It looks too ridiculous to be real, I suspect it was ugly by design.
Apple did this on the iPhone design, the ugly software UI was called “skankphone”.
So they make what Apple calls a stealth case, which is just a big plastic box. So our stealth case was so ugly. It looked like they went into an old Russian medical equipment leftover warehouse and just took some plastic boxes, and stuck it in. It was horrible. They said basically, “ You’re writing the file system for this thing. You don’t need to know what’s on the disc. Just make it work.”
David: So, my guess is they were making some sort of secret Geiger counter and they wanted to be able to take it around and look for, I don’t know, people making dirty bombs maybe? But not have it looked like a Geiger counter.
David: if you wanted to go and check if there’s any signs of radiation in some place where you’re not officially supposed to be checking, you’re on a tourist visa in Tehran or something, this would be a very useful device. If you’re arrested with a Geiger counter you’re in trouble, but if someone looks at your iPod and the iPod works and it plays music and it’s totally normal, you’d be much safer, right?
Adam:Yeah, totally. So, they built this and then?
Interestingly, the holes for the screen and the buttons look like they were molded, but the holes for the jacks and wheel look like they were milled. I wonder if the boxes were custom-made or something off-the-shelf that happened to have the right screen size and number of buttons.
This shows that this is complete nonsense.
We could break up Apple into a hardware and software company and little would change in this respect.
Uh, what? This makes no sense. It's not like the entire hardware and software teams were totally firewalled. Obviously higher ups and managers were in both circles and coordinated the development of both.
This is imho a better way of building things than having everything completely integrated in a single company. A fourth company could do the same thing as X and build an alternative iPod. And so could a fifth, etc.
Sounds like you should run your firm that way, then.
Wouldn't you agree that it is better if all companies have equal access to TSMC's services?
It’s certainly debatable, which is why we have antitrust regulations.
In the specific case you suggest of separate software and hardware companies, the reason that Apple has succeeded where others have failed (in large part) is because of their vertical integration. To wit: the equivalent of Apple (ignoring communication overhead, which is also huge) would be software and hardware companies that Apple has an exclusive contract with, who spend all of their time working on what Apple asks them to.
When they start serving other customers, their operational overhead increases, because they have to figure out how to schedule production schedules fairly across multiple contracts, and probably start to divide up their production functions by product area and customer.
They also typically end up having to make concessions to multiple customers, and risk ending up at a lowest-common-denominator product that fits the limitations of other customers more than it fits Apple’s specific set of capabilities and limitations. This is the market effect that drives standardization: agreeing on the lowest-common-denominator for everyone before production and product development starts.
In sum: they become less good at delivering specifically what Apple needs, whenever Apple needs it.
That is…not at all what this shows. Just because software engineers writing a file system don’t know what the final industrial design is going to be like doesn’t mean there aren’t people fully responsible for end user experience.
Keep in mind that this kind of decide would be under development for many years, if you can keep the idea a secret until launch you’ll be years ahead of your competitors. But if it leaks your advantage is gone.