Good work Carl, this is a really important issue for our age of instant communication and the impact it can have on the financial world and beyond. Lots of rammifications and very thought provoking! Keep up the good work.
The supposed danger in keeping secrets is that you don't get outside contributions of expertise for your secret task. But this is ameliorated if 1) other companies are busy talking (sometimes they talk just to show how smart they are!), or 2) you have good sources/research into what others (academia, companies, etc) are doing, and/or what the market wants.
Not only does Apple keep secrets, they seem to have great insight into what their competitors/markets are doing. For example, Jobs said in Jan 2006 that MS would have to release its own iPod killer, even while MS was disavowing it. Also, Apple seemed to know that Zune was going to underprice iPod 30GB at 249, and so priced its iPod at 249 last Sep. Another example is its intelligence into hard drives back at the first iPod/iPod mini, and subsequently into flash RAM (leading to investment).
On the other hand, Apple has said things but analysts didn't pick up on it. For example, at the Intel switch, Apple said it was because mobility was the future; and Intel said Apple had some great mobile products coming. Today, it's finally becoming clear that Apple aims to dominate the mobile space with OS X (just like MS dominated the desktop with Windows), altho MS picked up much earlier on some of this, as it led to launching the Zune effort. In any case, I find it fascinating to analyze everything Jobs says about the future.
Video rentals, HiDef, tablets, subnotebooks, home servers, .Mac, - what's coming? It's a well-kept secret.
"In any case, I find it fascinating to analyze everything Jobs says about the future. "
you could look instead at Gates' prognostications. Weren't we all supposed to be using speech recognition by now?
integrated into the woof and warp of the marketplace
I think you mean "weft and warp"
Commenting by HaloScan
