{"id":344177,"date":"2010-02-20T10:35:35","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T15:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.36187"},"modified":"2010-02-20T12:12:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T17:12:22","slug":"how-far-will-apple-go-to-keep-its-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/344177","title":{"rendered":"How Far Will Apple Go to Keep Its Secrets?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Several items this week highlighted Apple&#8217;s obsessive focus on secrecy, from hiding iPad-related shipping data to refusing to release the racial and gender makeup of its workforce. While the strategy has obviously paid off so far, is Apple&#8217;s secrecy savvy, or pathological?<\/p>\n<p>We saw reports this week on Apple&#8217;s <a multilinks-offsetheight=\"16\" multilinks-offsetwidth=\"130\" multilinks-offsetleft=\"228\" multilinks-offsettop=\"10\" multilinks-visible=\"true\" href=\"http:\/\/brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com\/2010\/02\/18\/apple-conceals-ipad-freight-records\/\">success at concealing<\/a> iPad shipping data, and the extent to which a supplier <a multilinks-offsetheight=\"16\" multilinks-offsetwidth=\"155\" multilinks-offsetleft=\"122\" multilinks-offsettop=\"26\" multilinks-visible=\"true\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE61G3XA20100217\">goes to keep trade secrets<\/a> and employees within its Chinese supplier&#8217;s &#8220;walled city.&#8221; Apple, along with four other tech giants, also convinced regulators <a multilinks-offsetheight=\"16\" multilinks-offsetwidth=\"43\" multilinks-offsetleft=\"427\" multilinks-offsettop=\"42\" multilinks-visible=\"true\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/top-stories\/ci_14382477\">to deny<\/a> <i>The Mercury News<\/i>&#8216; request for diversity data because it could cause &#8220;commercial harm.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The company&#8217;s desire to hide its shipping data supposedly stems from the media reports that accurately <a multilinks-offsetheight=\"16\" multilinks-offsetwidth=\"53\" multilinks-offsetleft=\"100\" multilinks-offsettop=\"154\" multilinks-visible=\"true\" href=\"http:\/\/brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/23\/apple-takes-delivery-of-188-mysterious-ocean-containers\/\">predicted<\/a> the arrival of the iPhone 3G thanks to customs data and a lot of educated reasoning. But the available customs data was hardly revealing &#8212; it described the cargo as &#8220;electric computers.&#8221; That might be useful in conjunction with other reports of Apple&#8217;s plans, but on its own it reveals little. The customs data does include manufacturer sources for the shipments, but it&#8217;s no secret that one of its major suppliers is Foxconn, which is the preeminent global supplier of electronics and computer components.<\/p>\n<p>Secrecy certainly can have some ugly real-world consequences. Last July, a <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB124827762524772555.html\">Foxconn employee killed<\/a> himself shortly after losing an iPhone<br \/>\nprototype and recently a Reuters reporter was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE61G3XA20100217\">assaulted while<br \/>\nphotographing Foxconn&#8217;s Chinese plant<\/a> from the street. A guard kicked<br \/>\nhim in the leg, the police were called, and the reporter was allowed to<br \/>\nleave, but such incidents can easily turn into public relations nightmares.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, TechCrunch&#8217;s Michael Arrington <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2010\/02\/18\/foxconn-apple-crime-journalist-attack\/\">suggested<\/a> that it might be time for a boycott of Foxconn and its customers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nMaybe it&#8217;s time we started to hold those companies that do business<br \/>\nwith Foxconn &#8211; Apple, Sony, HP, Amazon, Nokia, Motorola, Nintendo,<br \/>\nMicrosoft, Dell, Cisco and other, responsible. By not buying products<br \/>\nproduced by Foxconn. Because next time someone (else) may end up dead<br \/>\nafter an interaction with Foxconn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the case of the <i>San Jose Mercury News<\/i>&#8216; attempt to flush out diversity data, Apple&#8217;s knee-jerk instinct for secrecy seems particularly pointless, and this time it was joined by <span id=\"mn_Global\"><span id=\"mn_Article\">Silicon Valley peers Google, Yahoo, Oracle and Applied<br \/>\nMaterials<\/span><\/span>. Concealing the racial and gender breakdown of employees is doesn&#8217;t increase demand for the next must-have iPad. It&#8217;s just an unusually clumsy blunder in the public relations battle that Apple is intent on fighting on its own terms.<\/p>\n<p><br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1ff74f2205a5d6404bc90743291ea8ac:%2BYpmixrnmJiIfLFzPnPe6O6O0ajkrtbb2gAXi99UATJxFBjLpvukwS4R3XZyw4OKSvWkINcNgHne'><img border='0' title='Email this Article' alt='Email this Article' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/emailthis.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:14e55cbff1878b743f1da2a6007f233e:gWmga85fnnkcjOdV%2BLI%2FmGK%2FSa079V%2BDdh8hgmi%2FOj4nKEVgvCs9DPcl56piXWH5L6Y%2B66xIRYie'><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/digg.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:75f89b676e20c2a861d57325b2a60b50:Z%2BOscSrH%2FNAsozeXUsjH7Rx7TPGB7l8anlpskBuo93V5z0a1LnBgv2DLO%2FL%2FPeIGcGHABl8C6Ll4'><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/reddit.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:740337e3915d4d4b18bcc55dfae276cb:lgZlvoDgzoUzdSHNCOYY%2BVDRTMNRBXKHbkDvDPNRdtOaDaD%2FYzXzdxuenhZHLFp8shHaxFYrckLYng%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Twitter' alt='Add to Twitter' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/twitter.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:2de9773e19078036c3704edd72221b7d:PcgNNQYMg98EP%2B5b%2BhYGmIRqCO99VRlk%2FzGCdyKpk3Wq%2BZ46wcQ73%2B7C4Nhvj3X6i2YC88ww1S4g'><img border='0' title='Add to del.icio.us' alt='Add to del.icio.us' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/delicious.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:4c8d46ecddf10c7a42f728dea89ac265:q2ywdntZuon4aNpq2Off20NNpUs12qKm9qB86S1L3sFCERCh1gUa3uQqyBZfibcTMpH6IqWTmjb5cA%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to StumbleUpon' alt='Add to StumbleUpon' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/stumbleit.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:96aadf4620c4c135e499b6872e9c64af:6rB7DESfdrAkiayAc9rLf82sCEWRxmy6DV6f3kc%2B8ewdKSI0cWHt1oC1RljmwLj1gtTqJ4CruOiv1w%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/facebook.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=9a64c34f8b4dee77f048f4ecc4a8227c&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=9a64c34f8b4dee77f048f4ecc4a8227c&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2225\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/AtlanticBusinessChannel\/~4\/XBj5j4foIJs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several items this week highlighted Apple&#8217;s obsessive focus on secrecy, from hiding iPad-related shipping data to refusing to release the racial and gender makeup of its workforce. While the strategy has obviously paid off so far, is Apple&#8217;s secrecy savvy, or pathological? We saw reports this week on Apple&#8217;s success at concealing iPad shipping data, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3436,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3436"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}