Apple Breaks the Rules of Niceness--and Wins

I quickly finished reading the April issue of Wired last night. The cover story was about how Apple does well by going against all of the cooperative, sharing, and caring principals that have made other Silicon Valley businesses successful. They hide from the press and play hardball with anyone who peeps, and motivate their best programmers by making them fear being fired.

The story made a point that Apple has cloaked itself in secrecy while embracing closed source systems. There is also an telling anecdote about the famous chairman, Steve Jobs in the story by Leander Kahney.

"Like most things in Silicon Valley, Apple's parking lots are egalitarian, there are no reserved spots for managers or higher-ups. Even if you're a Porsche-driving senior executive, if you arrive after 10 am, you should be prepared to circle the lot endlessly, hunting for a space.

But there's one Mercedes that doesn't need to search for very long, and it belongs to Steve Jobs. If there's no easy to find spot and he's in a hurry, Jobs has been known to pull up to Apple's front entrance and park in a handicapped space. Some times he takes up two spaces. It's a running gag at the company, employees have stuck note under his windshield wiper 'Park Different.'