When the Mac first came out, it was exactly the same. It was a closed appliance, which is exactly what Jobs wanted to sell.
The industry was selling open machines, as the older AIO market waned with the intro of the IBM PC.
One of the main reasons why the Mac didn't make it big was because of that reason. I knew plenty of others in business who loved the idea of the Mac but simply didn't want a closed machine that couldn't accept an internal HHd, and had an attached 9" monitor.
It didn't begin to sell well until after Jobs left, and Scully came out with the Mac II, with 8 slots. Then business began to take it up in big numbers, but it was too late for dominance.
Well, this is an interesting perspective. I never thought about how far back Jobs' AIO thing went, although it is obvious when you mention it.
But I always thought it was understood that IBM prevailed because it was the "buisness" company that industry was comfortable with (as opposed to the misfits and rebels).
It wasn't the iMac that got Apple back on track. It was the iPod.
I'm not sure it is an either/or situation.
The iMac got Apple noticed again. It started showing up in movies, TV shows, newspaper cartoons long before the iPod changed the consumer electronic industry.
I got my mom back to the Mac side with an original iMac. Towers and cables and connections were not her thing. She was happy to ditch her annoying/confusing/scary/overcabled Windows box for AIO simplicity. The fact that it was cute didn't hurt...
That said, my PowerBooks never got any respect from my students until they all had (or wanted) iPods and saw that distinctive white powerbrick: "You got an iPod?" "No, that is for my laptop." "Cool!" That first "Cool!" blew me away, and it started happening more and more after that. I was a first hand witness to the Halo Effect.
I don't think the iPod would have saved the Mac if there was no iMac to capture the masses with.
Not that I "prefer" Scully. He made his mistakes as well.
The point you missed is that Jobs makes plenty of mistakes because of his "strong" ideas.
It wasn't the iMac that got Apple back on track. It was the iPod.
No, it was Jobs that got Apple back on track using the iMac and the iPod along with the Apple Store and many other things we take for granted that is part of Apple today.
Does Jobs make mistakes? Sure. Is the lack of an xMac a mistake? Debatable. I say no given the success of the current Mac line up vs past Mac lineups. The f-ing lineup is doing great with the emphasis on style and mobility. Elegant computing from operating system to hardware. The lineup plays to Apple's strengths and away from Dell and HPs.
But regardless Jobs is an exceptional CEO and visionary and that pigheadedness is a virtue not a vice. Remove it and you remove a key element of Apple's success today...and there's no way in hell that an xMac is worth that. You can keep Scully and his cheap clones and towers. I'll take Jobs' underpowered, overpriced iMac every time even if I'm in the demographic that naturally prefers a tower.
Christ, I can understand if it were 2000 and folks were whining but 2007 is a great year for Apple. At most all Apple needs is a BTO for a single Xeon Mac Pro at a lower price (say $1,799)and a high end ultraportable 11" MBP for $3000. The BTO Mac Pro doesn't hurt branding or ASPs (unlike a $499 xMac) and the ultraportable enhances branding and ASP.
In fact, it would be simple for Apple to gather that information from shoppers who did not buy a desktop. If they had learned that those shoppers did not buy a desktop because they wanted a tower, then Apple would have made a tower.
What about the people who don't bother to go into the store because there's nothing they want in there? When people look around for a competitive desktop, they don't suddenly change their mind and decide to go for an even more expensive laptop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lundy
95%?? That's due to Windows, not the form factor of the hardware.
Well, if they use Windows because they have to or want to then they need persuasion to at least buy Apple's hardware to run Windows and it's clear that's not working either. A nicely designed machine is appealing to a large number of PC users and I've heard PC users say so many times.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lundy
As always, I don't care if Apple makes a midrange tower or not. If they think it can help market share, I'm all for it. I only buy towers myself.
But I think it is clear why they don't - there is no market for it.
How many people are going to say that? It's always 'I don't think an xMac is a good idea. Would I buy one, yes'. The trouble is that people are against ideas Apple don't come up with until they actually do and then it's the greatest thing ever. How many people said they shouldn't switch to Intel or even to OS X and they've turned out to be two of the best decisions Apple have ever made.
Nobody can say that it would be a failure because the evidence we have to go on strongly suggests it won't be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TrevorD
You should have bought a more powerful car to begin with.
Exactly, but Apple don't give you the choice. They give you two crappy slow cars and a monster truck. People don't care all that much about upgrades but options are good and the options you have with cars far outnumber the choices you get with Apple. The biggest issue is that by using OS X, you are locked into their hardware range. If I used Windows all the time then I can almost guarantee I wouldn't buy a Mac even now that it does run Windows.
I would if they offered a nicely designed mid-range tower that I can configure to my needs because I like a quiet well-designed computer and I will pay extra for that.
Well, this is an interesting perspective. I never thought about how far back Jobs' AIO thing went, although it is obvious when you mention it.
But I always thought it was understood that IBM prevailed because it was the "buisness" company that industry was comfortable with (as opposed to the misfits and rebels).
Ah, but, you see, it was Apple's early dominance of the business pc market that got IBM thinking that it wasn't good to have another company moving its computers into IBM's space. That's what inspired them to come out with the PC in the first place.
And, who designed the open Apple II series? Jobs? No! Wozniack!
Nothing takes me back like remembering the time spent waiting for programs to load off cassette tapes. How did we live like that?
That was considered to be a great advance. At first, it had to be done with paper punches and readers. Or, switches on the front panel. You actually switched in the 1's and 0's.
The iMac got Apple noticed again. It started showing up in movies, TV shows, newspaper cartoons long before the iPod changed the consumer electronic industry.
I got my mom back to the Mac side with an original iMac. Towers and cables and connections were not her thing. She was happy to ditch her annoying/confusing/scary/overcabled Windows box for AIO simplicity. The fact that it was cute didn't hurt...
That said, my PowerBooks never got any respect from my students until they all had (or wanted) iPods and saw that distinctive white powerbrick: "You got an iPod?" "No, that is for my laptop." "Cool!" That first "Cool!" blew me away, and it started happening more and more after that. I was a first hand witness to the Halo Effect.
I don't think the iPod would have saved the Mac if there was no iMac to capture the masses with.
But, over several years, Apple's sales numbers didn't rise too much from the iMac, though they stopped declining.
It was the iPod that really put Apple on the map again. As more people used their product, they became interested in their other products.
We all experience that effect. If we get a product from a company, and like it a lot, we look at the other products the company has.
I highly doubt Apple will abandon the computer industry, but I do think they will attempt to expand their consumer electronics market. Apple TV is a great concept but a very tough challenge.
I did read somewhere that new Mercedes 2008 or 2009 will have their computer console/navigation/entertainment designed by Apple.
Well, it is a natural progression. People buy desktops, then laptops, then small handheld computers, then wrist watch computers with roll-out screens, then finally Borg implants.
I currently have a desktop and a laptop. Eventually I won't replace the desktop with another desktop but maybe a small form factor laptop with an external LCD monitor (wish Apple made docking stations).
Eventually, over time, that laptop will look as big and ugly as I once thought the desktop looked like. These transitions take decades but they happen. Smaller, more powerful, and cheaper.
No, it was Jobs that got Apple back on track using the iMac and the iPod along with the Apple Store and many other things we take for granted that is part of Apple today.
Does Jobs make mistakes? Sure. Is the lack of an xMac a mistake? Debatable. I say no given the success of the current Mac line up vs past Mac lineups. The f-ing lineup is doing great with the emphasis on style and mobility. Elegant computing from operating system to hardware. The lineup plays to Apple's strengths and away from Dell and HPs.
But regardless Jobs is an exceptional CEO and visionary and that pigheadedness is a virtue not a vice. Remove it and you remove a key element of Apple's success today...and there's no way in hell that an xMac is worth that. You can keep Scully and his cheap clones and towers. I'll take Jobs' underpowered, overpriced iMac every time even if I'm in the demographic that naturally prefers a tower.
Christ, I can understand if it were 2000 and folks were whining but 2007 is a great year for Apple. At most all Apple needs is a BTO for a single Xeon Mac Pro at a lower price (say $1,799)and a high end ultraportable 11" MBP for $3000. The BTO Mac Pro doesn't hurt branding or ASPs (unlike a $499 xMac) and the ultraportable enhances branding and ASP.
Vinea
The Mac was dying when Jobs left. That's history. The Mac II revived the line.
Jobs has been blamed for the problems with the original Macs and their direction.
That's been documented several times. There's no point in arguing it here.
Scully made other mistakes. The worst one was after he rejected the licensing agreement with MS, and raised the price of the Mac which led to large profits, but led to a decline in marketshare from 12% to the 10% it had for several years afterwards.
The biggest screwup though, was Michael Spindler.
He is responsible for most all of the problems Apple suffered from the holiday 1995 season fiasco. I remember that well.
I'm not against Jobs, he's learned a lot since his old Apple and Next days. But, he still has some ideas that he won't move from.
The biggest move he made since coming back was in recognizing that the iPod, which he had described shortly after it first came out as a nice little product for Apple, was much bigger than he had thought it would be, and did exactly the right thing with it.
That really put Apple on the map, and in everyones palm.
Many CEO's would have missed that, and handled it badly, but he, and his team, did not.
From that, he's building an empire, no question. He just has to be careful that the entertainment companies aren't able to go around Apple as they are now trying to do.
If he can prevent that, his place on the pantheon of business leaders will be assured.
Are you really not wondering, even a little bit, why Apple's % retail share of laptops is in the teens, whilst that of desktops is significantly under ten?
Answer:Because corporate slave boxes and servers count as desktops?
I don't know how many of those are sold at retail. I'm guessing none.
Do you have sales figures for market share of desktops that are exclude all sales but retail? Is Apple's market share still way under 10% in that case? Seems like I just read an article by Fortune disputing that assertion.
But hey I'm no statistician.
Either way laptops are the future. And Apple is doing just fine there. I want to see them successful in areas that will carry them forward, not cater to dying paradigms.
The Mac was dying when Jobs left. That's history. The Mac II revived the line.
What is history is that many of the Mac II concepts were developed for the BigMac project under Jobs. The BigMac was the predecessor to both the NeXT and MacII being a Unix based workstation using the 68020.
That the BigMac was going to ultimately be more successful than the MacOS based Mac II can be seen in today's Macs. Had Gassee not cancelled the BigMac but pursued it we'd have had OSX a full ten years earlier.
The Mac II revivial lasted a scant two year (1987-1989) and the slump was caused by Jobs leaving in 1985.
Quote:
Jobs has been blamed for the problems with the original Macs and their direction.
What is also history is that the Lisa was a failure but the Mac a success. The Mac was released in 1984. Jobs was gone in 1985. There was zero problem with direction of the Mac in 1984 in comparison to the Lisa direction which Markkula had kicked Jobs off of.
Imagine Apple in 1984 without the Mac and only the Lisa 2. Major suckage.
I had the Mac 128K in 1985. I had the Lisa in 1984. The usability difference in the two machines was rather large dispite the price and performance disparity. My college buddies and I had a small side business where we converted Mac 128Ks into Fat Macs with more memory and an additional fan.
Quote:
That's been documented several times. There's no point in arguing it here.
Bullshit. You want to make the assertion that Jobs sucks and revise history you damn well better defend it.
Quote:
Scully made other mistakes. The worst one was after he rejected the licensing agreement with MS, and raised the price of the Mac which led to large profits, but led to a decline in marketshare from 12% to the 10% it had for several years afterwards.
Scully's mistake is that he never really got computers and never cared.
Quote:
The biggest screwup though, was Michael Spindler.
He is responsible for most all of the problems Apple suffered from the holiday 1995 season fiasco. I remember that well.
By 1991 the Mac had lost to Windows 3.0 despite the Mac II. Apple's failures definately occured on Scully's watch and not Spindler. Spindler was a disaster but did manage to transition to PPC and build the PowerMac...which did lead to constrained deliveries for the 95 season and a billion dollars in backorders.
Quote:
I'm not against Jobs, he's learned a lot since his old Apple and Next days. But, he still has some ideas that he won't move from.
Thank god. Certainly his NeXT years taught him a lot and allowed Pixar to happen and flourish but to blame the 90s Apple on him and not on Scully is revisionist crap. So is ignoring that he saved Apple after the disasterous 90s.
Quote:
The biggest move he made since coming back was in recognizing that the iPod, which he had described shortly after it first came out as a nice little product for Apple, was much bigger than he had thought it would be, and did exactly the right thing with it.
He had multiple biggest "moves". One was to make the Mac what it should have been in the mid-90s if he had never left or Apple had the vision to pursue the BigMac vs the conservative Mac II. Another was the Apple Store.
Apple was rebounding from 1997 onwards. Killing clones, adding the Apple Store and yes, introducing the iMac in 1998...the best selling computer for the fall of 1998. Then the iBook in 1999.
Apple stock was at 52 week highs and trading in the 70s. All pre-iPod.
Quote:
That really put Apple on the map, and in everyones palm.
Many CEO's would have missed that, and handled it badly, but he, and his team, did not.
From that, he's building an empire, no question. He just has to be careful that the entertainment companies aren't able to go around Apple as they are now trying to do.
If he can prevent that, his place on the pantheon of business leaders will be assured.
What is history is that many of the Mac II concepts were developed for the BigMac project under Jobs. The BigMac was the predecessor to both the NeXT and MacII being a Unix based workstation using the 68020.
That the BigMac was going to ultimately be more successful than the MacOS based Mac II can be seen in today's Macs. Had Gassee not cancelled the BigMac but pursued it we'd have had OSX a full ten years earlier.
The Mac II revivial lasted a scant two year (1987-1989) and the slump was caused by Jobs leaving in 1985.
What is also history is that the Lisa was a failure but the Mac a success. The Mac was released in 1984. Jobs was gone in 1985. There was zero problem with direction of the Mac in 1984 in comparison to the Lisa direction which Markkula had kicked Jobs off of.
Imagine Apple in 1984 without the Mac and only the Lisa 2. Major suckage.
I had the Mac 128K in 1985. I had the Lisa in 1984. The usability difference in the two machines was rather large dispite the price and performance disparity. My college buddies and I had a small side business where we converted Mac 128Ks into Fat Macs with more memory and an additional fan.
Bullshit. You want to make the assertion that Jobs sucks and revise history you damn well better defend it.
Scully's mistake is that he never really got computers and never cared.
By 1991 the Mac had lost to Windows 3.0 despite the Mac II. Apple's failures definately occured on Scully's watch and not Spindler. Spindler was a disaster but did manage to transition to PPC and build the PowerMac...which did lead to constrained deliveries for the 95 season and a billion dollars in backorders.
Thank god. Certainly his NeXT years taught him a lot and allowed Pixar to happen and flourish but to blame the 90s Apple on him and not on Scully is revisionist crap. So is ignoring that he saved Apple after the disasterous 90s.
He had multiple biggest "moves". One was to make the Mac what it should have been in the mid-90s if he had never left or Apple had the vision to pursue the BigMac vs the conservative Mac II. Another was the Apple Store.
Apple was rebounding from 1997 onwards. Killing clones, adding the Apple Store and yes, introducing the iMac in 1998...the best selling computer for the fall of 1998. Then the iBook in 1999.
Apple stock was at 52 week highs and trading in the 70s. All pre-iPod.
No, in this cause its just plain wrong.
Vinea
There's no point in arguing with you, as usual, you don't get it, and screw up the facts.
There's no point in arguing with you, as usual, you don't get it, and screw up the facts.
Says the guy that wants to claim that the "mac was dying when Jobs left" and the
"Apple's sales numbers didn't rise too much from the iMac" (number one selling computer in 4th qtr 1998...held for a 5 month period).
Yeah, just run away after you say something categorically stupid and claim the other side "screwed up the facts".
Gassee's handling of the Mac was short term gain at the expense of long term success. It was his "55 or die" campaign (55% margins) and pushing engineer centered design (as opposed to user centered design) that ulitmately lead to the failure of the Mac in the 90's to take share from the PC. Jobs vision of affordable computing for the masses was sabotaged from the beginning by the board with the $2499 price point where Jobs wanted to keep it under $2000 (and Raskin wanted $1000).
By moving the Mac into the corporate realm with the Mac II and away from unique designs it became yet another (overpriced) beige box (Dell and IBM adopted many stylistic cues by that point) that got slaughtered by IBM and the clones. The Mac II/Gassee strategy failed by the winter of 1989 (Gassee got canned Jan 1990) leading to the morass of the 90s.
If Apple had bought Be instead of NeXT and we had Gassee instead of Jobs you'd have your xMac and Apple would suck.
Comments
And there I was trying to figure what old school storage they had back in the 80s that I couldn't remember!!
You missed the real HHD's, the full sized 5.25" drives. Those were the "Heavy Hard Drives".
You also have to look at history.
When the Mac first came out, it was exactly the same. It was a closed appliance, which is exactly what Jobs wanted to sell.
The industry was selling open machines, as the older AIO market waned with the intro of the IBM PC.
One of the main reasons why the Mac didn't make it big was because of that reason. I knew plenty of others in business who loved the idea of the Mac but simply didn't want a closed machine that couldn't accept an internal HHd, and had an attached 9" monitor.
It didn't begin to sell well until after Jobs left, and Scully came out with the Mac II, with 8 slots. Then business began to take it up in big numbers, but it was too late for dominance.
Well, this is an interesting perspective. I never thought about how far back Jobs' AIO thing went, although it is obvious when you mention it.
But I always thought it was understood that IBM prevailed because it was the "buisness" company that industry was comfortable with (as opposed to the misfits and rebels).
You missed the real HHD's, the full sized 5.25" drives. Those were the "Heavy Hard Drives".
Nothing takes me back like remembering the time spent waiting for programs to load off cassette tapes. How did we live like that?
It wasn't the iMac that got Apple back on track. It was the iPod.
I'm not sure it is an either/or situation.
The iMac got Apple noticed again. It started showing up in movies, TV shows, newspaper cartoons long before the iPod changed the consumer electronic industry.
I got my mom back to the Mac side with an original iMac. Towers and cables and connections were not her thing. She was happy to ditch her annoying/confusing/scary/overcabled Windows box for AIO simplicity. The fact that it was cute didn't hurt...
That said, my PowerBooks never got any respect from my students until they all had (or wanted) iPods and saw that distinctive white powerbrick: "You got an iPod?" "No, that is for my laptop." "Cool!" That first "Cool!" blew me away, and it started happening more and more after that. I was a first hand witness to the Halo Effect.
I don't think the iPod would have saved the Mac if there was no iMac to capture the masses with.
Not that I "prefer" Scully. He made his mistakes as well.
The point you missed is that Jobs makes plenty of mistakes because of his "strong" ideas.
It wasn't the iMac that got Apple back on track. It was the iPod.
No, it was Jobs that got Apple back on track using the iMac and the iPod along with the Apple Store and many other things we take for granted that is part of Apple today.
Does Jobs make mistakes? Sure. Is the lack of an xMac a mistake? Debatable. I say no given the success of the current Mac line up vs past Mac lineups. The f-ing lineup is doing great with the emphasis on style and mobility. Elegant computing from operating system to hardware. The lineup plays to Apple's strengths and away from Dell and HPs.
But regardless Jobs is an exceptional CEO and visionary and that pigheadedness is a virtue not a vice. Remove it and you remove a key element of Apple's success today...and there's no way in hell that an xMac is worth that. You can keep Scully and his cheap clones and towers. I'll take Jobs' underpowered, overpriced iMac every time even if I'm in the demographic that naturally prefers a tower.
Christ, I can understand if it were 2000 and folks were whining but 2007 is a great year for Apple. At most all Apple needs is a BTO for a single Xeon Mac Pro at a lower price (say $1,799)and a high end ultraportable 11" MBP for $3000. The BTO Mac Pro doesn't hurt branding or ASPs (unlike a $499 xMac) and the ultraportable enhances branding and ASP.
Vinea
You missed the real HHD's, the full sized 5.25" drives. Those were the "Heavy Hard Drives".
Full sized in the early 80s/late 70's was a washing machine sized hard drive with 14" platters.
In fact, it would be simple for Apple to gather that information from shoppers who did not buy a desktop. If they had learned that those shoppers did not buy a desktop because they wanted a tower, then Apple would have made a tower.
What about the people who don't bother to go into the store because there's nothing they want in there? When people look around for a competitive desktop, they don't suddenly change their mind and decide to go for an even more expensive laptop.
95%?? That's due to Windows, not the form factor of the hardware.
Well, if they use Windows because they have to or want to then they need persuasion to at least buy Apple's hardware to run Windows and it's clear that's not working either. A nicely designed machine is appealing to a large number of PC users and I've heard PC users say so many times.
As always, I don't care if Apple makes a midrange tower or not. If they think it can help market share, I'm all for it. I only buy towers myself.
But I think it is clear why they don't - there is no market for it.
Nobody can say that it would be a failure because the evidence we have to go on strongly suggests it won't be.
You should have bought a more powerful car to begin with.
Exactly, but Apple don't give you the choice. They give you two crappy slow cars and a monster truck. People don't care all that much about upgrades but options are good and the options you have with cars far outnumber the choices you get with Apple. The biggest issue is that by using OS X, you are locked into their hardware range. If I used Windows all the time then I can almost guarantee I wouldn't buy a Mac even now that it does run Windows.
I would if they offered a nicely designed mid-range tower that I can configure to my needs because I like a quiet well-designed computer and I will pay extra for that.
Well, this is an interesting perspective. I never thought about how far back Jobs' AIO thing went, although it is obvious when you mention it.
But I always thought it was understood that IBM prevailed because it was the "buisness" company that industry was comfortable with (as opposed to the misfits and rebels).
Ah, but, you see, it was Apple's early dominance of the business pc market that got IBM thinking that it wasn't good to have another company moving its computers into IBM's space. That's what inspired them to come out with the PC in the first place.
And, who designed the open Apple II series? Jobs? No! Wozniack!
Nothing takes me back like remembering the time spent waiting for programs to load off cassette tapes. How did we live like that?
That was considered to be a great advance. At first, it had to be done with paper punches and readers. Or, switches on the front panel. You actually switched in the 1's and 0's.
I'm not sure it is an either/or situation.
The iMac got Apple noticed again. It started showing up in movies, TV shows, newspaper cartoons long before the iPod changed the consumer electronic industry.
I got my mom back to the Mac side with an original iMac. Towers and cables and connections were not her thing. She was happy to ditch her annoying/confusing/scary/overcabled Windows box for AIO simplicity. The fact that it was cute didn't hurt...
That said, my PowerBooks never got any respect from my students until they all had (or wanted) iPods and saw that distinctive white powerbrick: "You got an iPod?" "No, that is for my laptop." "Cool!" That first "Cool!" blew me away, and it started happening more and more after that. I was a first hand witness to the Halo Effect.
I don't think the iPod would have saved the Mac if there was no iMac to capture the masses with.
But, over several years, Apple's sales numbers didn't rise too much from the iMac, though they stopped declining.
It was the iPod that really put Apple on the map again. As more people used their product, they became interested in their other products.
We all experience that effect. If we get a product from a company, and like it a lot, we look at the other products the company has.
I highly doubt Apple will abandon the computer industry, but I do think they will attempt to expand their consumer electronics market. Apple TV is a great concept but a very tough challenge.
I did read somewhere that new Mercedes 2008 or 2009 will have their computer console/navigation/entertainment designed by Apple.
Well, it is a natural progression. People buy desktops, then laptops, then small handheld computers, then wrist watch computers with roll-out screens, then finally Borg implants.
I currently have a desktop and a laptop. Eventually I won't replace the desktop with another desktop but maybe a small form factor laptop with an external LCD monitor (wish Apple made docking stations).
Eventually, over time, that laptop will look as big and ugly as I once thought the desktop looked like. These transitions take decades but they happen. Smaller, more powerful, and cheaper.
No, it was Jobs that got Apple back on track using the iMac and the iPod along with the Apple Store and many other things we take for granted that is part of Apple today.
Does Jobs make mistakes? Sure. Is the lack of an xMac a mistake? Debatable. I say no given the success of the current Mac line up vs past Mac lineups. The f-ing lineup is doing great with the emphasis on style and mobility. Elegant computing from operating system to hardware. The lineup plays to Apple's strengths and away from Dell and HPs.
But regardless Jobs is an exceptional CEO and visionary and that pigheadedness is a virtue not a vice. Remove it and you remove a key element of Apple's success today...and there's no way in hell that an xMac is worth that. You can keep Scully and his cheap clones and towers. I'll take Jobs' underpowered, overpriced iMac every time even if I'm in the demographic that naturally prefers a tower.
Christ, I can understand if it were 2000 and folks were whining but 2007 is a great year for Apple. At most all Apple needs is a BTO for a single Xeon Mac Pro at a lower price (say $1,799)and a high end ultraportable 11" MBP for $3000. The BTO Mac Pro doesn't hurt branding or ASPs (unlike a $499 xMac) and the ultraportable enhances branding and ASP.
Vinea
The Mac was dying when Jobs left. That's history. The Mac II revived the line.
Jobs has been blamed for the problems with the original Macs and their direction.
That's been documented several times. There's no point in arguing it here.
Scully made other mistakes. The worst one was after he rejected the licensing agreement with MS, and raised the price of the Mac which led to large profits, but led to a decline in marketshare from 12% to the 10% it had for several years afterwards.
The biggest screwup though, was Michael Spindler.
He is responsible for most all of the problems Apple suffered from the holiday 1995 season fiasco. I remember that well.
I'm not against Jobs, he's learned a lot since his old Apple and Next days. But, he still has some ideas that he won't move from.
The biggest move he made since coming back was in recognizing that the iPod, which he had described shortly after it first came out as a nice little product for Apple, was much bigger than he had thought it would be, and did exactly the right thing with it.
That really put Apple on the map, and in everyones palm.
Many CEO's would have missed that, and handled it badly, but he, and his team, did not.
From that, he's building an empire, no question. He just has to be careful that the entertainment companies aren't able to go around Apple as they are now trying to do.
If he can prevent that, his place on the pantheon of business leaders will be assured.
And, please, don't mistake criticism for whining.
Full sized in the early 80s/late 70's was a washing machine sized hard drive with 14" platters.
We're just talking about pc devices, not mainframe ones.
Are you really not wondering, even a little bit, why Apple's % retail share of laptops is in the teens, whilst that of desktops is significantly under ten?
Answer:Because corporate slave boxes and servers count as desktops?
Answer:Because corporate slave boxes and servers count as desktops?
I don't know how many of those are sold at retail. I'm guessing none.
I don't know how many of those are sold at retail. I'm guessing none.
Do you have sales figures for market share of desktops that are exclude all sales but retail? Is Apple's market share still way under 10% in that case? Seems like I just read an article by Fortune disputing that assertion.
But hey I'm no statistician.
Either way laptops are the future. And Apple is doing just fine there. I want to see them successful in areas that will carry them forward, not cater to dying paradigms.
The Mac was dying when Jobs left. That's history. The Mac II revived the line.
What is history is that many of the Mac II concepts were developed for the BigMac project under Jobs. The BigMac was the predecessor to both the NeXT and MacII being a Unix based workstation using the 68020.
That the BigMac was going to ultimately be more successful than the MacOS based Mac II can be seen in today's Macs. Had Gassee not cancelled the BigMac but pursued it we'd have had OSX a full ten years earlier.
The Mac II revivial lasted a scant two year (1987-1989) and the slump was caused by Jobs leaving in 1985.
Jobs has been blamed for the problems with the original Macs and their direction.
What is also history is that the Lisa was a failure but the Mac a success. The Mac was released in 1984. Jobs was gone in 1985. There was zero problem with direction of the Mac in 1984 in comparison to the Lisa direction which Markkula had kicked Jobs off of.
Imagine Apple in 1984 without the Mac and only the Lisa 2. Major suckage.
I had the Mac 128K in 1985. I had the Lisa in 1984. The usability difference in the two machines was rather large dispite the price and performance disparity. My college buddies and I had a small side business where we converted Mac 128Ks into Fat Macs with more memory and an additional fan.
That's been documented several times. There's no point in arguing it here.
Bullshit. You want to make the assertion that Jobs sucks and revise history you damn well better defend it.
Scully made other mistakes. The worst one was after he rejected the licensing agreement with MS, and raised the price of the Mac which led to large profits, but led to a decline in marketshare from 12% to the 10% it had for several years afterwards.
Scully's mistake is that he never really got computers and never cared.
The biggest screwup though, was Michael Spindler.
He is responsible for most all of the problems Apple suffered from the holiday 1995 season fiasco. I remember that well.
By 1991 the Mac had lost to Windows 3.0 despite the Mac II. Apple's failures definately occured on Scully's watch and not Spindler. Spindler was a disaster but did manage to transition to PPC and build the PowerMac...which did lead to constrained deliveries for the 95 season and a billion dollars in backorders.
I'm not against Jobs, he's learned a lot since his old Apple and Next days. But, he still has some ideas that he won't move from.
Thank god. Certainly his NeXT years taught him a lot and allowed Pixar to happen and flourish but to blame the 90s Apple on him and not on Scully is revisionist crap. So is ignoring that he saved Apple after the disasterous 90s.
The biggest move he made since coming back was in recognizing that the iPod, which he had described shortly after it first came out as a nice little product for Apple, was much bigger than he had thought it would be, and did exactly the right thing with it.
He had multiple biggest "moves". One was to make the Mac what it should have been in the mid-90s if he had never left or Apple had the vision to pursue the BigMac vs the conservative Mac II. Another was the Apple Store.
Apple was rebounding from 1997 onwards. Killing clones, adding the Apple Store and yes, introducing the iMac in 1998...the best selling computer for the fall of 1998. Then the iBook in 1999.
Apple stock was at 52 week highs and trading in the 70s. All pre-iPod.
That really put Apple on the map, and in everyones palm.
Many CEO's would have missed that, and handled it badly, but he, and his team, did not.
From that, he's building an empire, no question. He just has to be careful that the entertainment companies aren't able to go around Apple as they are now trying to do.
If he can prevent that, his place on the pantheon of business leaders will be assured.
And, please, don't mistake criticism for whining.
No, in this cause its just plain wrong.
Vinea
What is history is that many of the Mac II concepts were developed for the BigMac project under Jobs. The BigMac was the predecessor to both the NeXT and MacII being a Unix based workstation using the 68020.
That the BigMac was going to ultimately be more successful than the MacOS based Mac II can be seen in today's Macs. Had Gassee not cancelled the BigMac but pursued it we'd have had OSX a full ten years earlier.
The Mac II revivial lasted a scant two year (1987-1989) and the slump was caused by Jobs leaving in 1985.
What is also history is that the Lisa was a failure but the Mac a success. The Mac was released in 1984. Jobs was gone in 1985. There was zero problem with direction of the Mac in 1984 in comparison to the Lisa direction which Markkula had kicked Jobs off of.
Imagine Apple in 1984 without the Mac and only the Lisa 2. Major suckage.
I had the Mac 128K in 1985. I had the Lisa in 1984. The usability difference in the two machines was rather large dispite the price and performance disparity. My college buddies and I had a small side business where we converted Mac 128Ks into Fat Macs with more memory and an additional fan.
Bullshit. You want to make the assertion that Jobs sucks and revise history you damn well better defend it.
Scully's mistake is that he never really got computers and never cared.
By 1991 the Mac had lost to Windows 3.0 despite the Mac II. Apple's failures definately occured on Scully's watch and not Spindler. Spindler was a disaster but did manage to transition to PPC and build the PowerMac...which did lead to constrained deliveries for the 95 season and a billion dollars in backorders.
Thank god. Certainly his NeXT years taught him a lot and allowed Pixar to happen and flourish but to blame the 90s Apple on him and not on Scully is revisionist crap. So is ignoring that he saved Apple after the disasterous 90s.
He had multiple biggest "moves". One was to make the Mac what it should have been in the mid-90s if he had never left or Apple had the vision to pursue the BigMac vs the conservative Mac II. Another was the Apple Store.
Apple was rebounding from 1997 onwards. Killing clones, adding the Apple Store and yes, introducing the iMac in 1998...the best selling computer for the fall of 1998. Then the iBook in 1999.
Apple stock was at 52 week highs and trading in the 70s. All pre-iPod.
No, in this cause its just plain wrong.
Vinea
There's no point in arguing with you, as usual, you don't get it, and screw up the facts.
Say whatever you want. Have fun.
There's no point in arguing with you, as usual, you don't get it, and screw up the facts.
Says the guy that wants to claim that the "mac was dying when Jobs left" and the
"Apple's sales numbers didn't rise too much from the iMac" (number one selling computer in 4th qtr 1998...held for a 5 month period).
Yeah, just run away after you say something categorically stupid and claim the other side "screwed up the facts".
Gassee's handling of the Mac was short term gain at the expense of long term success. It was his "55 or die" campaign (55% margins) and pushing engineer centered design (as opposed to user centered design) that ulitmately lead to the failure of the Mac in the 90's to take share from the PC. Jobs vision of affordable computing for the masses was sabotaged from the beginning by the board with the $2499 price point where Jobs wanted to keep it under $2000 (and Raskin wanted $1000).
By moving the Mac into the corporate realm with the Mac II and away from unique designs it became yet another (overpriced) beige box (Dell and IBM adopted many stylistic cues by that point) that got slaughtered by IBM and the clones. The Mac II/Gassee strategy failed by the winter of 1989 (Gassee got canned Jan 1990) leading to the morass of the 90s.
If Apple had bought Be instead of NeXT and we had Gassee instead of Jobs you'd have your xMac and Apple would suck.
Vinea
We're just talking about pc devices, not mainframe ones.
At one point, Radio Shack sold a 5 meg HDD for around $4000.
I seem to recall 8" disks. What were those for?
If memory serves, my first desk top had no HDD and you needed 2 - 51/4" floppies. My first HDD was a 20 meg ramped to 30 meg (RLL).
We have seen a remarkable ascent in the last 30 years.