Apple has refused to chat with the world through blogs and dropping crumbs of information on its inner workings, though it is known as one of the coolest companies in the world.
True, a small number of companies have been more secretive than Apple or as punitive to those who dare to violate the company’s rules on keeping tight control over information.
Employees have been fired for leaking news to outsiders, and the company has been known to disinform its own workers about its product plans.
Even Apple’s handling of news on the health of its chief executive and co-founder, Steve Jobs, who has fought against pancreatic cancer and recently had a liver transplant while on a leave of absence, is beyond compare.
People briefed on the matter by current and former board members said that Jobs received the liver transplant about two months ago. Despite intense interest in Jobs’s condition among the news media and investors, Apple representatives have denied to speak about the matter, reciting with maddening discipline only that Jobs will be back at the company by the end of June.
Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas.
Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said. Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.
Apple employees are often just as surprised about new products as everyone else. Apple routinely tries to find and fire leakers. Apple’s senior vice president for marketing has held internal meetings about new products and provided incorrect information about a product’s price or features, according to a former employee who signed an agreement not to discuss internal matters. Apple then tries to track down the source of news reports that include the incorrect details.
Five years ago, Apple took its obsession with secrecy to the courts. It sued several bloggers who had covered the company, arguing that they had violated trade-secret laws and were not entitled to First Amendment protections. A California appeals court ruled for the bloggers, and the company had to pay US$700,000 in legal fees.
Apple also sued a blog called Think Secret and settled the case for an undisclosed amount, but as part of the settlement that blog shut down.
Apple’s decision to severely limit communication with the news media, shareholders and the public is at odds with the approach taken by many other companies, which are embracing online outlets like blogs and Twitter and generally trying to be more open with shareholders and more responsive to customers.
For corporate governance experts, and perhaps federal regulators, the biggest question is whether Steve Jobs’s approach has led to violating laws that cover what companies must disclose to the public about the well-being of their chief executive.
On that key issue, the experts are divided. Some believe Apple did not need to disclose Jobs’s liver transplant because he was on a leave of absence and had passed responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the company to the chief operating officer, Timothy Cook.
Other governance experts argue that the liver transplant now makes one of Apple’s assertions from January - that Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance - seem like a deliberate mistruth, unless his health condition suddenly deteriorated. Of course, no one knows enough to say definitively.
Most governance experts do seem to agree on one point: that the secrecy that adds surprise and excitement to Apple product announcements is not serving the company well in other areas.
Apple’s stock dropped US$2.11 to US$137.37 on Monday amid a larger market sell-off, and the company had something to reveal, that is, it had sold a million units of its new iPhone 3G S over the weekend, above analysts’ estimates.
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From some of the comments I read at other sites about this news, a lot of people are angry about this. How can Jobs be the “sickest patient on the waiting list”? Seems that the hospital that did the surgery saw dollar signs and a “free publicity” opportunity to make more money.
Doctors are the number one killers in America. Not car accidents, plane crashes or cancer. Doctors. Healthcare has become so expensive that those who REALLY do need to have treatments cannot afford it unless if doctors and hospitals can screw your health insurance over real good.
Put the blame for healthcare cost where it really belongs. Greedy doctors and big pharmaceutical companies. The medical industry is not in the business of “saving lives”. They are in the business of generating death. Death makes them money. Not life. Not natural items, herbs and plants.
In essence, doctors who take the “hippocratic oath” of “do no harm” are just hypocrites. Knowledge is power. You have to be your own doctor, medical advocate and do your own research. Because if you don’t, the choice will be made for you. And the choice won’t be in your “best interest”.