Apple's Organizational Crossroads


Ben Thompson wrote an interesting piece on Apple's corporate organization and its challenges with services. While Apple excels at hardware and software cycles, Thompson argues the same machine is ill equipped to handle services.

The problem in all these cases is that Apple simply isn't set up organizationally to excel in these areas:

- Apple values integration and perfection, which results in too many services being over-built and thus more difficult to iterate on or reuse elsewhere

- Service releases (and software) are not iterative but rather tied to hardware releases

- Apple's focus on secrecy means many teams end up building new services from scratch instead of reusing components

The root problem in all these cases is the lack of accountability: as long as the iPhone keeps the money flowing and the captive customers coming, it doesn't really matter if Apple's services are as good as they could be. People will still use the App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud, simply because the iPhone is so good.


The third bullet seems highly speculative, I think the first may be accurate.