Gawker: valleywag, greg joswiak

Apple's five worst quality control failures

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:00:00 EDT

In the past year, Apple earned top scores in both customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. It's a tribute to the power of marketing. And for Apple customers' collective delusion, we credit Greg Joswiak, a top marketing executive who handled Mac hardware before he moved on to pushing iPods and iPhones.While Apple products may be shiny, easy to use and full of whizbang features, going back at least as far as 1999, they've been often unreliable and sometimes dangerous. Five reasons Joswiak deserves a raise, below.

This month, a French newspaper reported Mac Pro desktops might cause cancer.
The iPhone 3G charger cord is a fire hazard and it's being recalled.
In 2007, iPod Nanos began bursting into flames.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted MobileMe wasn't ready for launch when Apple began pushing it on customers.
In 2006, some MacBooks also burst into flames. They also discolored after little use and continue to crack.

(Photo via Ars Technica)

Zuckerberg looks for his Eric Schmidt

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:20:16 EST

Mark Zuckerberg wants to hire a well-known executive to help him run Facebook, BoomTown reports. It's like when Google founders Brin and Page hired a then-obscure Eric Schmidt away from Novell, except Zuckerberg wants to keep the CEO title. "It has to be someone who does not overshadow Mark," a source told BoomTown, "But also someone who can challenge him when he needs challenging."

On BoomTown, Kara Swisher rattles off two dozen or so possibilities before settling on Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. It's an odd choice. Consider the companies Andreessen founded: Netscape is dead, Opsware was bought, and Ning builds social networks for porn sites. None of these are fates Zuckerberg would wish for Facebook. Practically speaking, I'd go for someone running a revenue machine proven to work at a public company, like Apple marketing czar Greg Joswiak or Google's Sheryl Sandberg. For sheer entertainment value, though, we nominate former Pay By Touch CEO John Rogers.

French and Germans mostly say "non" and "nein" to iPods

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:31:31 EST

Apple's iPod may command 77 percent of the U.S. MP3 player market, but that dominance has yet to carry over internationally, Apple marketing exec Greg Joswiak told Fortune. In Europe, for example, the iPod has 58 percent market share in the U.K., but only 28 percent in Germany and France.

But don't bask in that glimmer of hope so fast, Apple haters. The tiny market share only means Apple really does have room to grow as large as Google and the French have to suffer through retro-styled advertising. Joswiak says Apple plans to bombard European airwaves with more traditional ads explaining the iPod's benefits, leaving the iconic, self-explanatory "silhouette" ads for later.

iPhone apps to be sold through iTunes store

Jordan Golson — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:16:25 EST

Back in October we hypothesized that Apple was going to use iTunes to securely deliver apps to iPhone and iPod Touch users. We thought this would work in the same way that users currently buy and download ringtones, songs and TV shows: "Apple is building an iTunes-based platform to securely deliver apps to users. From movies to music to software, Apple is plotting a way to keep itself in the middle of any money-making transaction on its hardware." Greg Joswiak, Apple's iPod and iPhone marketing VP confirms our hunch in an interview with Fortune.

"Of course what we want to make sure we've done is keep the phone safe and reliable, and that's why it's taken us a little while to get this SDK out," Joswiak said. These security concerns are significant in a phone that can't crash as frequently as our Macs do. I suspect the vetting process that apps will need to pass to be released to the general public will be necessarily strict — I have personal experience with a Windows Mobile phone crapping out on me because of badly written apps.

The article doesn't mention our theory of Apple taking a cut on revenue from app purchases, but we stand by that analysis. Apple gets a small percentage of everything else. The iTunes Store — it dropped "Music" from its name some time ago — would be a one-stop-shop for music, movies, TV shows and applications, and give easy access to apps from the Wi-Fi store. Selling apps would be a further strengthening of the tripod of revenue Apple has set up for itself. We should learn more details of the February SDK rollout at Macworld Expo in mid-January.

(Photo by acaben)