The Secret of Apple's Success

Apple is a unique company which doesn't stop to amaze consumers and even rivals with its 'way to be'. It is not only about the fact that it has been around for a while, it is also about the fact that it staid up among the best companies having a profile to envy.

Apple is the company that gave us three of the greatest technological innovations of the past 30 years. These are: Apple II, Macintosh and iPod with all the support, accessories and models.

Thus, while most high-tech companies focus on developing one or two sectors, Apple involves in several of them at once. Apple manufactures its own:

• hardware (iBooks and iMacs)
• operating system to run on hardware (Mac OS X)
• programs to run on its operating system (iTunes, iMovie, Safari Web browser, etc.)
• consumer-electronics devices to connect to (the rapidly multiplying iPod family)
• on-line service to provide content for its devices (iTunes Music Store)

Some say that even putting Microsoft, Dell and Sony together you would still miss something of the Apple's diversity. So, the key question is How Apple Does It?

Folk-belief would say: ''Try to do everything at once, and you won't do anything well enough'. Well, Apple brakes the rule. We even can say that Apple essentially operates its own closed techno-economy.

Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, has a lot to tell about how it works! "What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible.' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse."

This was the actual situation when Steve Jobs took up his present position in 1997. First to get through the above experience was the original iMac project. Jobs and Ive (head of design) came up with the idea of a candy-colored computer merged with a cathode-ray tube. Jobs recalls that when they took it to the engineers, the last came up with 38 reasons why it's impossible. It was Jobs CEO position that made him confident of the fact that this would work. So, he said, 'We're doing this!'. And they made it a hit!

The lesson to be drawn from what Apple does concerns collaboration and control. Apple employees call it deep collaboration or cross-pollination. The same product is worked on by all departments at once (design, hardware, software). Johnathan Ive considers – "The historical way of developing products just doesn't work when you're as ambitious as we are...When the challenges are that complex, you have to develop a product in a more collaborative, integrated way."

One of the secrets of Apple is the bottom line of the business – employees. All of them have a strong sense that they are the chosen ones! They are very dedicated to their work and take company's success as their personal.

Another secret is Steve Jobs himself! He is not just one of the greatest engineers and programmers, he is also a great innovator. He doesn't have an M.B.A, further more, he doesn't even have a college degree (he quited Reed College after one semester). The reality about Jobs is that he has an inborn sense of design, besides he has a ultra-sensible scent for hiring geniuses. Above all he can't just sit and watch the process of creation without putting a hand to it.

Jobs is the main reason why Apple makes its own hardware and software. Why? Because Jobs doesn't want to work with people he doesn't know and can't fire. "One company makes the software. The other makes the hardware ... It's not working. The innovation can't happen fast enough. The integration isn't seamless enough. No one takes responsibility for the user interface. It's a mess", Jobs says.

Jobs might be right and Apple has already won a moral and a technological victory. But taking the example of Microsoft we can see that Bill Gates focused on OS and didn't worry about hardware. He made hardware someone else's problem and he won the market quantitatively.

Though it might seam that Jobs doesn't care just about winning or losing, the experience with iPod proved that he won approach. "I think the definition of product has changed over the decades," says Tony Fadell, vice president of engineering in the iPod division, "The product now is the iTunes Music Store and iTunes and the iPod and the software that goes on the iPod."

Of course, there are plenty of other portable video players, but there is something special about iPod. It looks nice and is easy to use, and it works seamlessly with the support it gets from iTunes Music Store. As Jobs considers, it gives users a quick, legal and reasonably cheap way to buy video content, which is the approach Apple makes possible.

Video capability has changed everything about iPod. Video is the spice of contemporary gadget culture! Music is important too, but the scale is different. TV show, movie trailers, animated shorts, old syndicated shows, DVD-extra-style exclusives – in other words the entire television industry is top-rated drawing an audience of 30 million.

Has Jobs expected such turn of events? Probably he did, but not at such extent. Now it is already a matter of challenge for Apple as well as for its rivals.