dan hughes' weblog

I love this kid…and the guy who made his day by organizing...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:39:07 -0400

I love this kid…and the guy who made his day by organizing a flash mob. Awesome.

Inside Apple's Top Secret Product Development Process

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:48:39 -0500

Inside Apple's Top Secret Product Development Process:

Many aspects of Apple’s product development process have long been shrouded in mystery. The process is discussed in a new book Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works, by Adam Lashinsky, which is out now. The book talks about a variety of different aspects of Apple as a company; its philosophy, its hiring process and its legendary secrecy.

But Apple’s product process has held a strong fascination for many over the years as it defies long-held conventions about how it should work for companies as large as it is. While some of these points have been revealed before, there is much here that is new to me. Lashinsky’s compact tome, which is fantastic, goes into detail on every aspect of the process and is well worth a read.

This is the framework on which every Apple product development is hung:

Every product at Apple starts with design. Designers are treated like royalty at Apple, where the entire product conforms to their vision. This the polar opposite of the way it works at other companies. Instead of the design being beholden to the manufacturing, finance or manufacturing departments, these all conform to the will of the design department headed by Jony Ive.

Designers at Apple have literally no contact with the finance departments at all and are considered to be unlimited in terms of the costs or manufacturing practicality of the materials used. The Industrial Design studio is the womb of all Apple products. It is where they are first generated and it is only accessible to a small number of Apple employees including Jonathan Ive.

A start-up is formed. Once a new product has been decided on, a team is organized and segregated from the rest of the company by secrecy agreements and sometimes physical barriers. Sections of the building may be locked or cordoned off to make room for the teams working on a sensitive new project. This effectively creates a ‘start-up’ inside the company that is only responsible to the executive team, freeing them from the reporting structure of a big company.

Apple New Product Process (ANPP). Once the design of the product has begun, the ANPP is put into action. This is a document that sets out every step in the development process of a product in detail. It’s not an original Apple concept but was first applied at the company during the development of the Macintosh. It maps out the stages of the creation, who is responsible for completion, who will work on each stage and when they will be completed.

Products are reviewed every Monday. The ET (Executive Team) meets every Monday to go over every product that the company has in process. It is able to accomplish this because Apple has so few products in production at any given time. Any that do not get a review are rolled over to the next review Monday. This means that no product is ever more than two-weeks away from a key decision being made.

The EPM mafia. Once a product begins production, two responsible people are enlisted to bring it to fruition. The engineering program manager (EPM) and the global supply manager (GSM). The former has absolute control of the product process and is so powerful that it is referred to as the ”EPM mafia”. Both of these positions are held by executives that spend most of their time in China overseeing the production process. The supply manager and program manager collaborate, but not without tension, always making decisions based on ‘what is best for the product’.

Once a product is done, it is designed, built and tested again. At times there are leaks that display versions of a product like the iPhone that we never see released. Many times these leaks come from China, where a factory worker has been paid to hand off a prototype to a blogger or journalist. It turns out that once Apple is done building a product, it redesigns the product and sends it through the manufacturing process again, explaining the various versions we may see leaked. This is a 4-6 week process that ends with a gathering of responsible Apple employees at the factory.

The EPM then takes the beta device back to Cupertino for examination and comments, hopping right back on a plane to China to oversee the next iteration of the product. This means that many versions of any given device have beencompleted, not just partially prototyped. This is an insanely expensive way of building a new product, but it is the standard at Apple.

The packaging room. A room in the Marketing building is completely dedicated to device packaging. The security here is matched only by the sections of the building dedicated to new products and to design. At one point before a new iPod was launched there was an employee who spent hours every day for months simply opening the hundreds of box prototypes within in order to experience and refine the unboxing process.

The launch is controlled by the Rules of the Road. An action plan for the product launch is generated, called the Rules of the Road. It’s a top secret document that lists every significant milestone of a product’s development up until launch. Each milestone is annotated with a DRI (directly responsible individual) that is in charge of making that item happen. Losing or revealing this document to the wrong people results in an immediate firing, as noted in the document itself.

As you can see from the breakdown, Apple often makes decisions that make the process more expensive and less efficient in order to produce a seriously better product. These are things that shouldn’t pay nearly the dividends they do, but consistently fail to disappoint. Many companies are too complex, or too hidebound in the traditional way of doing things, to take on many, if any, aspects of Apple’s process. Still, there is an alluring simplicity to Apple’s accountability schemes and its devotion to ‘good products first’. And there is, of course, the massive financial success of the company over the past 10 years.

This product development process is just a fraction of the information revealed in Lashinsky’s book, which is available today in a variety of formats. If you’re a student of Apple or of electronics manufacturing at large then it should be added to your reading list post-haste.

1991 --- The year the world changed

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:56:28 -0500

This was shared over on Hacker News today. What a gem. My favorite line is “However, it could start a revolution in information access.”

Original Usenet post

The WorldWideWeb application is now available as an alpha release in source
and binary form from info.cern.ch.

WorldWideWeb is a hypertext browser/editor which allows one to read information
from local files and remote servers. It allows hypertext links to be made and
traversed, and also remote indexes to be interrogated for lists of useful
documents. Local files may be edited, and links made from areas of text to
other files, remote files, remote indexes, remote index searches, internet news
groups and articles. All these sources of information are presented in a
consistent way to the reader. For example, an index search returns a hypertext
document with pointers to documents matching the query. Internet news articles
are displayed with hypertext links to other referenced articles and groups.

The code is not strictly public domain: it is copyright CERN (see copyright
notice is in the .tar), but is free to collaborating institutes.

Also available is a portable line mode browser which allows hypertext to be
browsed by anyone with a dumb ascii terminal emulator. Hypertext may be made
public by putting on an anonymous FTP server, or by using a HTTP daemon. A
skeleton HTTP daemon is also available in source form. A server may be written
to make other existing data readable by WWW browsers. Files are

/pub/WWWNeXTStepEditor_0.12.tar.Z NeXT application + sources
/pub/WWWLineMode_0.11.tar.Z Portable Line Mode Browser
/pub/WWWDaemon_0.1.tar.Z Simple server

Basic documentation is enclosed. Details about our project and about hypertext
in general are available in hypertext form on our servers, as are lists of
known bugs and features.

This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty
whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access. We are
currently using WWW for user support at CERN. We would be very interested in
comments from anyone trying WWW, and especially those making other data
available, as part of a truly world-wide web.

Tim BL
___________________________________________________________________________
Tim Berners-Lee ti…@info.cern.ch
World Wide Web project Tel: +41(22)767 3755
CERN Fax: +41(22)767 7155
1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland

I’m looking forward to this technology becoming...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:24:00 -0400

I’m looking forward to this technology becoming commonplace. I especially like the example of using it for remote collaboration.

"If you live each day as if it was your last. Some day you will most certainly be right."

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:28:00 -0400

“If you live each day as if it was your last. Some day you will most certainly be right.”

- Steve Jobs

I never tire of watching this.

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:27:00 -0400

I never tire of watching this.

iCuffLinks http://www.adafruit.com/icufflinks

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:49:21 -0400

iCuffLinks

http://www.adafruit.com/icufflinks

I love this gbattle: Turntable.fm’s co-founder Billy Chasen...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:13:27 -0400

I love this

gbattle:

Turntable.fm’s co-founder Billy Chasen has his business on lock, literally. You don’t use keys to enter Turntable.fm’s HQ, you send a text message from a white-listed phone number and voila, it opens. This is a much smarter, safer and cheaper option than handing out a ton of keys.

UPDATE: This won a Twilio prize and he explains how to build one yourself.

kateoplis: Fifty miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, the...

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:47:49 -0400

kateoplis:

Fifty miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Colorado River Delta and its once-rich estuary wetlands—reduced by 95% since the river was restricted by dams—are now as perched as the surrounding Sonoran Desert. Only rare floods or cancelled farm orders allow the river to reach the Gulf of California.

Why The Colorado River Stopped Flowing | NPR

Known by some as “America’s Nile,” the Colorado River stretches about 1,450 miles across seven states and two countries — and photographer Peter McBride has traveled the entire thing, shooting photos for his new book, The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict. […]

“This estuary used to be one of the largest desert estuaries in North America,” McBride says. “It ran to the sea for 6 million years, and the river basically stopped in the late ’90s. It used to be 3,000 square miles with lush forests and jaguars and deer. And having walked it … it’s nothing but a cracked, parched arid landscape.” […]

taylordavidson: encosion: Is extreme weather on the rise?....

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:14:54 -0400

taylordavidson:

encosion:

Is extreme weather on the rise?. This storm in South Dakota produced 8-inch diameter hailstones (2010.07.23)

(Source: The Big Picture | Chad Cowan)

Dunno about any claims about the weather, but love the picture.

Temp office for SBM (at least for today until FiOS gets their...

Thu, 26 May 2011 10:43:19 -0400

Temp office for SBM (at least for today until FiOS gets their act together)

File this under “Why didn’t I think of that”.

Wed, 18 May 2011 10:34:28 -0400

File this under “Why didn’t I think of that”.

Awesome. Thanks @Stefmara.

Tue, 17 May 2011 23:37:46 -0400

Awesome. Thanks @Stefmara.

Focus

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:21:00 -0400

Quitting one’s job to become a full-time entrepreneur is one hell of a time-management tool (although admittedly not for everyone). When I worked for someone else it was easy to steal away a small amount of time to work on things that perhaps weren’t a huge priority for the company but were simply interesting to me. Google has their official “20% time” that both acknowledges and encourages this. I never worked for Google but it could be said that I always implemented my own personal 20% policy in every job I’ve ever had.* However, that was then. Things are very different as an entrepreneur. All hours of the day I find myself thinking “is what I’m doing right this very moment going to help me get more customers (or retain the ones I’ve got)?” It’s amazing how powerful that question is and how easy it becomes to know what you should be doing at every moment of the day. In fact, I’m asking myself that question right now and that’s why I’m ending this post.

* Actually in practice it was more like a 120% policy, as in my job consumes 100% and I find another 20% elsewhere for my projects :)

Photo by Ihtatho

Need some input, what exactly constitutes a tech company these days? Is Groupon a tech company?

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:24:00 -0500

A lot of businesses these days are claiming to be “tech companies”. I’m guilty of it too. I routinely position StorageByMail as a technology company when it suits me. And I can make a very compelling case when I describe how StorageByMail is the technology layer that connects consumers, delivery companies and operators of major fulfillment centers to deliver a superior storage experience. But are we really a tech company? Put another way, when we’re a big public company would you say we’re more likely to be compared with Public Storage (NYSE:PSA) or with Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)? My guess would be the former.

I find it strange when I read articles in the media about Groupon. Reporters all describe Groupon as a tech company. And the supposed tech blogs seem to agree that Groupon is a tech company judging by the quantity of articles. I suppose to some extent if Google attempts to buy your company that automatically qualifies you as a tech company.

The point of this post is not to say who is a tech company and who is not. I don’t know the answer to that question. And at the end of the day it probably doesn’t matter as long as companies are creating value and delivering on their plan. But in the interest of satisfying my curiosity I thought I’d write this post to see what others think.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Is Groupon a tech company? What about StorageByMail? Of all the companies covered on TechCrunch, what percentage would you say are truly tech companies?

Nobody really gives a damn what you built your site in (why I chose asp.net).

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:41:00 -0500

Here’s a surefire way to spark a heated discussion —- ask a bunch of technology entrepreneurs what they think is the best technology stack on which to build your company. I did this over and over again before I building StorageByMail.com. There are those who will make a very compelling case for Ruby on Rails, while others will swear by PHP, Python, or even Microsoft ASP.NET. Can Rails scale? Is Microsoft evil? Is the Python developer community robust? I’ve heard all of the arguments and I still can’t answer a single one of these questions. Nor can I tell you what is the best technology stack. But I had a decision to make. I went with Microsoft ASP.NET (and C#), a technology that would rank about one notch above Cobol if one were to rank technologies according to coolness. Here’s why I made the choice I did:

I don’t have a computer science background and as a newbie I found ASP.NET to be unmatched in terms of documentation, the developer community and the quality of its IDE (Visual Studio). These things are important if you’re a beginner.
Hiring quality coders on a bootstrapper’s budget is easier for ASP.NET than it is for anything open source. It just is. If you go the open source route you have to compete with the all the cool kids (Tumblr, Etsy, etc) for talent whereas with Microsoft products you’re competing with Dundler Mifflin. It’s not about the quality of the talent. It’s a simple supply and demand question.
An exit strategy should to some extent inform your technology decisions. In the case of StorageByMail we’re far more likely to catch the eye of Public Storage or Fedex than Google or Facebook. I made a list of likely acquirers and then looked at what kind of programming skills they hire for. It was clear they all favor Microsoft. All things being equal it seemed logical to do the same.
Upon examining my own personal network I realized that I had a good support network of C# programmers to rely upon. And I knew that I was going to be asking them a lot of dumb questions when I ran into trouble. So I might as well work in their language of choice.

At the end of the day things just have to work and customers don’t give a shit what technology you built your site on. Make a choice and move on. Looking back it’s probably one of the least significant decisions I’ve made to date (though I do admittedly have a minor case of Rails envy).

This is not a good day if you need emergency services. I helped...

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 10:25:00 -0500

This is not a good day if you need emergency services. I helped these people push the ambulance out only to walk by five minutes later to see another ambulance stuck in the same spot!

Note to all plow drivers, the next time you drive by an emergency vehicle stuck in a snow bank, pull over and help out!!! I couldn’t believe how many Hoboken city plows drove by and ignored my efforts to flag them down. They looked and just kept on going. One even pulled over a half block ahead to get his breakfast rather than help us. Unbelievable! Time to crack some heads Mayor Zimmer.

Can’t wait to play in this tomorrow!

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:24:18 -0500

Can’t wait to play in this tomorrow!

Big Air in Jersey City

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:52:47 -0400

These guys put on a hell of a show yesterday in Pavonia Newport.

September is the best time of year in New York.

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:28:47 -0400

September is the best time of year in New York.