Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

The other side of the story

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:7/19/2000; 1:20:50 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 7/18/2000
Msg #:18772 (In response to 18771)
Prev/Next:18771 / 18773

OK, just to show that I'm a reasonable person, let me argue this from an Apple point of view.

Our product cycles are a year long. (Just guessing.) From the time we have a spec, to the time the product is on the retailer's shelves, is one year. Now suppose the spec leaked out as soon as it was available at Apple internally, ie, one year before the product is in the stores.

Sales would stop, waiting for the new product. Once people know something new is coming, they freeze their hardware purchases. In the meantime, we still have to make payroll, keep the numbers going so our stock options are worth something (Silicon Valley is a brutal place for employers nowadays) so our employees don't jump ship, so we can ship the product.

So if we don't close all the holes, we'll never sell any product, or we'd never be able to develop new ones, which certainly would hurt our users.

So we're caught between a rock and a hard place. We don't want to look like bad guys, and we don't want to shut down publications because that makes us look bad with the creative people who are our users, but what else can we do?

PS: If you want to understand what I'm doing, check out the Trance thread from last weekend. Once it's clear that I have a pov, it's easy to jump into someone else's body through my imagination and see it from their pov. And I use some experience here, the distribution side of the business is one that few users understand, but it has a major effect on how products flow, which ones get created, where the money is. You need money to make a business work, one of the invevitable facts of life, it isn't *all* art, unfortunately. ";->"

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