Is Apple The Worst Company Ever At Public Relations?

Apple, by most accounts, is great at public relations. But as I see it it really depends how you define public relations. Apple is great at having product launches, and at getting people speculating about what they are going to do. Apple is great at getting people excited about their products. Apple is great at making itself the center of attention.

But as I see it, Apple is horrible at actually *relating* to the public. They are horrible at creating the image of a company that actually seem like, well, humans. And the most recent, though by far not the only example of this is Apple's MobileMe launch.

David Pogue in the New York Times today writes that the MobileMe launch is a mess. Essentially, for many people the email part of MobileMe doesn't work at all and is actually *eating* emails. This is bad, but the reality is that stuff happens. Software doesn't work sometimes. Worse yet, sometimes products lose data.

But the thing about Apple is they never seem to really own up to *anything*, and this tends to make things worse. There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and Apple doesn't seem to know where it is.

This is Pogue's take on the MobileMe situation:

I called Apple. Would the P.R. team be willing to say what the problem is? What is being done to solve it? When might it be fixed? What kind of resources or time is being spent on a resolution?

No. Apple declined to comment on any of that.

A P.R. manager did, however, offer me this official statement: "The .Mac to MobileMe transition was a lot rockier than we had hoped, and we are still having some growing pains. Some users have been having problems with their e-mail in particular, and we are trying to restore the service as soon as possible. We're very thankful for our loyal customers' patience as we work out the kinks."

Shortly thereafter, that stale, static status message on the MobileMe site was expanded to include this: "We understand this is a serious issue and apologize for this service interruption. We are working hard to restore your service."

That's about as far as Apple will go in expressing an understanding of the emotional toll the outage is causing those 20,000 people.

It's amazing that Apple doesn't recognize this situation. This is an airplane that's stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom. And the pilot doesn't come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what's being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: "We apologize for the inconvenience."

And indeed the situation is horrible. But the larger point is Apple seems to have a tin ear when it comes to reasonable public behavior.

One very recent example is that Apple requires that all developers who download an iPhone software development kit must digitally sign an NDA. The repercussion of this is there can be no user groups, discussion forums, consultants, or even books in the Apple iPhone eco-system because no one is allowed to talk about developing for the iPhone. How dumb. And arrogant. And heavy-handed.

Another famous example was Apple's aggressive effort to sue a writer to reveal a source about an upcoming product launch. And yet another was the horrific iPhone price cut shortly after its product launch making the initial purchasers really feel like dupes.

All these things reflect a sense that Apple just has no concern for how its actions will play with the public. When things bubble up, Apple seems to take just enough corrective action to appease the natives. It feels like they are dancing in a circle that is unreasonably small for no apparent purpose. Why dance so close to the edge of trouble. And yet, in truth, up until now it would be accurate to say they have always done just enough to keep things under control. But I keep wondering how long Apple's hyper-arrogance can continue without some fall from grace.

Indeed, the MobileMe situation can still be fixed. But the seriousness of the technical issues here combined with the typical Apple attitude really feels like a potentially serious demarcation line. And whether it is or not, I think Apple needs to work on this part of its consumer facing behavior. Because eventually this kind or hubris always gets you in trouble.