Apple is organized around functions, rather than divisions:

The result is a command-and-control structure where ideas are shared at the top — if not below. Jobs often contrasts Apple’s approach with its competitors’. Sony (SNE), he has said, had too many divisions to create the iPod. Apple instead has functions. “It’s not synergy that makes it work” is how one observer paraphrases Jobs’ explanation of Apple’s approach. “It’s that we’re a unified team.”
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Specialization is the norm at Apple, and as a result, Apple employees aren’t exposed to functions outside their area of expertise. Jennifer Bailey, the executive who runs Apple’s online store, for example, has no authority over the photographs on the site. Photographic images are handled companywide by Apple’s graphic arts department. Apple’s powerful retail chief, Ron Johnson, doesn’t control the inventory in his stores. Tim Cook, whose background is in supply-chain management, handles inventory across the company. (Johnson has plenty left to do, including site selection, in-store service, and store layout.)

This doesn’t just mean that the best person is handling a specific task (like the photos in Apple’s online store)—it also means that the company is interwoven and has no choice but to work together. Rather than have engineering lay out the specifications for a new product, hand it off to the design department so they can create a design that meets them, and then hand it off to marketing, Apple instead integrates design, engineering and marketing from the beginning of the process.

There’s a lot to learn from Apple’s corporate and business strategies, but I think there is even more to learn from how the company’s organized. Apple is defining how companies must be organized and managed to succeed in this century.

Such a great story.

(via @rickstawarz.)

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Fantastic article that I was really hoping somebody would write.

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Wow.

Yegge makes a cogent argument and I find it strangely impressive that he’s got the huevos to make a statement like this (which, if I understand it, was meant to be shared with all of Google, internally).

But, still. Wow.

(via 512px)

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Jeff Bezos has a few excellent ideas for how to reform our patent system:

Much (much, much, much) remains to be worked out, but here’s an outline of what I have in mind:

1. That the patent laws should recognize that business method and software patents are fundamentally different than other kinds of patents.

2. That business method and software patents should have a much shorter lifespan than the current 17 years — I would propose 3 to 5 years. This isn’t like drug companies, which need long patent windows because of clinical testing, or like complicated physical processes, where you might have to tool up and build factories. Especially in the age of the Internet, a good software innovation can catch a lot of wind in 3 or 5 years.

3. That when the law changes, this new lifespan should take effect retroactively so that we don’t have to wait 17 years for the current patents to enter the public domain.

4. That for business method and software patents there be a short (maybe 1 month?) public comment period before the patent number is issued. This would give the Internet community the opportunity to provide prior art references to the patent examiners at a time when it could really help. (Thanks to my friend Brewster Kahle for this suggestion.)

Two and four are brilliant. Reducing patent lifespans to 3-5 years would instantly make our current patent problems much smaller, because not only would patents be invalidated rather quickly, but because their lifespan is so short, people would have much less reason to file them in the first place.

By the way, note the date on this.

Christopher Mims:
The average human expends between 100 and 200 watts of power when exercising vigorously, but your iPhone can only accept up to 2.5 watts when charging. Somewhere, somehow, there’s got to be an inexpensive and reliable way to connect these two realities.
I hear that submerging humans in goo works pretty well.
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The War Powers Resolution forbids American forces to stay in a war zone for more than 60 days without authorization from Congress. May 20th was the 60th day of U.S. involvement in the war in Libya.

The Office of Legal Counsel and the Pentagon’s general counsel both advised President Obama that the U.S.’s involvement in NATO operations against Qaddafi amounted to hostilities, and thus the administration would need to end American involvement or receive approval from Congress. Obama overruled them, and insisted our involvement doesn’t amount to hostilities:

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

We are providing surveillance and refueling for NATO planes, two things that are absolutely required to continue operations, and we continue to use unmanned drones to fire missiles at targets on the ground. It is the President’s contention that those three things do not amount to “hostilities”?

The executive branch routinely has disagreements with Congress, but what’s ridiculous about this is just how quiet the left has been about it. This sounds remarkably similar to what Democrats rightly criticized the Bush administration for doing, but we’ve heard little more than silence. Apparently, an “imperial presidency” is only a concern if it isn’t their guy in the White House.

Oliver Reichenstein wrote a fantastic post about how iA came up with and decided on the pricing and features for their Writer app (my review here), this point really stuck out to me:
Even though iA Writer for iPad is a professional’s tool, it is sold in an amateur environment at amateur prices.
So very true of the iOS App Store. The entire post is worth the read if you wonder why Writer for the Mac is priced the way it is.
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I don’t link to Daring Fireball often, because nearly all of you subscribe, but this deserves it. Gruber is absolutely right—Daring Fireball: Twitter’s new OAuth policy for third-party applications is a shit sandwich:

I can’t think of any reason why Twitter would force native apps through OAuth other than to create a hurdle that steers users toward Twitter’s own official native clients. Because Twitter’s official clients aren’t going to force users to jump through OAuth to authenticate — they’re still going to simply ask for your username and password in a simple native dialog box.

I love Twitter as a service, but what’s becoming clear is management doesn’t have a clear idea for what Twitter is and where they’re heading. As a result, they’re stepping on third-party developers’ toes for no good reason.

The only good explanation for this that I can see is Twitter wants all of their users using first-party applications, like Twitter’s iPhone application, so they can begin advertising to them like a normal web service. Too bad; there’s serious potential for making money using other, less annoying options.

They either don’t know how to make decent revenue by taking advantage of Twitter as a communications utility, or simply don’t think it’s possible. Either way, that’s disappointing.

Lukas Mathis:

The goal is not to make your user interface as realistic as possible. The goal is to add those details which help users identify what an element is, and how to interact with it, and to add no more than those details.

Great post by Mathis for the UX Magazine.

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Masculine, masculine, masculine. Klaus Bischoff, head of design for the Volkswagen brand, kept returning to the word to describe the design of the successor to the New Beetle, the car Volkswagen calls simply “the 21st century Beetle.”

I love it. It looks a bit like an Audi, and definitely like something I’d want to drive.

✚ Permalink

Thomas Baekdal:

It is 10 times more secure to use “this is fun” as your password, than “J4fS<2″.

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After being accused of quartering a supporter of al Qaeda, American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi was extradited from Britain and placed in solitary confinement:

The federal government established SAMs in 1996 for gang leaders and other crime bosses with demonstrated reach in cases of “substantial risk that an inmate’s communication or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons.” After September 11, the Justice Department began using SAMs pretrial, with wide latitude to wall off terrorism suspects before they had been convicted of anything.

Fahad was allowed no contact with anyone outside his lawyer and, in very limited fashion, his parents—no calls, letters, or talking through the walls, because his cell was electronically monitored. He had to shower and relieve himself within view of the camera. He was allowed to write only one letter a week to a single member of his family, using no more than three pieces of paper. One parent was allowed to visit every two weeks, but often would be turned away at the door for bureaucratic reasons. Fahad was forbidden any contact—directly or through his lawyers—with the news media. He could read only portions of newspapers approved by his jailers—and not until 30 days after publication. Allowed only one hour out of his cell a day, he had no access to fresh air but was forced to exercise in a solitary cage.

The government cited Hashmi’s “proclivity for violence” as the reason for such harsh measures—even though he had no criminal record and was not charged with committing an actual act of violence or having any demonstrated reach outside of prison. Given the number of people convicted of a violent crime behind bars in the United States, “proclivity for violence” seemed an implausible justification for the harsh measures.

After nearly three years of solitary confinement, he plead guilty to providing material support to terrorism in April 2010. He was never allowed to review evidence held against him, because it was deemed classified.

The federal government alleged that he provided support to al Qaeda by allowing an acquaintance to stay at his apartment in London with luggage filled with “military gear”—raincoats, ponchos, and water-proof socks, apparently—that later delivered it to al Qaeda in Pakistan. This acquaintance, by the way, testified against him in court.

He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He is now being held at Colorado’s Supermax prison, in solitary confinement.

Perhaps, as the government argued, Hashmi was radicalized and was attempting to support terrorism. It’s certainly possible; while pursuing his degree in political science in New York, he advocated Muslim religious law as a “utopian” society and called the U.S. the world’s largest terrorist. I don’t deny that he may very well have been a threat, and imprisoning him based on these rather flimsy charges may have prevented greater crimes.

But I don’t know. It may also be that an innocent man—a man who advocated a political system I strenuously disagree with and that runs counter to our system, yes, but an innocent man—is now being held in solitary confinement, serving out a 15-year sentence. The only people who know are Hashmi and the federal government officials which have access to the evidence held against him, evidence we have never seen.

The government is asking us to trust them; I am generally inclined to do so on issues related to terrorism, but this isn’t acceptable. Not only is this a slippery slope, but we may have already slid down it: there may very well be an innocent man rotting away in prison. That’s too much power for the federal government to hold. We are not very far away from the situation in China, where the government uses state secrets laws to throw dissenters in jail. The only thing which prevents the federal government from abusing “Special Administrative Measures” (SAMs) and classified evidence rules is their own moral rectitude, and if that is all we have, we are in trouble indeed.

We are at risk of a government with arbitrary power, where the law does not define their power and constrain it, but rather enables them to do as they please.

Want an example of what I meant by “no strategy, no future”?

Here’s what Microsoft did to Courier, a promising (and original) tablet concept they were working on:

So when Robbie Bach, who led the company’s entertainment and devices division at the time, presented his idea to CEO Steve Ballmer and Microsoft’s senior leadership, he expected enthusiasm and additional funding for the project. There was just one problem: The Courier prototype borrowed from Windows, Microsoft’s vaunted computer operating systems, but had an operating system all its own. (That’s what Apple did with its iPhone and iPad — it built a new operating platform based on its existing Mac OS X.)

Bach learned a hard lesson about the power and might of Windows within Microsoft. Not only would Bach not receive the extra funding he sought, said Ballmer, who personally delivered the blow, but there would be no Courier because it was unnecessary. The best of Courier, where appropriate, would be folded into the next version of Windows, Windows 8, due at the end of 2011 or in 2012 — or maybe even Windows 9. Several months after its death, Bach announced his retirement.

The problem is very simple: they are so beholden to Windows that anything that might threaten it—whether it comes from outside the company or inside—has to be eliminated. Effectively, Microsoft is protecting Windows at the expense of the company’s long-term success. That’s not only a mistake. It’s absolute idiocy.

Microsoft has the potential to be successful in the mobile market; Windows Phone 71 is well designed and original. They have the talent. Their issue is management. Microsoft’s management refuses to threaten the company’s current business to be an important player in the mobile market. In other words, they would rather be irrelevant in the future than possibly—oh, no!—give up Windows.

Their tablet strategy is a perfect example of this. Microsoft thinks tablets should use the same operating system as PCs, with a user interface “optimized” for touch. Tablets, then, aren’t completely new devices, distinct from PCs, which would require a new use paradigm and thus a completely different user interface; instead, they are just a different form factor for using the same PC operating system we’ve been using, with the same basic use concept and user interface, just with a nice touch layer overlaid.

Why would Microsoft want tablets to be merely derivative of PCs? That’s easy: because it means what they’re currently doing, licensing a PC operating system and selling software for PCs can continue unchanged.

Microsoft’s management isn’t thinking about where computing is moving, how they can improve people’s lives and how they can capitalize on it. They’re thinking about how they can preserve their current business. And that’s a fantastic path toward irrelevancy.

Their phone operating system’s name is symptomatic of their inherent problem: they put “Windows” in the name of a mobile operating system that doesn’t even have windows. They are so dependent on Windows they are afraid even to name their mobile operating system something different.

Smashing Magazine rounds up a few tricks for “CSS Layouts, Visual Effects and Forms”. Not everything in here looks useful to me, but I did notice a few gems while quickly browsing through. Bookmarked for later investigation. link

m.nicewebtype.com is a light yet essential mobile site for people who design websites, love type, and struggle to keep up with the dizzying world of web fonts. In it, Tim Brown, author of Nice Web Type, creator of Web Font Specimen (what’s that?), and latterly type manager for Typekit, curates the Design Twitterverse to share the latest insights, innovations, quips, and controversies regarding everyone’s favorite new web design fetish.

Don’t leave home without it.