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Apple Failure Modes

Medium2021-03-25

Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually ...

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Ashaliphant
·2021-03-25
Buyyy
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- Kayabunz:
  Yes buy!!
  2021-03-26
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- Ashaliphant:
  [财迷]
  2021-03-26
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Tedam
·2021-03-25
Please comment, thanks!
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- 阿汉:
  [微笑] [微笑] [微笑]
  2021-03-26
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Jiayu97
·2021-03-25
Apple stop falling
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JJQ
·2021-03-25
Apple 🍎! 💪Please like and comment! Thank you!
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- Tedam:
  Please comment back, thanks!
  2021-03-25
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- JJQ:
  Thank you!
  2021-03-26
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ValAly
·2021-03-25
Buy the dip..
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- ValAly:
  Comment and like plS!
  2021-03-25
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- Jiayu97:
  When is it gonna stop dipping thEn
  2021-03-25
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- Big__Boss:
  response my comment pls
  2021-03-25
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Tzewei94
·2021-03-25
Please like and comments
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- aliciatng:
  comment
  2021-03-25
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HOTBE
·2021-03-25
Not really!
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IcySilver
·2021-03-25
Well written! Good to learn $Microsoft(MSFT)$avoided big failure. Now one wonders if $Apple(AAPL)$can avoid similar big failure.Frankly, it really needs to up the game and join in the next wave
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Arch_Mints_
·2021-03-25
Are you kidding??
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Dankel
·2021-03-25
There is still a chance
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- jeff123:
  how?
  2021-03-25
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Retxed183
·2021-03-25
For mission
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- Retxed183:
  Mission
  2021-03-25
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Lty1098
·2021-03-25
Please like n comment
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- dannynggg:
  hi
  2021-03-25
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wywy
·2021-03-25
pls like. thanks
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- YOOGIN:
  Sure. Please reSpond to my commenrs and Like!
  2021-03-25
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- wywy:
  good stuff
  2021-03-25
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- Lty1098:
  Please like n comment
  2021-03-25
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chongyeetan
·2021-03-25
really
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- chongyeetan:
  really?
  2021-03-25
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xinda
·2021-03-25
Oh man
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- xinda:
  Hmm
  2021-03-25
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Horngryz
·2021-03-25
APPL
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- Chriz:
  [强]
  2021-03-25
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vincentlaubc
·2021-03-25
Please like and comment thanks!
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- Chriz:
  [强]
  2021-03-25
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- Sallyoo:
  Like and comment
  2021-03-25
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- Chriz回复Sallyoo:
  ok
  2021-03-25
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From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually ...\n\n<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">网页链接</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":"AAPL","symbol_name":"苹果","start_time":0,"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","article_id":"1139908626","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":[],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"columns":[],"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"lsy1616663746307","name":"Medium"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"mondaynote.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"translate_title":"苹果失效模式","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9},"content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","kind":"news","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":true,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":false,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"isVideo":false,"video":null,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":0,"need_auth":false,"need_login_tip":false,"code":"91000000","status":"200"},"commentList":[{"id":358139172,"gmtCreate":1616671228096,"gmtModify":1631891867081,"author":{"id":"3578039715565156","authorId":"3578039715565156","name":"Ashaliphant","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a31fa041fdf8434c80ba7a87f80d7d28","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3578039715565156","authorIdStr":"3578039715565156"},"htmlText":"Buyyy","listText":"Buyyy","text":"Buyyy","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358139172","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3891843,"gmtCreate":1616763510700,"gmtModify":1635748752957,"authorId":3578558472894517,"author":{"id":3578558472894517,"idStr":"3578558472894517","authorId":3578558472894517,"name":"Kayabunz","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f55b83d8dfc7c9f14a1d8b86e9727914","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358139172,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Yes buy!!","text":"Yes buy!!","html":"Yes buy!!"},{"id":3891855,"gmtCreate":1616763563999,"gmtModify":1635748752478,"authorId":3578039715565156,"author":{"id":3578039715565156,"idStr":"3578039715565156","authorId":3578039715565156,"name":"Ashaliphant","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a31fa041fdf8434c80ba7a87f80d7d28","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358139172,"type":1,"supId":3891843,"prevId":0,"content":"[财迷]","text":"[财迷]","html":"[财迷]"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358130809,"gmtCreate":1616671160401,"gmtModify":1634524646646,"author":{"id":"3574663138666653","authorId":"3574663138666653","name":"Tedam","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b03558df0abaa80f9e6b141bb1e3d38e","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3574663138666653","authorIdStr":"3574663138666653"},"htmlText":"Please comment, thanks!","listText":"Please comment, thanks!","text":"Please comment, thanks!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358130809","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3883955,"gmtCreate":1616690122521,"gmtModify":1635749221587,"authorId":3563934075749379,"author":{"id":3563934075749379,"idStr":"3563934075749379","authorId":3563934075749379,"name":"阿汉","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1d5e5a6a13a00b0d3210d8a99e4f2e73","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358130809,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"[微笑] [微笑] [微笑]","text":"[微笑] [微笑] [微笑]","html":"[微笑] [微笑] [微笑]"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358101886,"gmtCreate":1616669195945,"gmtModify":1634524653946,"author":{"id":"3573643362626678","authorId":"3573643362626678","name":"Jiayu97","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9bddf909e289ba70311ce86f4de36637","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3573643362626678","authorIdStr":"3573643362626678"},"htmlText":"Apple stop falling","listText":"Apple stop falling","text":"Apple stop falling","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358101886","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358103363,"gmtCreate":1616669047152,"gmtModify":1634524654649,"author":{"id":"3571627110799155","authorId":"3571627110799155","name":"JJQ","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a1583dfc728890d33cf4ad0811d5ce30","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[{"categoryType":1104,"badgeId":"99a38ff64bfd44f891fd016771fc8f64-1","name":"超级披露者","description":"在交易分享中开启超级披露","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/70e97d213ed3e4f4820224f1366d402f","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/802f4014829adb4e63332fc230b97e42","isScarce":1,"plateColors":{"bgColor":{"dark":"#2f2a1f","tint":"#fcf6e5"},"fontColor":{"dark":"#dea95e","tint":"#885600"}},"effectEnabled":0,"redirectLinkEnabled":1,"redirectLinkType":1,"redirectLink":"https://www.itigerup.com/activity/forapp/star-investor","redirectLinkValidityFrom":1776816000000,"redirectLinkValidityTo":2156198400000,"sortingWeight":0,"wearable":1}],"idStr":"3571627110799155","authorIdStr":"3571627110799155"},"htmlText":"Apple 🍎! 💪Please like and comment! Thank you!&nbsp;","listText":"Apple 🍎! 💪Please like and comment! Thank you!&nbsp;","text":"Apple 🍎! 💪Please like and comment! Thank you!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358103363","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3880590,"gmtCreate":1616671182766,"gmtModify":1635749372319,"authorId":3574663138666653,"author":{"id":3574663138666653,"idStr":"3574663138666653","authorId":3574663138666653,"name":"Tedam","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b03558df0abaa80f9e6b141bb1e3d38e","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358103363,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Please comment back, thanks!","text":"Please comment back, thanks!","html":"Please comment back, thanks!"},{"id":3889090,"gmtCreate":1616744195702,"gmtModify":1635748884486,"authorId":3571627110799155,"author":{"id":3571627110799155,"idStr":"3571627110799155","authorId":3571627110799155,"name":"JJQ","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a1583dfc728890d33cf4ad0811d5ce30","vip":1,"currentWearingBadge":{"badgeId":"99a38ff64bfd44f891fd016771fc8f64-1","templateUuid":"99a38ff64bfd44f891fd016771fc8f64","name":"超级披露者","description":"在交易分享中开启超级披露","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/802f4014829adb4e63332fc230b97e42","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/70e97d213ed3e4f4820224f1366d402f","redirectLinkEnabled":1,"redirectLinkType":1,"redirectLink":"https://www.itigerup.com/activity/forapp/star-investor","redirectLinkValidityFrom":1776816000000,"redirectLinkValidityTo":2156198400000,"hasAllocated":1,"isWearing":1,"stampPosition":0,"hasStamp":0,"allocationCount":1,"allocatedDate":"2026.04.23","individualDisplayEnabled":0,"individualDisplaySort":0,"categoryType":1104,"isScarce":1,"effectEnabled":0,"wearingSort":1},"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[{"categoryType":1104,"badgeId":"99a38ff64bfd44f891fd016771fc8f64-1","name":"超级披露者","description":"在交易分享中开启超级披露","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/70e97d213ed3e4f4820224f1366d402f","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/802f4014829adb4e63332fc230b97e42","isScarce":1,"plateColors":{"bgColor":{"dark":"#2f2a1f","tint":"#fcf6e5"},"fontColor":{"dark":"#dea95e","tint":"#885600"}},"effectEnabled":0,"redirectLinkEnabled":1,"redirectLinkType":1,"redirectLink":"https://www.itigerup.com/activity/forapp/star-investor","redirectLinkValidityFrom":1776816000000,"redirectLinkValidityTo":2156198400000,"sortingWeight":0,"wearable":1}]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358103363,"type":1,"supId":3880590,"prevId":0,"content":"Thank you!","text":"Thank you!","html":"Thank you!"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358100880,"gmtCreate":1616668747940,"gmtModify":1634524655247,"author":{"id":"3562707747643111","authorId":"3562707747643111","name":"ValAly","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9d97b7d80605b322b36bcb7e5b0dff4f","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3562707747643111","authorIdStr":"3562707747643111"},"htmlText":"Buy the dip..&nbsp;","listText":"Buy the dip..&nbsp;","text":"Buy the dip..","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":3,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358100880","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3880347,"gmtCreate":1616668780389,"gmtModify":1635749386004,"authorId":3562707747643111,"author":{"id":3562707747643111,"idStr":"3562707747643111","authorId":3562707747643111,"name":"ValAly","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9d97b7d80605b322b36bcb7e5b0dff4f","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358100880,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Comment and like plS! ","text":"Comment and like plS! ","html":"Comment and like plS! "},{"id":3880384,"gmtCreate":1616669229174,"gmtModify":1635749383685,"authorId":3573643362626678,"author":{"id":3573643362626678,"idStr":"3573643362626678","authorId":3573643362626678,"name":"Jiayu97","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9bddf909e289ba70311ce86f4de36637","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358100880,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"When is it gonna stop dipping thEn","text":"When is it gonna stop dipping thEn","html":"When is it gonna stop dipping thEn"},{"id":3880407,"gmtCreate":1616669496428,"gmtModify":1635749382252,"authorId":3570517865216539,"author":{"id":3570517865216539,"idStr":"3570517865216539","authorId":3570517865216539,"name":"Big__Boss","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2c36c2fe68f671064d7d1fd9b7268165","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358100880,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"response my comment pls","text":"response my comment pls","html":"response my comment pls"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358371702,"gmtCreate":1616667948106,"gmtModify":1634524658174,"author":{"id":"3572923042290830","authorId":"3572923042290830","name":"Tzewei94","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f6adb684d3ea173ba323c27f9954240d","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3572923042290830","authorIdStr":"3572923042290830"},"htmlText":"Please like and comments","listText":"Please like and comments","text":"Please like and comments","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358371702","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3880305,"gmtCreate":1616668369352,"gmtModify":1635749389177,"authorId":3572214398550610,"author":{"id":3572214398550610,"idStr":"3572214398550610","authorId":3572214398550610,"name":"aliciatng","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c4b23ee891a1061c7907495a9c7da890","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358371702,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"comment","text":"comment","html":"comment"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358370014,"gmtCreate":1616667508938,"gmtModify":1634524660199,"author":{"id":"3576325295778787","authorId":"3576325295778787","name":"HOTBE","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4f535d0d25c5b9833a0f75cd652fbbcd","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3576325295778787","authorIdStr":"3576325295778787"},"htmlText":"Not really!","listText":"Not really!","text":"Not really!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358370014","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358344446,"gmtCreate":1616667308785,"gmtModify":1634524660683,"author":{"id":"3574577404599862","authorId":"3574577404599862","name":"IcySilver","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/484d3b69652c2ca3d6cd65bc1007a60b","vip":2,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3574577404599862","authorIdStr":"3574577404599862"},"htmlText":"Well written! Good to learn <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/MSFT\">$Microsoft(MSFT)$</a>avoided big failure. Now one wonders if <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AAPL\">$Apple(AAPL)$</a>can avoid similar big failure.Frankly, it really needs to up the game and join in the next wave&nbsp;","listText":"Well written! Good to learn <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/MSFT\">$Microsoft(MSFT)$</a>avoided big failure. Now one wonders if <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AAPL\">$Apple(AAPL)$</a>can avoid similar big failure.Frankly, it really needs to up the game and join in the next wave&nbsp;","text":"Well written! Good to learn $Microsoft(MSFT)$avoided big failure. Now one wonders if $Apple(AAPL)$can avoid similar big failure.Frankly, it really needs to up the game and join in the next wave","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358344446","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358354052,"gmtCreate":1616666142576,"gmtModify":1634524665708,"author":{"id":"3576121666701741","authorId":"3576121666701741","name":"Arch_Mints_","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c24a88acc5f19ddae6f47bbaa50a5344","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3576121666701741","authorIdStr":"3576121666701741"},"htmlText":"Are you kidding??","listText":"Are you kidding??","text":"Are you kidding??","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358354052","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358355271,"gmtCreate":1616666104593,"gmtModify":1634524666069,"author":{"id":"3573623220650432","authorId":"3573623220650432","name":"Dankel","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/084a34a7e85f0f077a0253b0ee1a1dbc","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3573623220650432","authorIdStr":"3573623220650432"},"htmlText":"There is still a chance","listText":"There is still a chance","text":"There is still a chance","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358355271","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3880228,"gmtCreate":1616667632659,"gmtModify":1635749394156,"authorId":3578111079453218,"author":{"id":3578111079453218,"idStr":"3578111079453218","authorId":3578111079453218,"name":"jeff123","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d2c71145c4a9a4565a59fc5476086738","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358355271,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"how?","text":"how?","html":"how?"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358352997,"gmtCreate":1616665960119,"gmtModify":1634524666906,"author":{"id":"3571060865958359","authorId":"3571060865958359","name":"Retxed183","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c86091eb56187447cd7d41aabe57cbeb","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3571060865958359","authorIdStr":"3571060865958359"},"htmlText":"For mission","listText":"For mission","text":"For mission","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358352997","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3880028,"gmtCreate":1616666024607,"gmtModify":1635749405707,"authorId":3571060865958359,"author":{"id":3571060865958359,"idStr":"3571060865958359","authorId":3571060865958359,"name":"Retxed183","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c86091eb56187447cd7d41aabe57cbeb","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358352997,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Mission","text":"Mission","html":"Mission"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358358595,"gmtCreate":1616665839717,"gmtModify":1634524668203,"author":{"id":"3573201360768736","authorId":"3573201360768736","name":"Lty1098","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0123641e5b1e8993162711702dcb0f22","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3573201360768736","authorIdStr":"3573201360768736"},"htmlText":"Please like n comment","listText":"Please like n comment","text":"Please like n comment","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358358595","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3880235,"gmtCreate":1616667702018,"gmtModify":1635749393540,"authorId":3574589862407814,"author":{"id":3574589862407814,"idStr":"3574589862407814","authorId":3574589862407814,"name":"dannynggg","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358358595,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"hi","text":"hi","html":"hi"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358351835,"gmtCreate":1616665644327,"gmtModify":1634524669002,"author":{"id":"3566982670449095","authorId":"3566982670449095","name":"wywy","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/76ed86374fc7b16c12094c45ea30787c","vip":2,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3566982670449095","authorIdStr":"3566982670449095"},"htmlText":"pls like. thanks","listText":"pls like. thanks","text":"pls like. thanks","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":3,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358351835","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3879995,"gmtCreate":1616665710077,"gmtModify":1635749407784,"authorId":3558365337828428,"author":{"id":3558365337828428,"idStr":"3558365337828428","authorId":3558365337828428,"name":"YOOGIN","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4fc4ff7b47cdfe259e0e84eb3b969746","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358351835,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Sure. Please reSpond to my commenrs and Like!","text":"Sure. Please reSpond to my commenrs and Like!","html":"Sure. Please reSpond to my commenrs and Like!"},{"id":3880001,"gmtCreate":1616665782066,"gmtModify":1635749407418,"authorId":3566982670449095,"author":{"id":3566982670449095,"idStr":"3566982670449095","authorId":3566982670449095,"name":"wywy","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/76ed86374fc7b16c12094c45ea30787c","vip":2,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358351835,"type":1,"supId":3879995,"prevId":0,"content":"good stuff","text":"good stuff","html":"good stuff"},{"id":3880007,"gmtCreate":1616665853060,"gmtModify":1635749406807,"authorId":3573201360768736,"author":{"id":3573201360768736,"idStr":"3573201360768736","authorId":3573201360768736,"name":"Lty1098","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0123641e5b1e8993162711702dcb0f22","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358351835,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Please like n comment","text":"Please like n comment","html":"Please like n comment"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358326810,"gmtCreate":1616664729030,"gmtModify":1634524672191,"author":{"id":"3573519539005968","authorId":"3573519539005968","name":"chongyeetan","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/58f6eb6730af7768ad82093944f2351a","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3573519539005968","authorIdStr":"3573519539005968"},"htmlText":"really","listText":"really","text":"really","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358326810","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3879906,"gmtCreate":1616664741488,"gmtModify":1635749410444,"authorId":3573519539005968,"author":{"id":3573519539005968,"idStr":"3573519539005968","authorId":3573519539005968,"name":"chongyeetan","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/58f6eb6730af7768ad82093944f2351a","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358326810,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"really?","text":"really?","html":"really?"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358323772,"gmtCreate":1616664529896,"gmtModify":1634524672779,"author":{"id":"3568766270669985","authorId":"3568766270669985","name":"xinda","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2760aaaf4f8e82555fbca3c14fa7d8c7","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3568766270669985","authorIdStr":"3568766270669985"},"htmlText":"Oh man","listText":"Oh man","text":"Oh man","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358323772","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3879887,"gmtCreate":1616664570091,"gmtModify":1635749411642,"authorId":3568766270669985,"author":{"id":3568766270669985,"idStr":"3568766270669985","authorId":3568766270669985,"name":"xinda","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2760aaaf4f8e82555fbca3c14fa7d8c7","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358323772,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Hmm","text":"Hmm","html":"Hmm"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358367482,"gmtCreate":1616664291846,"gmtModify":1634524675022,"author":{"id":"3569807654789153","authorId":"3569807654789153","name":"Horngryz","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c97e02620d57cf3c3449462d356cd6c0","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3569807654789153","authorIdStr":"3569807654789153"},"htmlText":"APPL&nbsp;","listText":"APPL&nbsp;","text":"APPL","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358367482","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3879860,"gmtCreate":1616664358437,"gmtModify":1635749413937,"authorId":3561335246727315,"author":{"id":3561335246727315,"idStr":"3561335246727315","authorId":3561335246727315,"name":"Chriz","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8c393b32112334e204b0590fb83bbc7d","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358367482,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"[强]","text":"[强]","html":"[强]"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":358367015,"gmtCreate":1616664176937,"gmtModify":1634524675142,"author":{"id":"3574048205972490","authorId":"3574048205972490","name":"vincentlaubc","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/527738d1afb729d071d6d5a4b247954f","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"wearingBadges":[],"idStr":"3574048205972490","authorIdStr":"3574048205972490"},"htmlText":"Please like and comment thanks!","listText":"Please like and comment thanks!","text":"Please like and comment thanks!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":6,"commentSize":3,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/358367015","repostId":1139908626,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1139908626","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1616663752,"share":"https://www.laohunote.com/m/news/1139908626?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-25 17:15","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1139908626","media":"Medium","summary":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more…Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows?Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in ","content":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>","source":"lsy1616663746307","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Failure Modes<blockquote>苹果失效模式</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nMedium2021-03-25 17:15\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nApple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?<blockquote>苹果避免了困扰许多科技巨头的失败类型。从我深爱的惠普和我们曾经害怕的IBM，到Palm、诺基亚、黑莓等等……苹果最终会遵循类似的轨迹，要么消失，要么退入阴影吗？或者，蒂姆-库克能否在乔布斯去世近十年后继续保持乔布斯苹果 2.0 奇迹？</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/028afa8092cf5134580f1cb4b8bd6596\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"590\"><blockquote></blockquote> The Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.<blockquote>周一的笔记已经不定期地中断了，因为我正在写一本记录我在科技界流浪汉半个世纪的书。虽然我只在苹果呆了十年，但地心引力发挥了它的吸引力，这本书有时感觉是以那家让我实现两个梦想的公司为中心的：来到美国，领导一个产品工程组织。</blockquote> Writing about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.<blockquote>写下苹果的早期，我开始思考这家雄心勃勃但苦苦挣扎的公司是如何成为今天价值 2 万亿美元的企业的，它是如何避免我们在业内许多大公司身上看到的 “失败公式”的。</blockquote> Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.<blockquote>诺基亚、Palm和黑莓遵循了一个相对简单的失败秘诀。当第一代 iPhone 发布时，他们驳斥了这一威胁，指责苹果有能力在他们的领域发挥作用。然后Android设备出现了，巨头们拒绝退缩：我们知道我们在做什么，看看我们的数字!’.</blockquote> My good old HP is a&nbsp;much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…<blockquote>我的旧惠普是一个复杂得多的故事。在技术方面，该公司允许其卓越的桌面计算业务被 “廉价 ”的 8 位处理器所颠覆，但真正的问题是文化和政治问题：首席执行官办公室里有一扇旋转门，董事会互相监视，缺乏连贯的企业战略，导致灾难性的收购和分拆..</blockquote> No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.<blockquote>没有一家公司像IBM一样强大，然后又衰落。曾经被称为公司，其大型机产品和服务主导了商业计算，其管理方法堪称典范。(七十年代中期，我得到了一本《无所不包的经理指南》，我对这项工作的深度和范围感到敬畏）。后来，IBM 最初抓住了 PC 这个产品类别，但由于让微软软件驱动的克隆产品充斥市场，扼杀了市场的利润，失去了它。</blockquote> A decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.<blockquote>十年后，当互联网和网络化服务器改变了游戏规则时，IBM 还没有做好准备，几乎破产，后来被卢-郭士纳（Lou Gerstner）救了.至少在一段时间内是这样。不幸的是，郭士纳的继任者们未能驾驭云计算的无情增长，现在公司已经分崩离析。现任首席执行官阿尔温德-克里希纳（Arvind Krishna）最近决定将 IBM 拆分为 “两家市场领先、战略专注的公司”。较大的实体保留了IBM的名字，较小但尚未命名的公司剥夺了IBM低利润、低希望、竞争激烈的IT基础设施业务。</blockquote> Microsoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.<blockquote>微软在犯下历史性的、代价高昂的错误后，提供了一个有趣的成功反例。在智能手机游戏后期，该公司为诺基亚的Windows Phone操作系统提供了特殊的许可条款，结果却看到合作伙伴关系陷入困境。绝望的是，微软在2013年以72亿美元收购了诺基亚，两年后注销了76亿美元，第二年又注销了9亿美元。清理工作留给了2014年从史蒂夫·鲍尔默手中接管的萨蒂亚·纳德拉。从那时起，随着该公司专注于为组织提供软件和云服务，微软蓬勃发展。作为重新聚焦的一部分，模仿苹果商店的微软商店已经关闭。</blockquote> While these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.<blockquote>虽然这些失败的故事给苹果带来了一些教训，但其中一些实际上令人放心。</blockquote> For example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.<blockquote>例如，一家大公司开始衰落需要不止一个重大错误。苹果地图的处女作和《天线之门》就是例子，虽然令人尴尬，但并没有造成任何持久的伤害。可以肯定的是，连续两款平庸的 iPhone 会对形象和财务产生有害影响，但即便如此，也有可能生存下来，尤其是在当今准饱和的市场中。正如微软的例子向我们展示的那样，严重错过一个行业浪潮（智能手机）可以通过跳上一个新的浪潮（Windows/Office飞轮辅助的云）来克服。这可能会揭示苹果为推动服务业发展所做的努力，而服务业本身就是一个飞轮。</blockquote> Apple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.<blockquote>苹果的 iCloud 则是另一回事。诚然，“云 ”是一个非常宽泛的术语，该公司的许多云服务都是理所当然的，几乎看不见。例如，iPhone 照片存储在 PB 或 EB 的云存储中，可以很好地传播到用户的设备上。音乐等也是如此。</blockquote> While iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the&nbsp;Exchange For The Rest Of Us&nbsp;that&nbsp;embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part&nbsp;depends on AWS&nbsp;and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.<blockquote>虽然 iCloud 作为一款产品，自 2008 年 MobileMe（让史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）感到尴尬的交换）以来已经取得了长足的进步，但它往往进展缓慢且存在缺陷（即使是现在，当我试图 “说话时 ”使用页面时）。它缺乏谷歌和Dropbox所提供的力量和润色。尽管如此，我们不应该指望苹果会像亚马逊网络服务、谷歌云和微软 Azure 那样提供 iCloud 服务。事实上，苹果自己的基础设施部分依赖 AWS 和其他公司——这是一个有争议的内部话题。</blockquote> Apple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy&nbsp;John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.<blockquote>苹果在人工智能（另一个广泛领域）方面的记录无疑是董事会的一个痛点。虽然该公司率先推出了 Siri，但该公司眼睁睁地看着谷歌和亚马逊超越它们，成为智能助理应用的领导者。在日常生活中，我们可以看到 Siri 的实用性和普及性取得了适度的进步，我们可以希望机器学习和人工智能战略高级副总裁 John Giannandrea 能够纠正错误。</blockquote> Apple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.<blockquote>在考虑故障模式时，苹果的优势不容小觑。其硬件、软件和供应链管理是无与伦比的。但让我们把重点放在一个不太被称赞的优势上，那就是其组织结构的力量。</blockquote> To simplify, there are no&nbsp;divisions&nbsp;at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are&nbsp;functions&nbsp;as sketched by the&nbsp;Apple Leadership&nbsp;chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):<blockquote>简单来说，没有司在苹果，没有 iPhone、Mac 或 AirPod 的“子公司”。相反，有功能如苹果领导力图表所示（点击名称可访问有用的职位详细信息）：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b887dfe02642de363c4b17cc7f5e4f47\" tg-width=\"1050\" tg-height=\"1806\"><blockquote></blockquote> When Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.<blockquote>当苹果开发新产品时--我将避免诱人的可能性--工作是围绕项目.项目组是借鉴软件工程、运营、硬件技术等职能组成的。对于产品设计或运营等活动，一些团队成员可能从事多个项目。只要项目存在，该集团就存在，如果产品被取消或上架，该集团就会解散。</blockquote> One of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.<blockquote>困扰惠普的事情之一是其部门结构，不可避免的竞争、领土争端和资源争夺。当然，客户并不关心部门，他们关心的是产品。苹果坚固、灵活、功能性的组织帮助每个人专注于产品和客户。</blockquote> It’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.<blockquote>这是史蒂夫-乔布斯极其宝贵的遗产。</blockquote> Does this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?<blockquote>这是否意味着苹果不会受到大规模失败的影响，有一天它不会重蹈惠普或 IBM 的覆辙？</blockquote> No.<blockquote>不是。</blockquote> In a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.<blockquote>在寻找下一个增长引擎的过程中，苹果可能会冒很大的风险，比如试图进入汽车行业，要么正面攻击特斯拉、丰田和 “德意志股份公司 ”（德国汽车制造商），要么以更新颖的个人出行方式进军汽车行业。或者它可能会被花在医疗保健上的巨额资金所诱惑。</blockquote> And no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.<blockquote>无论组织结构多么强大，苹果和所有公司一样，都容易受到个人平庸的影响：缺乏安全感的 B 级经理会雇佣 C 级球员，而这些球员不会挑战他们的权威或 “专业知识 ”，产品也会因此受到影响。我们知道老组织笑话：当上层的人往下看时，他们看到的是大脑；当较低层的大脑抬头时，他们看到#$$洞。对于一个组织来说，当大脑意识到上层被无能的人殖民，并进入何必麻烦模式时，末日的开始就来了。我对公司的招聘和解雇做法了解不够，但在我紧张的头脑中，这是苹果面临的最大风险。从远处看，根本无法知道苹果是如何努力避免某种形式的退化失败的。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0\">Medium</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://mondaynote.com/apple-failure-modes-a5c9e1c9ffb0","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1139908626","content_text":"Apple has avoided the types of failures that have beset so many tech giants. From the HP I dearly loved and the IBM we once feared, to Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, and many more… Will Apple eventually follow a similar trajectory and either disappear or recede into the shadows? Or can Tim Cook continue to keep the Steve Jobs Apple 2.0 miracle alive almost a decade after the magician’s passing?\n\nThe Monday Note has been on an irregular hiatus as I labor on a book chronicling my picaresque half century in the tech world. While I only spent ten of those years inside Apple, gravity exerts its pull and the book sometimes feels centered on the company that allowed me to fulfill two dreams: Coming to the US and leading a product engineering organization.\nWriting about the early days at Apple led me to contemplate how the ambitious but struggling company became today’s $2T enterprise, how it avoided the “failure formulas” we’ve seen in so many grandees of the industry.\nNokia, Palm, and Blackberry followed a relatively simple failure recipe. When the first generation iPhone was announced, they dismissed the threat, impugning Apple’s ability to play in their arena. Then Android devices arrived, and the giants refused to back down: ’We know what we’re doing,just look at our numbers!’.\nMy good old HP is a much more complicated story. On the technical side, it allowed its superb desktop computing business to be disrupted by “cheap” 8-bit processors, but the real problems were cultural and political: A revolving door in the CEO suite, a Board of Directors that spied on each other, no coherent corporate strategy leading to catastrophic acquisitions followed by spinoffs…\nNo company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary. (In the mid-seventies I was given a copy of the all-encompassing Manager’s Guide and was in awe with the depth and scope of the work.) Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.\nA decade later when the Internet and networked servers changed the game, IBM wasn’t ready and almost went bust, only to be saved by Lou Gerstner…at least for a while. Unfortunately, Gerstner’s successors were unable to harness the relentless growth of Cloud Computing, and now the company has fractured. The current CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently decided to split IBM into“Two Market-Leading Companies with Focused Strategies”. The larger entity keeps the IBM name, the smaller as yet unnamed company rids IBM of a low-margin, low hope, ferociously competitive IT infrastructure business.\nMicrosoft offers an interesting counterexample of success after it made an historic, expensive miss. Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later, followed by another $900M the following year. The clean-up job was left to Satya Nadella who took the reins from Steve Ballmer in 2014. Since then, Microsoft has prospered as the company has focused on software and Cloud services for organizations. As a part of that refocus the Microsoft stores, modeled after the Apple Store, have been shuttered.\nWhile these failure stories hold some lessons for Apple, some of them are actually reassuring.\nFor example, it takes more than one substantial mistake for a large company to begin its decline. The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.\nApple’s iCloud is a different story. True, “cloud” is a very broad term and many of the company’s cloud services are so taken-for-granted as to be almost invisible. For example, iPhone photos live in the petabytes or exabytes of cloud storage that propagates nicely to users’ devices. The same is true for Music and more.\nWhile iCloud as a product has come a long way since the 2008 MobileMe, the Exchange For The Rest Of Us that embarrassed Steve Jobs, it’s often sluggish and buggy (even now as I attempt to use Pages “as we speak”). It lacks the power and polish that Google and Dropbox have to offer. That said, one shouldn’t expect Apple to offer iCloud services in the way that Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure do. In fact, Apple in part depends on AWS and others for its own infrastructure — a contentious internal topic.\nApple’s record with Artificial Intelligence (another broad domain) is surely a sore point in the Board Room. Although the company was “there” first with Siri, the company watched as Google and Amazon surpassed them to become the leaders in Intelligent Assistant applications. In everyday life, one can see modest progress in Siri’s usefulness and pervasiveness, and we can hope Senior VP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea, a Google alumnus with a distinguished résumé who joined Apple in 2018, will set things right.\nApple’s strengths are not to be discounted when considering failure modes. Its hardware, software, and supply chain management is unrivaled. But let’s focus on a less lauded advantage, the power of its organizational structure.\nTo simplify, there are no divisions at Apple, no iPhone, Mac, or AirPod “subcompany”. Instead, there are functions as sketched by the Apple Leadership chart (helpful job details are accessed when clicking on the names):\n\nWhen Apple develops a new product — I’ll avoid titillating possibilities — work is organized aroundprojects. A project group is formed by drawing on functions such as Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, and so on. Some team members, for activities such as Product Design or Operations, may work on more than one project. The group exists as long as the project exists and is disbanded if the product is canceled or put on the shelf.\nOne of the things that beset HP was its divisional structure with the unavoidable rivalries, territorial disputes, and fights over resources. Customers, of course, don’t care about divisons, they care about products. Apple’s robust, flexible,functionalorganization helps everyone focus on products and customers.\nIt’s an extremely valuable Steve Jobs legacy.\nDoes this mean Apple is immune to large scale failure, that it won’t someday take the path HP or IBM did?\nNo.\nIn a quest for the next engine of growth, Apple could take big risks such as trying to enter the auto industry, either in a frontal assault against Tesla, Toyota, and “Deutsche AG” (German car makers), or in more original forms of individual mobility. Or it could be tempted by the humongous amounts of money spent on healthcare.\nAnd no matter how powerful its organizational structure is, Apple, like every company, is susceptible to personal mediocrity: Insecure B-grade managers hire C-grade players who won’t challenge their authority or their “expertise”, and products suffer as a result. We know the old organization joke: When upper layer people look down, they see brains; when brains in the lower layers look up, they see #$$holes. For an organization, the beginning of the end comes when the brains realize the upper layers are colonized by incompetents and get into Why Bother Mode. I don’t know enough about the company’s hiring and firing practices but, in my nervous mind, this is the biggest risk to Apple. From a distance, it’s impossible to know how hard Apple works to avoid a form of degenerative failure.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3879859,"gmtCreate":1616664342404,"gmtModify":1635749414057,"authorId":3561335246727315,"author":{"id":3561335246727315,"idStr":"3561335246727315","authorId":3561335246727315,"name":"Chriz","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8c393b32112334e204b0590fb83bbc7d","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358367015,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"[强]","text":"[强]","html":"[强]"},{"id":3880493,"gmtCreate":1616670330112,"gmtModify":1635749378084,"authorId":3575444016531170,"author":{"id":3575444016531170,"idStr":"3575444016531170","authorId":3575444016531170,"name":"Sallyoo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/41b2ed5423d3f03bc394c43d718c92cd","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":358367015,"type":1,"supId":3879859,"prevId":0,"content":"Like and comment ","text":"Like and comment ","html":"Like and comment "},{"id":3881674,"gmtCreate":1616677869503,"gmtModify":1635749324203,"authorId":3561335246727315,"author":{"id":3561335246727315,"idStr":"3561335246727315","authorId":3561335246727315,"name":"Chriz","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8c393b32112334e204b0590fb83bbc7d","vip":1,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":3575444016531170,"repliedAuthor":{"id":3575444016531170,"idStr":"3575444016531170","authorId":3575444016531170,"name":"Sallyoo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/41b2ed5423d3f03bc394c43d718c92cd","vip":1,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"wearingBadges":[]},"objectId":358367015,"type":1,"supId":3879859,"prevId":3880493,"content":"ok","text":"ok","html":"ok"}],"langContent":"EN"}],"hasMoreComments":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":40,"commentSize":17,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false},"isCrawlerRequest":true}