The other odd thing you noted – it’s the Web 2.0 companies that embrace community that are the biggest stonewallers and, well, frauds when it comes to conversations. Try to find an inclusive, helpful newsroom on a Web 2.0 company. While they mocked corporate America, corporate America embraced the conversation and give media and the public all the tools necessary to get answers – and ask questions.

Really? I have never had a problems seeing the knowledge behind Apples achievements.
1. Customer needs first. Identify a need and fill it with an item.
2. Make the item simply out of a few materials and clutter/advertising/writing free.
3. Make it work well, even if that means sacrificing abilities
4. If companies don’t want to play, the customer will force them to by buying our product

Its always been their plan. 4 is a huge gamble, and 1 is the reason why they choose battery life (used by every customer every day) over the latest processors (with speeds useful for the intensive tasks few purchasers use, and then, only about 50% of the time)

I think Apple communicates very well its plans and overall goals. They have secrecy on their design process and upgrade plans…butI see no reason that anyone needs to know their upgrade plans. And the design process? Its called “hiring real designers”. Most companies seem to hire trend followers.

before launching any program or item, companies should ask themselves what it would look like if it was placed into another time period. Would it look ugly and alien…or futuristic even by their standards?

“Paradox” 1: “why do these high-tech firms do such poor public communication?” As the first commenter pointed out, this isn’t true for Apple at all. I also doubt it is true for Google. Google has a very positive image in the general public and it’s not really known for huge scandals or corruption or anything like that. You criticize their “boring anecdotes”, but they work for the overwhelming majority of consumers.

“Paradox” 2: “The companies who best understand today’s communication needs are not the ten or twenty-years-old technology firms but rather old corporations”. Which old corporations? Banks? Last time I checked they got it pretty bad during the financial crisis. Airlines? TSA body scanners weren’t exactly invented by a PR genius. Oil and utility companies? Maybe we should ask Tony Hayward for PR advice.

A lot of unexplained assumptions unfortunately.

Five years on I still rarely come across more than one link, sometimes none, in a press release. There’s still a long way to go before the comms departments get a handle on digital media. And I have no explanation why it is taking so long.

What you describe in terms of supporting journalists with relevant communications materials, is so blindingly obvious, as it was to me five years ago, that today must be even more obvious, yet we only see it in isolated cases. It should be a standard modus operandi.

Once you stop thinking about this as a “job” and start thinking about it as another “payoff with continuing benefits” it all makes sense.

Apple communicates extremely well to its customers. This is why Apple has such desired products. This is why Apple is so successful.

If anything, Apple communicates what is important to its customers. Witness its newest iPad ad – where Apple focuses on the user experience over and above the hardware specs.

Secrecy is important to Apple because it is a huge competitive edge. Why should Apple give out information that its competition can use against it????

Motorola, for example, is a company which gave out secrets left and right. It use to be the dominant cell phone company in China, for example. But with its competitors used its secrets to kill Motorola’s business. Now it is practically nothing in China.