on iPhone and iPad https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/ https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/
- adamors 10y agoIt's still inferior to Google Maps tho. It's not outright bad, but for directions/traffic Google Maps is still miles ahead (at least in random European countries).
- ghettoimp 10y agoShouldn't it be kilometers ahead in random European countries?
- neonhomer 10y agoI'd say that Google Maps is streets ahead of Apple Maps still. :P
- vacri 10y agoNot in the UK, should the RNG be so disposed.
- utspekulert 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_mile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_mile
- majewsky 10y agos/random European countries/everywhere except GB/
- tdkl 10y agoOf course, it's the default app opened on click that cannot be changed.
- neonhomer 10y agoThis! In iOS you can delete Apple Maps but it then just prompts you to re-download it when an app tries to open a map. It's worse than the old IE default browser.
- mikejb 10y agoThose numbers might be driven by the quality of Apple Maps, or by changes in iOS: it became less intuitive to use 'leading competitors' on the iPhone and iPad. At least I was unable to send my mom's iPhone to Google Maps when she clicks on an address I sent her - I have to send her a Google Maps link.
- cyberferret 10y agoI never actually open the maps app on my iPhone. I just ask Siri for directions, and I presume she uses the default Apple maps as the base. I'd suggest that the data is skewed because a lot of people would be doing the same thing. The evolution of the phone UI basically indicates that individual apps are fading as identifiable components. Modern bots and mashup interfaces just pull data from different app/sources and present an amalgamated view. I neither know, nor care whether Siri is pulling her route data from Google or Apple maps, or somewhere else.
- dijit 10y agoReasonably, for Europeans this helped them a lot because google maps enabled iOS could not search for businesses or restaurants outside of the USA. Even if navigation took a few iterations to catch up.
- arethuza 10y agoI use both Google, Bing, Apple maps and OpenStreetMap: - For general searching and desktop use I prefer Google - Bing and Apple have much more up to date "satellite" views than Google (for the areas I am interested in) - Apple maps have a spectacularly good 3d version of the city that I live (Edinburgh) in which I love looking at - Google 3D version had a huge error near to where I live - Bing has UK Ordnance Survey maps, which is brilliant for outdoor activities - OpenStreetMap is great for paths/cycle-paths in some areas Edit: For one area I've been looking at (in Fife) the Google Earth view is about 12 years old - which is actually quite handy as we are looking at buying a house there that was built ~10 years ago so it is interesting to be able to see what was there before the houses were built!
- astannard 10y agoI am not sure the watch is a failure yet but not the best start. I wrote a piece on how much the watch devalues which I find odd how high that figure is https://medium.com/@AndyStannard/apple-watch-depreciation-sobriety-d9c5f1443090#.5e67kegdm https://medium.com/@AndyStannard/apple-watch-depreciation-so...
- svarrall 10y agoI'm not sure it can be classed as a failure. Pivoted maybe, but failure? In what sense?
- paganel 10y agoIn the sense that they started out wanting to build a car and later on they decided not to build it anymore after having realized what it actually entails. I'd call that a failure, as in "failure to build a car which I wanted to build". Pivoting doesn't change anything, we all move on after our failures.
- taytus 10y agoHow can a company with literally mountains of cash plus the engineer power Apple has, fail to make a self driving car? I'm not saying at all that is something easy, but Apple is a beast in terms of resources. I confess that I don't get it.
- berntb 10y agoAfaik, Apple starts lots of development projects and a lot of them gets "Steved". If the new product isn't enough better than the competition or won't have enough profit margins... axe. (Point is, the project might have been doing well and following the plans -- but Apple might have found that the target market niche was too small. Or the margins might have been too low for Apple.)
- dizrupt 10y agoFailure is the path to success
- laurent123456 10y ago> Rather, it’s paring down its ambitions to focus on autonomous navigation and in-car entertainment — two things that make perfect sense for the market space as well as Apple’s existing expertise. Entertainment, yes, but autonomous navigation is not really within Apple's existing expertise. With so much competition in this area, including from Google which as way more experience, I wouldn't expect cars to run Apple's auto-navigation application (if they ever release one) any time soon.
- hkmurakami 10y agoNot sure why this is being called a failure when there was never an announcement about its efforts. How many skunks works projects were attempted and quietly folded in history?
- BillinghamJ 10y agoThey were quite public and arrogant about it
- redial 10y agoBased on the last earnings call, they still are.
- chiefalchemist 10y agoThe crux of Apple's big success was built on the back of the music industry. Obviously iPods gave birth to the iPhone. In any case, the fact is, Apple needed a desperate victim, if you will, and without that situation to boost it, it's commonness is showing through.
- fzzzy 10y agoHow is it obvious that the iPod gave birth to the iPhone? It is a completely different operating system with a completely different user interface.
- pilsetnieks 10y agoIf anything, the Mac gave birth to the [concept of] iPad, which gave birth to the iPhone, which in turn led to the real iPad.
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y agoThis is what happens when you're a design company masquerading as a tech company. Do they design beautiful products? Abso-freaking-lutely! Can they develop complex software/systems? The evidence strongly suggests a resounding, no! They struggle enormously at providing solid cloud services, their websites suck (particularly their developer portals), they can't write a functional USB stack, macOS has more bugs than ever, even iOS' stability seems to be going downhill. Don't get me wrong, they have top-notch product designers and UX designers. But engineering has been second fiddle since the iPod launched. Self-driving automobiles is entirely an engineering problem, design doesn't even come into it.
- brisance 10y agoCome on. Are you seriously suggesting that Apple is not a tech company? Have you seen their chip designs? Do you know of any company that ships in volume that has successfully migrated from two chip architectures which is still around today?
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y agoWhen you've got the cash Apple has, you can make (and they have made) some really nice acquisitions, and undoubtedly there are some pockets of real geniuses (pun intended) working under the Apple banner. However, those very engineers are cultural misfits at Apple. I do have to admit that Apple's complete lack of transparency makes it difficult to determine exactly how dire the technical skill shortage is at Apple. However, if you've ever tried to report a bug to Apple (a proper detailed bug report) the engineer who gets back to you will most likely be an arrogant latte loving hipster who is more interested in the latest trendy social sharing app than quality engineering. Don't expect an intelligent conversation!
- pjmlp 10y agoIf Steve Jobs hadn't returned to Apple, we would be talking about the Macs the same way we talk about Amiga and Atari nowadays. I clearly remember the not so good situation Apple was in around 1994, with Copland failing to impress.
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- tdkl 10y agoStill better "failure" then Googles "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" with its products (or even multiple similar existing at once - see messaging) that year per year slowly eroded the trust in the company.
- worldsayshi 10y ago"throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" - Is this really a bad thing? You have to try things in the real world to get anywhere. Are there any companies that can see into the future to see what works?
- mcphage 10y ago> "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" - Is this really a bad thing? If you're one of the people who pay real money for a product that doesn't stick, yes.
- majewsky 10y agoBut that can always happen to any product.
- mcphage 10y agoAbsolutely. So when I'm looking at a product, one of the things I ask myself is, "does this company have a history of releasing immature products, or dropping support for their products quickly?" Obviously it can't be foolproof, but if either of those is a company's general MO, then it's more likely to happen to a new product of theirs, than a company which rarely does that.
- skywhopper 10y ago"given that computers are much better drivers than humans" I can't tell if the author agrees with this premise or not. Clearly they are not better drivers than humans or there would already be fully autonomous cars on the road.
- redial 10y agoI don't call this events failures, I call them tries. And many, many tries are required to learn and create a single success. But maybe that is why I'm no analyst.
- hasenj 10y agoI can't help but see this as a post hoc rationalization. When Steve Jobs was at its helm, did Apple have failures that it needed to rebrand as "tries"?
- pasta 10y agoI think you overestimate Steve Jobs. What goes up must come done. It's very normal for a growing company to see a period of loss. Even invincible empires died as history tells. Of course Steve Jobs created a big company. But it doesn't mean Apple would never fail if he was still here.
- redial 10y agoDon't get me wrong, there are failures, Ping, or MobileMe being some examples, but I think that is the result of not trying (and learning) enough. For example, it is said when designing the iPhone they tested (tried) two different operating systems, one based on OS X and the other one based on Linux. Even the hardware itself was first started as an iPad like device and was later decided to shelve the original project and do the iPhone instead. When you try an idea you learn, and you might even learn that it is a bad idea. I don't think of that as failure, the only failure is to not use what you learned. I'd be worried if they, despite the knowledge gained and to not be thought of as a failure by pundits, decided to be courageous and go to market anyway.
- pilsetnieks 10y agoThe article refers to the secret car project that was never launched. It is fairly likely that in Jobs' time there were a fair amount of cancelled or downscaled projects as well but we just haven't heard of them. For example, the TV comes to mind - there were a lot of rumors about it at the time, and it was mentioned in his biography - and nothing came of it.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoApple's quiet failure has more to do with forgetting key values than the fact that the car market is incredibly difficult. (Of course it is, but that's not even the main issue.) Jobs era Apple had a clear focus on user benefits. They were part imaginary - look and feel, styling, status - but part real, in the sense that when you bought an Apple product you were getting a specific set of experiences and possibilities which you probably felt were exciting, novel, and cool. Cook era Apple has lost that. Apple Maps was me-too, the hardware is me-too - competing with the old Apple against itself - and the new projects don't have the old vision. What's the novel, exciting benefit of Watch? Er... Apple has missed some important markets, including home automation (currently a mix of competing products that barely work together, and often barely work at all), the indie content creation market (which it half-owned with podcasting, but then gave away to YouTube), and social networking. But the biggest difference is the shift from an Apple that tried to make products to empower and delight people, including creators, to an Apple that encourages passive consumption of its products/objects/services, because "we make stuff and market it to you, and you buy it." It's a lot easier to do the latter than the former. It looks like a subtle shift but it's really a complete change in direction. And it has made Apple a much less interesting company.
- aleem 10y ago> I would rather commit seppuku than fail -- Elon Musk on failure Project Titan is not a failure but it has suffered major setbacks, the credit or blame for which lies with Tim Cook. It takes unrelenting passion and fanaticism to wield the fortunes in your favour. Jobs had this and Musk has it too. If project Titan is not about building a car then it's just about components. Apple has historically owned the vertical and there is little exciting about being a component supplier. It's a losing bid. Google does mapping better than Apple. It does voice recognition and AI better than Apple. The car manufacturers desire a steely grip on their UX and design so Apple's strengths there won't come into play either. Ive's own ambitions seem to indicate the poor state of cars: > “There are some shocking cars on the road,” Ive said. “One person’s car is another person’s scenery.” To his right was a silver sedan with a jutting lower lip. Ive said, quietly, “For example.” As the disgraced car fell behind, I asked Ive to critique its design: “It is baffling, isn’t it? It’s just nothing, isn’t it? It’s just insipid.” He declined to name the model, muttering, “I don’t know, I don’t want to offend.” (Toyota Echo.) [1] I for one would have loved to see an Apple Car and disruption of the auto industry. Am hoping Apple hasn't conceded on the bigger vision but it does seem bleak at the moment. [1]: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come