Tag Archives: John Sculley

John Sculley vs. Steve Jobs – Showdown at Apple

The Seduction: From Sugar Water to Silicon

By 1983, Apple was no longer a hobbyist’s garage project; it was a public company facing fierce competition from IBM. Steve Jobs, while brilliant, was perceived by the board as too young and volatile to lead a multinational corporation. They wanted “adult supervision.”

Jobs set his sights on John Sculley, the then-president of PepsiCo. Sculley was a marketing prodigy responsible for the “Pepsi Challenge.” The recruitment process was a months-long pursuit that culminated in one of the most famous lines in business history. When Sculley initially hesitated, Jobs challenged him:

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Steve Jobs challenges John Sculles

Jobs wanted Sculley to share his excitement about the Macintosh and showed him a prototype. “This product means more to me than anything I’ve done,” Jobs said. “I want you to be the first person outside of Apple to see it.” He dramatically pulled the prototype out of a vinyl bag and gave a demonstration. Sculley found Jobs as memorable as his machine. “He seemed more a showman than a businessman. Every move seemed calculated, as if it was rehearsed, to create an occasion of the moment.”

Jobs had asked Software Developer Andy Hertzfeld and the gang to prepare a special screen display for Sculley’s amusement. “He’s really smart,” Jobs said. “You wouldn’t believe how smart he is.” The explanation that Sculley might buy a lot of Macintoshes for Pepsi “sounded a little bit fishy to me,” Hertzfeld recalled, but he and Susan Kare created a screen of Pepsi caps and cans that danced around with the Apple logo. Hertzfeld was so excited he began waving his arms around during the demo, but Sculley seemed underwhelmed. “He asked a few questions, but he didn’t seem all that interested,” Hertzfeld recalled. He never ended up warming to Sculley. “He was incredibly phony, a complete poseur,” he later said. “He pretended to be interested in technology, but he wasn’t. He was a marketing guy, and that is what marketing guys are: paid poseurs.”

Steve Jobs was not very impressed by the concerns of his team and decided to hire the marketing specialist: Sculley joined Apple as CEO in April 1983, bringing the corporate discipline and marketing prowess Apple’s board craved.

John Sculley and Steve Jobs: The “Dynamic Duo” Phase

Initially, the partnership was remarkably harmonious. The media dubbed them the “The Dynamic Duo.”. Jobs was the product visionary, dreaming up the Macintosh; Sculley was the operational expert who knew how to scale a brand.

The Bond: They were nearly inseparable, often finishing each other’s sentences in interviews. Sculley gave Jobs the professional validation he sought, and Jobs gave Sculley a sense of higher purpose beyond consumer goods.

During this honeymoon period, they successfully launched the Macintosh in 1984, backed by the iconic Super Bowl commercial. It seemed, for a moment, that the marriage of counter-culture innovation and Madison Avenue marketing was invincible.

The Apple Macintosh had not been a success from the outset. The hardware was not designed particularly generously for the requirements of a graphical user interface. Especially the main memory had been calculated rather tightly. Moreover, there was no hard disk for the Mac at that time.

“The original 128K Mac had too many problems to list,” wrote Jack Schofield from the Guardian 20 years later in an article about the 20th anniversary of the apple Macintosh. “It had too little software, you couldn’t expand it (no hard drive, no SCSI port, no ADB port, no expansion slots), it was horribly underpowered and absurdly overpriced. The way MacWrite and MacPaint worked together was brilliant, but producing anything more than a short essay was a huge struggle. Just copying a floppy was a nightmare.” In addition, there was a lack of appropriate business software.

The Mac lacked the applications that dragged the Charlie Chaplin figure across the screen box by box in the IBM’s advertising spot for the PC. Therefore, Guy Kawasaki and other “Software Evangelists” of Apple made an effort to convince the developers of other software companies to write programs for the Mac. The Mac’s ROM, which had been calculated far too narrowly at 128 kilobytes, did not make this a simple task. Not until the “Fat Mac” with 512 kilobytes was launched one year after the first Macintosh had this narrow bottleneck been removed.

The problem came to a head when by the beginning of 1985, the Macs that had not found purchasers during the Christmas sales of 1984 were piling up in storage. Apple had to publish the first quarterly loss in the company’s history and release a fifth of the staff. During a marathon meeting on April 10 and 11, 1985, Apple’s CEO John Sculley demanded to have Steve Jobs relieved of his position as an Apple vice president and general manager of the Macintosh department.

According to Sculley’s wishes, Steve Jobs was to represent the company externally as a new Apple chairman without influencing the core business. As Jobs got wind of these plans to deprive him of his power, he tried to arrange a coup against Sculley on the Apple board. Sculley told the board: “I’m asking Steve to step down and you can back me on it and then I take responsibility for running the company, or we can do nothing and you’re going to find yourselves a new CEO.” The majority of the board backed the ex-Pepsi man and turned away from Steve Jobs.

On May 31, 1985, Jobs lost his responsibilities and was shuffled off to the chairman position. In September, the Apple co-founder left the company with a few people in order to found NeXT Computer. “I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I’ve got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that,” Jobs wrote to Mike Markkula on parting. Ten years later, Steve Jobs also commented on his disempowerment with bitterness in the TV documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” (1996):

Excerpt from the TV documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” with Robert Cringley

Jobs: What can I say? I hired the wrong guy. –
Question: That was Sculley?
Jobs: Yeah and he destroyed everything I spent ten years working for. Starting with me but that wasn’t the saddest part. I would have gladly left Apple if Apple would have turned out like I wanted it to.

Apple’s Heart and Soul

Andy Hertzfeld, one of the Macintosh’s fathers, later recalled the events:

The conflict came to a head at the April 10th board meeting. The board thought they could convince Steve to transition back to a product visionary role, but instead he went on the attack and lobbied for Sculley’s removal. After long wrenching discussions with both of them, and extending the meeting to the following day, the board decided in favor of John, instructing him to reorganize the Macintosh division, stripping Steve of all authority. Steve would remain the chairman of Apple, but for the time being, no operating role was defined for him. John didn’t want to implement the reorganization immediately, because he still thought that he could reconcile with Steve, and get him to buy into the changes, achieving a smooth transition with his blessing. But after a brief period of depressed cooperation, Steve started attacking John again, behind the scenes in a variety of ways. I won’t go into the details here, but eventually John had to remove Steve from his management role in the Macintosh division involuntarily. Apple announced Steve’s removal, along with the first quarterly loss in their history as well as significant layoffs, on Friday, May 31, 1985, Fridays being the traditional time for companies to announce bad news. It was surely one of the lowest points of Apple history.

Hertzfeld mourned for Steve Jobs openly: “Apple never recovered from losing Steve. Steve was the heart and soul and driving force. It would be quite a different place today. They lost their soul.” In contrast, Larry Tessler, who had come to Apple from Xerox, refers to mixed reactions of the Apple staff: “People in the company had very mixed feelings about it. Everyone had been terrorized by Steve Jobs at some point or another and so there was a certain relief that the terrorist had gone but on the other hand I think there was an incredible respect for Steve Jobs by the very same people and we were all very worried – what would happen to this company without the visionary, without the founder without the charisma…”

The Sculley Era: From Visionary Disruption to Corporate Precision

The departure of Steve Jobs in 1985 marked a fundamental shift in Apple’s DNA. While the “Jobsian” approach was rooted in creating “insanely great” products regardless of immediate market demand, John Sculley’s leadership transitioned the company toward a market-driven, high-margin business model.

Embracing the “Open” Mac

One of the most significant shifts was the reversal of Jobs’s “closed box” philosophy. Jobs famously insisted that the Macintosh should be a sealed appliance, devoid of expansion slots, to maintain total control over the user experience.
Sculley, listening to corporate customers, greenlit the Macintosh II (1987). It featured color graphics and expansion slots. This move was a massive commercial success, as it allowed the Mac to compete with IBM in the high-end workstation market.

Screenshot of PageMaker 1.0 (french version)

The Desktop Publishing Revolution

Under Sculley, Apple stopped trying to sell the Mac as a general-purpose “appliance for the rest of us” and found its “killer app”: Desktop Publishing (DTP).

By pairing the Macintosh with the LaserWriter printer and Aldus PageMaker software, Sculley targeted a specific niche—graphic designers and publishers. This strategy saved the company, creating a loyal, high-paying user base that allowed Apple to charge premium prices during the late 80s.

Milking the Apple II “Cash Cow”

While Jobs had viewed the Apple II as an obsolete distraction, Sculley recognized it was the company’s financial lifeblood. He continued to iterate on the line (notably the Apple IIGS), using the profits from the aging platform to fund the expensive research and development of future Macintosh models. This pragmatism provided the stability Apple needed to survive the mid-80s tech slump.

The PowerBook Triumph

In 1991, Apple released the PowerBook, arguably the most successful product of the Sculley years. While Jobs’s earlier attempt at a portable (the 1989 Macintosh Portable) was a 16-pound failure, the PowerBook was a masterpiece of industrial design. It introduced the ergonomic layout we still see in laptops today—the keyboard pushed back to provide palm rests and a centered pointing device (the trackball). It captured 40% of the laptop market at its peak.

Strategy by Proliferation (The Downfall)

However, the post-Jobs era also saw the beginning of “product sprawl.” Without Jobs’s obsessive focus, the product line became bloated. Apple began releasing dozens of confusingly named models—Performa, Centris, Quadra—often with nearly identical specs. This led to:

Customer Confusion: It was impossible for a buyer to know which Mac was right for them.-
Inventory Bloat: Managing so many different hardware configurations became a logistical nightmare.
Brand Dilution: Apple started to look like just another PC manufacturer, losing its “special” status.

The Newton: A Visionary Leap Too Soon

Sculley’s final major push was the Apple Newton (MessagePad). He coined the term “Personal Digital Assistant” (PDA) and envisioned a world of handheld computing. However, without Jobs’s perfectionism, the product was launched prematurely. The handwriting recognition—its core feature—was unreliable, turning the device into a punchline in popular culture.

The immediate post-Jobs era was characterized by professionalization. Sculley turned Apple into a highly profitable, organized, and respected corporate entity. However, the cost was the loss of a singular, coherent vision. By the early 1990s, Apple was a company that made great hardware but had lost its way. Even before Microsoft introduced Windows 95, Apple sales were under heavy pressure. In 1993 Sculley had to step down.

Searching for a Strategy of Survival

Michael Spindler, known as “The Diesel” for his work ethic, took the helm after Sculley. His tenure was marked by a desperate attempt to keep Apple relevant in a world increasingly dominated by Microsoft’s Windows. Spindler successfully oversaw the architectural shift from Motorola 68k processors to the PowerPC. While technically impressive, it was an expensive and exhausting transition for developers and users alike. But Spindler made ohne bis mistake: In a move that Steve Jobs would later describe as “selling the soul of the company,” Spindler licensed the Macintosh Operating System to third-party manufacturers (cloners). The goal was to increase market share, but instead, it cannibalized Apple’s own high-margin hardware sales. Michael Spindler resigned as CEO of Apple on January 31, 1996. His departure followed a period of severe financial struggle for the company, including a massive quarterly loss and a failed attempt to sell Apple to Sun Microsystems.

The Amelio Era: 500 Days of Crisis

When Gil Amelio took over in 1996, Apple was hemorrhaging cash. The company was suffering from massive quarterly losses and a bloated product line that lacked any clear direction. Apple’s greatest asset, the Mac OS, was aging rapidly. It lacked modern features like protected memory and multitasking. Amelio realized that Apple could not build a new operating system in-house fast enough (the internal “Copland” project had failed).

Amelio began looking for an external operating system to buy. It is an irony of computer history that Jobs later saved the struggling Apple Computer company. NeXT’s subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since then. Jobs did not only save Apple, but revolutionized the world with the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

Steve Jobs and John Sculley: Not on good terms

In an Interview (June 2010) Sculley credits Jobs for everything Apple has accomplished and still laments the way things turned out. “I haven’t spoken to Steve in 20-odd years,” Sculley told The Daily Beast. “Even though he still doesn’t speak to me, and I expect he never will, I have tremendous admiration for him.”

Sculley said in the interview he accepts responsibility for his role but also believes that Apple’s board should have understood that Jobs needed to be in charge. “My sense is that it probably would never have broken down between Steve and me if we had figured out different roles,” Sculley said. “Maybe he should have been the CEO and I should have been the president. It should have been worked out ahead of time, and that’s one of those things you look to a really good board to do.”

The History of the Apple Macintosh

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The Apple Macintosh revolutionized the entire computer industry by the year of 1984. Steve Jobs and his ingenious Macintosh team arranged for the computer to be used by the normal “person in the street” – and not only by experts.

“Insanely great” – Steve Jobs could hardly put into words his enthusiasm by the launch of the Macintosh. On the legendary annual general meeting of January 24th, 1984, in the Flint Center not far from the Apple Campus in Cupertino, the Apple co-founder initially quoted Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in order to then polemicize against an imminent predominance of the young computer industry by IBM.

Steve Jobs’ introduction of the Apple Macintosh:

“The early 1980s. 1981 – Apple II has become the world’s most popular computer, and Apple has grown to a 300 million dollar corporation, becoming the fastest growing company in American business history. With over fifty companies vying for a share, IBM enters the personal computer market in November of 1981, with the IBM PC.

1983. Apple and IBM emerge as the industry’s strongest competitors, with each selling approximately one billion dollars worth of personal computers in 1983. The shakeout is in full swing. The first major personal computer firm goes bankrupt, with others teetering on the brink. Total industry losses for 1983 overshadow even the combined profits of Apple and IBM.

It is now 1984. It appears that IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers, after initially welcoming IBM with open arms, now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future and are turning back to Apple as the only force who can ensure their future freedom.

IBM wants it all, and is aiming its guns at its last obstacle to industry control, Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?“

The crowd, among them the complete Macintosh developer’s team, shouted back: “Nooooo!”

The introduction of the first Mac on January 24th, 1984; taken from the “Lost 1984 Videos”

There had been only two milestone products so far: the Apple II in 1977 and the IBM PC in 1981, Jobs continued. “Today (…) we are introducing the third industry milestone product, the Macintosh. Many of us have been working on Macintosh for over two years now and it has turned out insanely great.”

Steve Jobs

Taking a look at the history of the personal computer today, Steve Jobs was on the right track with his historical comparison. However, it would not be IBM that became the great dominator of the computer industry over the years, but rather, the alliance of Microsoft and Intel.

Previous to the Macintosh developer team, others had already tried to design a computer with a mouse and a graphical user interface – one year before Apple did, with its own business computer Lisa, which retailed for 10,000 dollars.

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John Sculley: “Steve Jobs was misrepresented in popular culture”

Knowledge Navigator (1987/88)

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The Knowledge Navigator is a concept described by former Apple Computer CEO John Sculley in his 1987 book, Odyssey. It describes a device that can access a large networked database of hypertext information, and use software agents to assist searching for information.

Apple produced several concept videos showcasing the idea. All of them featured a tablet style computer with numerous advanced capabilities, including an excellent text-to-speech system with no hint of “computerese”, a gesture based interface reminiscent of the multitouch interface used on the iPhone and an equally powerful speech understanding system, allowing the user to converse with the system via an animated “butler” as the software agent.

In one vignette a university professor returns home and turns on his computer, in the form of a tablet the size of a large-format book. The agent is a bow-tie wearing butler who appears on the screen and informs him that he has several calls waiting. He ignores most of these, from his mother, and instead uses the system to compile data for a talk on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. While he is doing this, the computer informs him that a colleague is calling, and they then exchange data through their machines while holding a video based conversation.

In another such video, a young student uses a smaller handheld version of the system to prompt him while he gives a class presentation on volcanoes, eventually sending a movie of an exploding volcano to the video “blackboard”. In a final installment a user scans in a newspaper by placing it on the screen of the full-sized version, and then has it help him learn to read by listening to him read the scanned results, and prompting when he pauses.

The videos were written and conceived by Hugh Dubberly and Doris Mitsch of Apple Creative Services, and produced by The Kenwood Group in San Francisco. Director: Randy Field. Director of Photography: Bill Zarchy. As a vision statement the films were groundbreaking, as powerful a vision of the future of computing as 2001: A Space Odyssey. It may be useful to note that the video opened with the statement “In the year 2010.” Most viewers missed this indication that the Knowledge Navigator was a visitor from the future and wanted the features now.

The astute bow tie wearing software agent in the video has been the center of quite a few heated discussions in the domain of human-computer interaction. It was criticized as being an unrealistic portrayal of the capacities of any software agent in the foreseeable future, or even in a distant future. Some user interface professionals like Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, College Park have also criticized its use of a human likeness for giving a misleading idea of the nature of any interaction with a computer, present or future.

Compared to recent research in the field of ubiquitous computing and augmented reality interfaces many of the aspects of the Knowledge Navigator seem a bit quaint. For some however this video prototype was and/or still is a source of motivation for their work. They see it as a goal set in a future they might help create one day. To some extent the concept was also used to position the Apple Newton handheld device. Newton was released before the technology was mature however, and proved to be a commercial failure. Eventually, the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web and several devices marketed by Apple’s competitors would indeed fulfill some of the visions of the Knowledge Navigator.

Source:

Knowledge Navigator. (2008, August 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13:46, November 2, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Knowledge_Navigator&oldid=234849787

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License

“I am but 30 and want still to contribute and achieve.” – Steve Jobs’ Resignation Letter (1985)

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This is the text of chairman Jobs’ resignation letter sent to company vice chairman A.C. “Mike” Markkula:

September 17, 1985

Dear Mike:
l This morning’ s papers carried suggestions that Apple is considering removing me as Chairman. I don't know the source of these reports but they are both misleading to the public and unfair to me.

You will recall that at last Thursday's Board meeting I stated I had decided to start a new venture and I tendered my resignation as Chairman.

The Board declined to accept my resignation and asked me to defer it for a week. I agreed to do so in light of the encouragement the Board offered with regard to the proposed new venture and the indications that Apple would invest in it. On Friday, after I told John Sculley who would be joining me, he confirmed Apple's willingness to discuss areas of possible collaboration between Apple and my new venture.

Subsequently the Company appears to be adopting a hostile posture toward me and the new venture. Accordingly, I must insist upon the immediate acceptance of my resignation. I would hope that in any public statement it feels it must issue, the company will make it
clear that the decision to resign as Chairman was mine. I find myself both saddened and perplexed by the management's conduct in this matter which seems to me contrary to Apple's best interest. Those interests remain a matter of deep concern to me, both because of my past association with Apple and the substantial investment I retain in it.

I continue to hope that calmer voices within the Company may yet be heard. Some Company representatives have said they fear I will use proprietary Apple technology in my new venture. There is no basis for any such concern. If that concern is the real source of Apple's
hostility to the venture, I can allay it.

As you know, the company's recent reorganization left me with no work to do and no access even to regular management reports. I am but 30 and want still to contribute and achieve.

After what we have accomplished together, I would wish our parting to be both amicable and dignified.

Yours sincerely,

Steven P. Jobs

Steve Jobs Discovers the Macintosh Project

Apple Macintosh

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Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The Macintosh 128K was released on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI) rather than a command line interface. Through the second half of the 1980s, the company built market share only to see it dissipate in the 1990s as the personal computer market shifted towards IBM PC Compatible machines running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Apple consolidated multiple consumer-level desktop models into the 1998 iMac all-in-one, which sold extremely well and saw the Macintosh brand revitalized. Current Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. They are: the aforementioned (though upgraded) iMac and the entry-level Mac mini desktop models, the workstation-level Mac Pro tower, the MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, and the Xserve server.

Production of the Mac is based on a vertical integration model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own operating system that is pre-installed on all Macs. This is in contrast to most IBM compatible PCs, where multiple vendors create hardware intended to run another company’s software. Apple exclusively produces Mac hardware, choosing internal systems, designs, and prices. Apple does use third party components, however; current Macintosh CPUs use Intel’s x86 architecture. Previous models used the AIM alliance’s PowerPC and early models used Motorola’s 68k. Apple also develops the operating system for Macs, currently Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”. The modern Mac, like other personal computers, is capable of running alternative operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Microsoft Windows, the latter of which is considered to be the Mac’s biggest competitor

The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype.

Bright engineers: Andy Hertzfeld, Chris Espinosa, Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, Bill Atkinson, Burrell Smith and Jerry Mannock

Bill Atkinson, a member of Apple’s Lisa team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and software; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included Chris Espinosa, Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, Jerry Manock, Susan Kare, Andy Hertzfeld, and Daniel Kottke.

Macintosh Commercial

Smith’s first Macintosh board was built to Raskin’s design specifications: it had 64 kilobytes (KB) of RAM, used the Motorola 6809E microprocessor, and was capable of supporting a 256×256 pixel black-and-white bitmap display. Bud Tribble, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa’s graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa’s Motorola 68000 microprocessor into the Mac while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980, Smith had succeeded in designing a board that not only used the 68000, but bumped its speed from 5 to 8 megahertz (MHz); this board also had the capacity to support a 384×256 pixel display. Smith’s design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which made production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete QuickDraw picture language and interpreter in 64 Kb of ROM – far than most other computers; it had 128 KB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64 kilobit (Kb) RAM chips soldered to the logicboard. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 KB by means of soldering sixteen chip sockets to accept 256 Kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final product’s screen was a 9-inch, 512×342 pixel monochrome display, exceeding the prototypes.

The original 1984 Mac OS desktop featured a radically new graphical user interface. Users communicated with the computer not through abstract lines of code but rather using a metaphorical desktop that included items that the user was already familiar with.

The design caught the attention of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and the final Macintosh design is said to be closer to Jobs’ ideas than Raskin’s.

After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at Xerox PARC, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the Xerox Alto computer and Smalltalk development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were partially influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group’s own ideas. Jobs also commissioned industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the “Snow White” design language; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers.[4] However, Jobs’ leadership at the Macintosh project was short-lived; after an internal power struggle with new CEO John Sculley, Jobs angrily resigned from Apple in 1985, went on to found NeXT, another computer company, and did not return until 1997.

1984: Introduction

This television commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl, launched the original Macintosh.
The Macintosh 128k was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, “1984”. The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984 and is now considered a “watershed event” and a “masterpiece.” 1984 used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother). These images were an allusion to George Orwell’s noted novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother.”

For a special post-election edition of Newsweek in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also ran a “Test Drive a Macintosh” promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take home a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. While 200,000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about $5,000 in 2007).

Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, it was too radical for some, who labeled it a mere “toy.” Because the machine was entirely designed around the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten; this was a challenging undertaking that many software developers shied away from, and resulted in an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984 Microsoft’s MultiPlan migrated over from MS-DOS, followed by Microsoft Word in January 1985. In 1985, Lotus Software introduced Lotus Jazz after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced Macintosh Office the same year with the lemmings ad. Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, it was not successful.

Feature stories about the Apple Macintosh on this web site:

The history of the Apple Macintosh
Source:

Macintosh. (2008, October 9). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:51, October 12, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Macintosh&oldid=244185329

This article is published under the GNU General Public License