Timothy B. Lee over at Ars Technica has a smart take on why Apple hasn’t been successful with online products and services:

Apple’s perennial difficulty with creating scalable online services is not a coincidence. Apple has a corporate culture that emphasizes centralized, designer-led product development. This process has produced user-friendly devices that are the envy of the tech world. But developing fast, reliable online services requires a more decentralized, engineering-driven corporate culture like that found at Google.

One of the many things I thought was great about Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC on Monday was how he openly admitted MobileMe was a failure. This got a big laugh from the audience and rightly so.
How often do we see CEOs of other technology companies openly admit when they’re wrong?
I see it occasionally, but I rarely see admissions of failure during a keynote for an event or product unveiling.