Apple and Google: Too Big to Flail?
November 9, 2011
The game is in its final seconds, a key player gets the ball and flails helplessly as the ball is fumbled. Game over. Football, however, is not life.
That is a plus for both Apple and Google. At lunch today (November 4, 2011),one of the goslings mentioned the appear and and disappearance of the Google Gmail app for the iPhone. I don’t use an iPhone. I don’t use Gmail but I do have an account. I don’t need an app. A phone is for talking. I have another gizmo for email, thank you. With lousy eyes, I can’t see the tiny screens which are made for 12 year olds, not 67 year old geese.
According to CBS News, “Google Flubs Its First iPhone Gmail App.” I suppose when regular TV reports a fumble, I should care. I don’t, but I think there is a lesson in the general release of software with a “bug”. I liked the alleged comment by the pre-eminent Google: “Sorry. We messed up.”
Okay. Flail. Not football.
Then someone mentioned that her nifty iPhone 4S was really annoying. I asked, “Does it make calls?” The answer: “Yes.”
I asked, “What’s wrong with the gizmo?” She said, “The voice recognition thing is not working.”
Okay, fumble. Apparently, the death of Steve Jobs has left Apple in a tough spot. A key feature does not work and there is no one to fire off snappy emails in the pre-dawn hours.
According to the Washington Post’s “Apple’s Siri Shows She’s Only a Beta,”
Owners of the iPhone 4S, some of whom are still dealing with the battery drain issues from iOS 5, were further disappointed Thursday when Siri, the automated personal assistant on the phone, took some unapproved personal leave. Siri seemed to be back in service by late Thursday evening.
Another flail. Not a game. Just customers. Who cares?
A tip of the managerial hat to http://jeffreykrames.com/2009/10/12/a-person-could-be-the-biggest-unforced-error-of-all/
As my wont, I see these two events without the personal annoyance that customers of Google and Apple may experience. I don’t really care about either of the two companies.
Here are the factors which concern me:
- How does one find something in a mobile, cloud, go-go world if the core services don’t work? Answer: You don’t. With search necessary for many information functions, perhaps these flailing actions underscore some termites in the frameworks of these too good to fumble companies?
- How can a consumer or enterprise have confidence that these two giant firms will get back on track. Hapless RIM and its multi day BlackBerry outage is one thing. RIM is a company on its way down. Google and Apple are at or near the top and both can’t get something to work. Perhaps these outages point to a deeper weakness in the infrastructures on which companies build their super cool services?
- How can two successful companies with plenty of people and money make fundamental errors? In my view, most of these large scale goofs are caused by management. I like to think about executive competition plans which reward one thing and, thus, create a fertile ground for other tasks to get the short end of the oil dipstick.
I think the frequency, type, and impact of these “too too big to flail” examples speaks to the point that entropy is present. Management can keep entropy in its place. When fumbles occur, the question begged is, “What else is going wrong at these outfits?”
Oh, oh. Carbonite is trashing another MacBook and Google is trying to add real time results to its precisionless but ad rich search results. Too big to flail? Nope. Just the right size.
Stephen E Arnold, November 7, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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