Apple’s needless cult of secrecy

This is a very shallow argument. It’s not just about ‘surprise and delight’. It’s also about keeping new products under the wraps until the last moment. If it’s Apple who is controlling the narrative about the expectations for future products, they’ll be able to handle it better. However, if it’s someone else running away with Half-baked information every time, Apple’s suddenly a car company one moment, a failed car company the other, even before releasing a car!

There’s a lot of R&D that goes into the making of a product, If everyone was blabbing away information to the media, Apple’s internally failed ambitions wouldn’t remain ‘internal’ at all, they’d be for everyone to see, and Apple’d be answerable to their shareholders as to what exactly happened to their failed products. As for the public perception? People will find it hard to differentiate between vapour and actual products. It’s the uncertainty that’ll diminish the brand more than anything else.

Also the reasoning that all the stuff leaks anyway is wrong. At most, people get a casing, or a design document from the supply chain, there are ‘rumours’ about what the new iPhone or mac would have, but there aren’t clear answers. This is because people working on the product don’t talk about it at all! 

This year’s been a different ride all together. With virtually nothing leaking from the supply chain, Apple’s leak came from their own missteps. The first one, a genuine mistake of publishing the HomePod firmware, which had loads of code referring to the new iPhone. The second a more deliberate sharing of confidential data, which literally blew much of the surprises Apple had in store. Deliberate sharing of data isn’t fine by any account, and if the blogs were offering money to these people to leak the data? I’d say it’s wrong on the part of the blogs to do that too. 

These leaks aren’t difficult to plug. And keeping stuff secret is in the company’s best interests. So, ‘cult of secrecy’ ? Sure why not!