Apple's Dirty Little Secret

Apple has a secret. It's a secret about you, their customer. This hideous secret, if it were revealed, could shake the computer/business industry at its very foundation. Make no mistake, it is a closely guarded secret - but it is not guarded closely enough, for I have discovered their secret. And today I feel like doing a little shaking up of the computer industry. After today, this will be a secret no more. Remember, you heard it here first.

Apple's dirty little secret? They trust you.

What kind of business trusts its customer? Sears does not just put a bucket at the door and trust you to drop in your money for the merchandise you buy. The phone company does not trust you to keep track of the long-distance calls you make and send them money at the end of the month. Uncle Sam does not even place you on the "honor system" to pay your taxes! What in the world is Apple up to? Surely this behavior must be unique!

Actually, this is not quite a unique phenomenon. I can think of one other example of a business trusting me the way that Apple does. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution trusts me in much the same way as Apple. When I go to one of the Journal-Constitution's newspaper boxes, put in my 50 cents and open the door, they trust me to only take the one newspaper I paid for and not to run off with the whole stack. If they wanted to, they could come up with a fancier newspaper box that dispensed the papers one at a time to make sure that I only got what I paid for. Instead, they trust me to do the right and honest thing and only take one newspaper.

Apple Trusts Me

When I buy an operating system from Apple, they trust me to only install the OS on the one computer that the license agreement allows. They could come up with an elaborate 46-character alphanumeric license code and require me to type this in when I installed the OS. Just to keep me on my toes, they would not print this license code on the installation CD itself, but rather on another piece of paper included somewhere else in the box. It would, of course, be done in this manner in order to increase the probability of this code being lost or misplaced, thus necessitating the purchase of a whole new OS when I need to reinstall it after my computer crashes. This would tend to increase company revenue, and, according to the marketing weasels, benefit me in the long run by some hazy method that I do not yet fully comprehend.

At this point, Apple could decide that they were not anywhere close to being finished with me. Next, they could even (gasp!) require me to call Cupertino and register over the phone so that they could give me a second activation code. They could fix things so that the OS, which I have already bought and paid for, would not work until I typed in this second code, along with the first one (which I have already lost while waiting on hold for 45 minutes). They could make me give them my most personal and private information before rendering a decision as to my worthiness to receive this special code. Oh no, what if I'm not worthy?!? Finally, after disclosing my family history back six generations and providing account numbers and passwords for any and all online financial holdings, they could decide to be benevolent and bestow upon me, their most loyal and humble servant, the long sought-after key to paradise: the coveted activation code. If they suspect that I might somehow be able to bypass their elaborate security mechanisms and install the OS more than once, they can send me a nasty, threatening, harassing letter from their "trade group," which they might call, for example, the "Flemish Software Appliance."

And the best part of all? When Motorola kicks the G4 past 2 GHz and I decide to upgrade my processor, Apple could make the OS suddenly and mysteriously quit working until I dial up Cupertino again and start all over, wherein I would have to prove to their arbitrary satisfaction that I have only upgraded my existing computer and have not in fact stolen a computer and attempted to install the OS on a prohibited second machine! Instead, Apple decides to trust me to do the right and honest thing and only install the OS on the one computer that the license agreement allows.

What are the benefits of Apple's approach? For Apple, by displaying a basic level of trust in their customer, rather than treating that customer like a criminal "guilty until proven innocent," they stand a good chance of making a customer for life. For the customer? On the business side, for a company with more than a very few computers, the savings in time and headaches to the IT staff in installing the OS on a few dozen (or hundred) computers is astounding. Such a licensing approach is much more attractive to the business customer. By only having to keep up with a single CD, it makes life much easier for the consumer as well. It just makes practical sense.

Draconian Apple?

Apple would never seriously consider such tactics, would they?

In a word: no. So before you decide to launch an all-out email campaign on Apple, please know that there is absolutely no evidence that the company has ever considered (seriously or otherwise) such measures. There is even some evidence that these tactics have been discussed and summarily dismissed.

No company in its right mind would even contemplate implementing the draconian measures outlined here and which are, by the way, figments of my own creative imagination. To do so would be to set in motion a chain of events which would likely result in the company's ultimate downfall and the handing over of customers to their competitor by the tens or even hundreds of thousands. The thought alone would be sheer folly. It would be an even greater folly if their competitor already had an advantage, like maybe a new rock-solid Unix-based OS with a GUI which was the ultimate in simplicity. Folly indeed.

Last week, I made reference to something called the "three-finger salute," which dates from the days of DOS. I promised to tell you what it meant in this week's column. The "three-finger salute" refers to the placing of one finger on each of three keys: Control-Alt-Delete. This initiated a reboot of the DOS machine and was usually the first (and often only) troubleshooting mechanism utilized by DOS users.