Apple's internal organization
With all the speculation surrounding the September 12th announcement, I began to wonder about how Apple develops these new products internally without having their development be common knowledge within the company. From conception through design, prototype and manufacture, how does Apple remain so secretive? Some group has to come up with the idea for a product. Some group has to develop a prototype which must then be tested by some other group. Revisions must be made, technical specifications refined and further tested. Then the whole thing must be sent over to China to be built. How does a company compartmentalize information so well and still develop a working product? I just don't get it.
Comments
Apple also uses different code names for projects amongst different groups, and all breifs have the employees name watermarked over it so it cannot be duplicated without tracing.
My question -- which I posted about and discussed -- was how Apple can keep such secrecy with Advertising.
Lets take the original iPod. Someone high up had to come up with the idea for a hard drive based music player... okay fine... now what's the next step? Asthetic design? User interface? The nuts and bolts? To me, all these things are interconnected. How can you break it up and then put it all back together again? I have not had the experience of working on a team in such a way. In my experience, the team gets oriented to what the final goal is, and then gets assigned individual parts. While working on any one part, the big picture has to be kept in mind. Given this scenario, there just seems to be too many people involved for secrets to stay secret.
okay, so the ideas originate high up... someone still needs to take that idea and actually turn it into a working device. If the device is something new, they can't just use off the shelf parts to put it together (can they?). I am having trouble imagining different groups of people working on independent projects that are ultimately supposed to fit together into a working device.
Lets take the original iPod. Someone high up had to come up with the idea for a hard drive based music player... okay fine... now what's the next step? Asthetic design? User interface? The nuts and bolts? To me, all these things are interconnected. How can you break it up and then put it all back together again? I have not had the experience of working on a team in such a way. In my experience, the team gets oriented to what the final goal is, and then gets assigned individual parts. While working on any one part, the big picture has to be kept in mind. Given this scenario, there just seems to be too many people involved for secrets to stay secret.
Yes, but when you are PAID to keep your mouth shut... thats a whole other story.
okay, so the ideas originate high up... someone still needs to take that idea and actually turn it into a working device. If the device is something new, they can't just use off the shelf parts to put it together (can they?). I am having trouble imagining different groups of people working on independent projects that are ultimately supposed to fit together into a working device.
Lets take the original iPod. Someone high up had to come up with the idea for a hard drive based music player... okay fine... now what's the next step? Asthetic design? User interface? The nuts and bolts? To me, all these things are interconnected. How can you break it up and then put it all back together again? I have not had the experience of working on a team in such a way. In my experience, the team gets oriented to what the final goal is, and then gets assigned individual parts. While working on any one part, the big picture has to be kept in mind. Given this scenario, there just seems to be too many people involved for secrets to stay secret.
Not EVERYONE at Apple was involved in that, though. They told the then-fairly new iTunes team, some of the marketing team, and some of the engineers. Only a small number of people within Apple knew about it.