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RSSI'm not a passionate Apple cultist, despite my love affair with my iPod, but I still find it troubling to see how Apple has bungled the situation regarding Steve Jobs' health. However, most of us who have had to deal with Apple as reporters probably see the company's current predicament as entirely predictable. Apple has skated on its deserved reputation for creating the coolest of cool tech products for years, which has let the company dictate how it chooses to engage with the outside world. Now the terms are changing, and Apple is having trouble dealing with the shift.
The reason I mentioned reporters above is that Apple is one of a handful of companies with a reputation of being painfully unresponsive to press requests. Its communications with us lowly rabble have usually happened on its terms. No corporation, not even Apple, can get away with that anymore. As Rubel points out, citizen journalists are now consistently calling Apple's bluff.
Let's look back at how things have played out over the last few months. First, for months Apple has skirted discussing Jobs' health, and the rumor roller coaster that filled the void has affected the health of the company's share price. For a time, perhaps, Jobs himself didn't know what his health issue was, but the company behaved as though whatever was going on with Jobs was nobody's business. For the average citizen, that indeed would be true, but for CEOs of public companies, and particularly Jobs -- a cancer survivor, no less -- it's painfully obvious that's not the case.
Second, in the middle of the speculation about Jobs' health, the company offered up a snooty repudiation of MacWorld, pronouncing this would be its last time at the show and that its head of worldwide product marketing would keynote instead of Jobs. Were we expected to believe that Jobs was just fine and that MacWorld was so unimportant that Apple could foist the keynote off on another Apple executive? Particularly when Jobs' keynotes serve as invaluable PR for the company? Go to YouTube, and type in "Steve Jobs Macworld." What you'll get back is dozens of videos of Jobs' MacWorld keynotes, many of which have hundreds of thousands of views. How many iPods were purchased as a direct result of those Jobs-hosted product demos? Millions, I'd bet.
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It's hard to talk about this without thinking about the best Apple commercial of all time, which, is, of course, "1984." When that commercial was made, the woman who hurled the sledgehammer was meant to represent Apple. Twenty-five years later, we're the ones hurling it. Maybe Apple is starting to feel the pain.
RSS FEEDS
Yes, the company may leak things, but Apple is far from being transparent, which is much the point of my post. As consumers, we increasingly demand transparency from the corporations with which we do business. Apple shouldn't get a free pass on transparency for being Apple.
Hmm.. Apple's brand is better than ever. Their iPhone and OS is more mainstream than it ever was and it still has that "cool" image. The markets are frequently sitting and waiting for Apple's latest disruptive technology. The iPhone is probably the hottest product discussed in social media conversations.
Apple's Brand Reputation is truly rivaled by few.
Cathy