Is Being Too Open with Products a Bad Thing?

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Scoble has a post about PR and blogging as a corporate citizen. One of the things I really like about Adobe is how open we are. A lot of our employees have blogs, but it’s also that we’re open with our products. Flex is open source, we’ve been talking about AIR for a LOONG time and we released bits for it very early on so that developers could dig in and play with it. We’ve gotten a lot of great press around AIR, so in this case it seems to have been good for us.

But Scoble brings up the fact that Apple is uber-secretive about their products and Steve Jobs manages to get an insane amount of good PR whenever he does something. Sure, part of that is the fact that the company is secretive, but it’s also because since Steve’s been back, he’s done a lot of good things. Apple is the kind of company that *can* be secretive because they’ve got a string of big wins behind them and you never know if their next product will be as game changing as the iPod.

I don’t think other companies have that luxury for the most part. And I’m glad. I like being able to be very open and get product feedback in the middle of the development cycles. I think it makes for a better product and generates a lot of excitement in the community. What do you think?

[tags]Corporate PR, Blogging[/tags]

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  • http://www.thecrumb.com Jim Priest

    I just don’t get Apple. Over priced, over hyped. I’d replace ‘secretive’ with paranoid (and that applies to Microsoft as well)…

    Open = good. How much better could the iPhone have been if they had sought out public opinion?

    AT&T = sucks
    No Flash/Java = sucks
    Overpriced = sucks
    No GPS = sucks

    I think Adobe’s recent actions on Labs, Air, CF8 etc have been great!

  • http://blog.teknision.com Tony MacDonell

    For the most part, I would say it is because the companies have radically different target audiences.

    Apple targets “Consumers” (sorry James but I had to use the word)

    and

    Adobe targets Contributors

    These are two very different types of targets, and demand a totally different approach publicly.

  • http://blog.ewherrmann.com ewH

    I like the Apple products that I have used so far, but as someone who is not a fanboy, I find their secrecy and cultism annoying to the point where I don’t want to buy their stuff. I am still thinking about getting a MacBook for my next purchase, but I am not sure. Why does MS get such a bad reputation when it seems that Apple is just as evil?

    Cheers,
    ewH

  • JulesLt

    I was going to say much the same as Tony. Adobe wants to build a development community for Flex/Flash/AIR so the NDA approach Apple use isn’t going to work (although they did have it for earlier Flex users). It’s interesting that Apple have developed a reputation for secrecy when they actually pre-announce more often than they surprise – the key thing they’ve learned since their mid-90s low is not to announce things and not deliver.

    Jim – you really think Apple didn’t do market research for the iPhone? We know Verizon wouldn’t bend to what Apple wanted, and in longer run of course it will be available on other networks, once the carriers stop thinking they can make money out of content and accept their place as gateways to the Internet – ie. as happened with telcos and ISPs. I can’t think of anyone who loves their carrier – they just suck less compared to each other.
    GPS – would have added yet more to price for very little added benefit – it can get a rough fix to a hundred metres or so from cell position which will be good enough for Google maps. Will obviously be added as price of GPS chips fall.

    Java – ditto. What percentage of consumer install Java apps on their phones? (Now if phones came with software a la iTunes that made it easy to choose, download, and install, that would maybe change. But again the carriers are obsessed with getting people to use their networks to download software, music, etc, rather than making it easy for us to manage our phones using devices better suited for doing so).

    Flash – agreed that’s a problem. Now I doubt Ryan can tell us if it’s coming or not but it is rumoured – but remember it’s up to Adobe to deliver it, and they don’t have Flash 9 on AMD (and took months to deliver Flash 9 for Intel Macs despite plenty of advance notice). There is a rumour on a site somewhere it’s will have access to the accelerometer, but I’ll believe it when I see it. But without Flash it’s not ‘the real Internet’ much as that may upset standarnistas.

    Over-priced – depends on what you place value on. For me, the little pieces of attention to detail are worth the 15% markup on comparable Windows machines. Actually, scratch that, Sony VAIO machines are roughly the same price. From a technical point of view I’d be amazed if anyone else could deliver an iPhone equivalent for less than 80% of Apple’s price. Expensive (too expensive a phone for me) – yes. But that’s a different word.

    However, I’d think anyone in the RIA space should ‘get’ the point about Apple – it’s about adding value through providing a richer user experience. ‘Presentation is the shop window’ as teachers always used to say about my scrawl.

  • http://www.levelofindustry.com Samuel Agesilas

    Ryan,

    I enjoyed this post very much! It made me think about a lot of different things. I think your right about Apple. They have a great recent ( -7 years or so ) of great products and big wins! But what Adobe is doing is great too because it is using the community to build the next big thing after Flash. I as well as many others in the community believe that the is AIR. But only time will tell. However I applaud Adobe’s efforts in being more open and engaged with the user community.

    Cheers,
    Sam

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    Hmm, all pretty good points. JulesLt, you were the inspiration for my iPhone post just a minute ago. As you say, anyone in the RIA space should instantly see the benefit of a rich experience. That’s what Apple excels at with hardware.

    I’d like to see Adobe continue to strive for that in software.

  • JulesLt

    Cheers Ryan. Just realised I meant ARM not AMD in the above.

    I think where Apple excel is not hardware (which is nice, but others equally so) but in focusing on the whole picture – i.e. not just selling an MP3 player, but also great software to manage it. There’s that whole story about them building a mock-up store in a warehouse too. The ‘experience’ is thought through from purchase (on-line or retail) through packaging to the actual product. Which does make some people think ‘emperors new clothes’ but it’s how you maintain a high profit margin.

    Which is all pretty irritating to those who think that the technically best product should win. Where quite often technically best means ‘most features’.

    Adobe does seem to be changing – Acrobat Reader no longer insists on giving you several hours of patent numbers when you open a PDF.

  • http://scissormonkey.wordpress.com Thomas

    Earlier this week, I wrote a post on blogging and the correct level of transparency.

    One of the problems that we have dealt with in the past at Microsoft is being too transparent – OK don’t spit your soda on the monitor like that, let me explain.

    Previously Microsoft bloggers have written about any idea that came to mind, and our customers have taken these ideas as the direction we might go in. When it turns out the post was just throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks.

    We found that we weren’t being transparent we were randomizing our partners and our customers.

    There needs to be the correct level of transparency. Give people enough information that they understand the direction you are going in, and possibly how you are going about it, but not throwing out so many ideas that you generate confusion.

    I am not saying that we have the correct level of transparency down, but this is what we strive for.

    I would say one difference between companies like Adobe and Microsoft versus Apple in how transparent they are with information is their partner system. I don’t think Apple really works on partner model – Apple is more focused on creating their own insular product line. If after the fact companies want to create additional items for Apple products they don’t mind. Microsoft and Adobe on the other hand have a strong partner system, that they work with, that need information and more transparency into how they are getting things done.

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