Ex Apple Employees Slams Apple

hmurchisonhmurchison
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
And he's totally right!



http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,60407,00.html





And



http://apple.computerhistory.org/





Apple Computer SUCKED in the late 90s and what he says here sounds about right. Apple was unfocused and arrogant. The bleakest hours were those late 90s. Today's Apple is so much better. It's even visible from the outside that the company has some sort of strategic direction.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    That sounds exactly right, and it's nice to see "I" and "we" instead of "you" in the article, as well.



    I remember the late 90's, when I spent more than I could afford to to get a PowerMac 8600 on the theory that if Apple went under a) it wasn't my fault, and b) I'd have a robust and expandable machine to Amiga for many years afterward.



    I remember the desperate, strident tone of Mac evangelism then, too, and the ever-increasing ire of the developer base. So many things are so much better now that it's not even funny.



    The follow-ups to that article are good reads, too: None disagree, and all helpfully expand on the failed projects that he lists - you learn, for example, why Apple doesn't do processor design (although they assist).
  • Reply 2 of 5
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    I remember the desperate, strident tone of Mac evangelism then, too, and the ever-increasing ire of the developer base. So many things are so much better now that it's not even funny.



    in 1996-97, i was desperately trying to solve a problem with the latest drivers for iomega zip drives on our network. iomega was unhelpful, and their drivers were two significant updates behind the pc versions. no one had any answers, though many people had similar problems as i did. getting answers was like pulling teeth.



    i was about ready to simply pull the plug on the whole company and its products. man, it was beyond bleak, folks. steve may not have done everything right, but he was the shot of optimism and "preaching to the choir" and (to borrow a chris berman phrase) "circling of the wagons" that the mac community needed at the time. i'd wager they spent 3 years at least just trying to stem the tide of defections from the mac before they could even think of gathering new users.



    dark days then indeed.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    g-dogg-dog Posts: 171member
    I would like to applaud his courage with writing such a post.



    I'm sure many of us assumed some of what he is saying but now that it is being confirmed I am for one relieved that the truth has been told.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by G-Dog

    I would like to applaud his courage with writing such a post.



    I'm sure many of us assumed some of what he is saying but now that it is being confirmed I am for one relieved that the truth has been told.



    No kidding, it was a good post.



    Man I was doing mail order sales back in Amelio's day and things WERE bleak. Things were so bad that I usually had to convince customers that Apple was not in imminent danger of collapsing. Apple could do nothing right back then, and then they cancelled the clones... people were rather angry. Dark days indeed. I think that things really were turned around by the time that OS 10.1 hit the shelves because Apple had a viable future at that point in time.



    This really serves as a great reminder for all of us here and now. In one year, there will be G5 laptops, desktops and probably iMacs. iTMS will be the dominant download site for music in the PC world. iBooks will probably run some IBM branded altivec enabled G3. Apple will be considered to be a viable player in the small enterprise server market. In a year, things will be going great in all areas: hardware, software, and services. Quite frankly, Apple's stock is undervalued and they are going to come out of the recession with quite a comeback. Folks, Apple is doing well and is going to be doing really well in one more year.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    stoostoo Posts: 1,490member
    Quote:

    Quite frankly, Apple's stock is undervalued and they are going to come out of the recession with quite a comeback.



    A few months ago, I thought it would be a good idea to buy some Apple stock, with all these G5 rumours and an aura of general healthiness that Apple has compared to the 90s. (I didn't).



    AAPL stock over the past six months
Sign In or Register to comment.