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Almost didn't. Apple ][ revenue kept the doors open until I think it was 1986 when they were finally break-even on Macintosh. And it cost Jobs the company. Then

Almost didn't. Apple ][ revenue kept the doors open until I think it was 1986 when they were finally break-even on Macintosh. And it cost Jobs the company. Then he came in as a hail-mary and got $150mil from Microsoft to stay in business a few extra months and if he hadn't had those 11 years at Next Inc which also went bankrupt, OS X probably wouldn't have happened. The stars aligned for Apple a few times: I think it's Apple ][, iTunes, iPhone in that order. These days we reflect on the Macintosh as a success, but texts from the mid-to-late 80s did not and frankly, I trust those texts more. A fairly good specimen can be found in this 1987 text: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey:_Pepsi_to_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey:_Pepsi_to_Apple (available at https://archive.org/details/odyssey00john https://archive.org/details/odyssey00john) Here's an example from my personal library from a 1984 text, "The coming computer industry shakeout" which sadly hasn't been digitized: http://9ol.es/computer-shakedown-219.jpg http://9ol.es/computer-shakedown-219.jpg 1984-86 were pretty dark times for Apple if you're to go off of what people were saying between 1984-1986.

scarface74 4y ago
> Then he came in as a hail-mary and got $150mil from Microsoft to stay in business a few extra months This is another HN myth like “cable was once ad free”. Before Amelio was kicked out, he had secured $4 billion in financing. If you look at the series of events, it is completely illogical thst $150 million could have “saved” Apple. The deal happened in 1997. Apple wasn’t profitable and just barely until 2000-2001. $150 million couldn’t have saved it. Besides that, a month later, Apple spent $100 million to buy out PowerComputing’s Mac license. The second myth is that part of the deal was that Microsoft agreed to port Office to the Mac. Office was already available for the Mac and actually started on the Mac. Part of the deal was that Microsoft would continue supporting the Mac with Office and port IE. Also Apple and Microsoft were involved in two major legal disputes - the “look and feel” lawsuit where Apple accused MS of copying the Macs interface and that MS illegally used QuickTime code. They agreed to drop the lawsuit and cross license patents.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  I'd like to contest that and hopefully I'll remember to do it tomorrow when I'm awake. Their quarterly 10-Ks are online from the era. I've gone through them before. Sorry for not being more engaging, it's late and I'm getting kinda dizzy so I should go to bed.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Start here: Apple bought PowerComputing for $100 million in cash right after the MS deal. That would mean that a net $50 million “saved” Apple. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-acquires-power-computing/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-acquires-power-comput... My timeline for Apple profitability was off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc. But Apple lost over $1 billion that year. A net $50 million was a drop in the bucket. I also misstated that Amelio had obtained working capital. It was actually Fred Anderson from the same article. > On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors. Fred D. Anderson was the head of the directors in short term and obtained short-term working capital from the banks in July 1997.
    - kristopolous 4y ago
      Alright, I'm awake now. I looked over what I wrote. I think was doing too much for dramatic effect. The history in this thread is excellent. I don't have much to add but out of either narcissism or obligation I will (I wonder if they are related) and with it open a new can of worms, so let's go if someone was to run Lloyd's algorithm on tech companies they'd probably, with the right feature selection find nice Gaussian blobs around a number of once great companies who faltered. For example, RIM, Palm, DEC, Burroughs, Commodore, SGI and Sun. I think a pithy ~100 word description could describe them all: "Excellent teams blindsiding the world with visionary products that crash through material reality with the human spirit of creativity who are not able to stabilize the fragile chemical interplay between market, money, magic and mind. Delays and disappointments lead to disasters and desertion as the dreams turn into nightmares. The talent atrophies and the culture grows bitter. Plans for the future are replaced with the nostalgia of the past as the once great company grasps in futility at trying to reconstruct the fleeting world that once was but can increasingly never be again." This was also Apple's trajectory in the late 90s. The confluence of factors that led to its demise and rise were many and extraordinary. The MSFT influx is in my mind the most memorable. Apple was definitely in survival/death mode and could have just coasted and rode to the end until they got snatched up by someone like say, counterfactually now, Adobe in say 2003. They'd be another company on that pile of once great machines of the mighty who faltered. I should probably disclose I've never liked their products. I've got an obscure collection too; a magic link, newton, nextstation - I had a 1983 pre-production mac, early snow-white design language hardware - I've never worked there but I think I have pretty deep exposure to them and I've always found their stuff to be overpriced shoddy ostentatious appliances. And that's enough gasoline on this fire from me.
prox 4y ago
Guy Kawasaki also talks about his time at Apple. There were definitely problems, I mean Guy was one of the software evangelists to get more software getting produced which was a BIG problem. After C64 you got the Amiga (graphics) and Atari ST (music) who took a lot of the marketshare for easy to use GUI os’es. Also games were big on both. PC was still predominantly business until games like Doom and the first audioboards/videocards and the CD-ROM.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I have been programming Apple software since 1986. That means that I have been through a lot of changes, and watched Apple expand and contract; numerous times. I used to regularly get sneers from "PC people," about how I was holding onto a "dead baby," and should just let go, and learn Windows. It got fairly infuriating. Geeks can be pretty insulting (just spend some time, wandering around the comments of this very venue, and we're quite well-behaved, hereabouts). Kinda glad I stuck it through, though.
Someone 4y ago
> Then he came in as a hail-mary and got $150mil from Microsoft to stay in business a few extra months That was the outcome of a process that started years earlier, when Jobs wasn’t at Apple. I wouldn’t describ3 it as “got”, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company: The lawsuit "Apple Computer v. San Francisco Canyon Co.", filed on December 6, 1994, alleged that the San Francisco Canyon Company used some of the code developed under contract to Apple in their additions to Video for Windows. Apple expanded the lawsuit to include Intel and Microsoft on February 10, 1995, alleging that Microsoft and Intel knowingly used the software company to aid them in stealing several thousand lines of Apple's QuickTime code in their effort to improve the performance of Video for Windows. On March 3, 1995, a Federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that prohibited Microsoft from distributing its current version of Video for Windows […] In August 1997, Apple and Microsoft announced a settlement deal. Apple would drop all current lawsuits, including all lingering issues from the "Look & Feel" lawsuit and the "QuickTime source code" lawsuit, and agree to make Internet Explorer for Mac the default browser on the Macintosh unless the user explicitly chose the bundled Netscape browser. In return, Microsoft agreed to continue developing Office, Internet Explorer, and various developer tools and software for the Mac for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock

scarface74 4y ago

> Then he came in as a hail-mary and got $150mil from Microsoft to stay in business a few extra months This is another HN myth like “cable was once ad free”. Before Amelio was kicked out, he had secured $4 billion in financing. If you look at the series of events, it is completely illogical thst $150 million could have “saved” Apple. The deal happened in 1997. Apple wasn’t profitable and just barely until 2000-2001. $150 million couldn’t have saved it. Besides that, a month later, Apple spent $100 million to buy out PowerComputing’s Mac license. The second myth is that part of the deal was that Microsoft agreed to port Office to the Mac. Office was already available for the Mac and actually started on the Mac. Part of the deal was that Microsoft would continue supporting the Mac with Office and port IE. Also Apple and Microsoft were involved in two major legal disputes - the “look and feel” lawsuit where Apple accused MS of copying the Macs interface and that MS illegally used QuickTime code. They agreed to drop the lawsuit and cross license patents.

kristopolous 4y ago
I'd like to contest that and hopefully I'll remember to do it tomorrow when I'm awake. Their quarterly 10-Ks are online from the era. I've gone through them before. Sorry for not being more engaging, it's late and I'm getting kinda dizzy so I should go to bed.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Start here: Apple bought PowerComputing for $100 million in cash right after the MS deal. That would mean that a net $50 million “saved” Apple. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-acquires-power-computing/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-acquires-power-comput... My timeline for Apple profitability was off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc. But Apple lost over $1 billion that year. A net $50 million was a drop in the bucket. I also misstated that Amelio had obtained working capital. It was actually Fred Anderson from the same article. > On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors. Fred D. Anderson was the head of the directors in short term and obtained short-term working capital from the banks in July 1997.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    Alright, I'm awake now. I looked over what I wrote. I think was doing too much for dramatic effect. The history in this thread is excellent. I don't have much to add but out of either narcissism or obligation I will (I wonder if they are related) and with it open a new can of worms, so let's go if someone was to run Lloyd's algorithm on tech companies they'd probably, with the right feature selection find nice Gaussian blobs around a number of once great companies who faltered. For example, RIM, Palm, DEC, Burroughs, Commodore, SGI and Sun. I think a pithy ~100 word description could describe them all: "Excellent teams blindsiding the world with visionary products that crash through material reality with the human spirit of creativity who are not able to stabilize the fragile chemical interplay between market, money, magic and mind. Delays and disappointments lead to disasters and desertion as the dreams turn into nightmares. The talent atrophies and the culture grows bitter. Plans for the future are replaced with the nostalgia of the past as the once great company grasps in futility at trying to reconstruct the fleeting world that once was but can increasingly never be again." This was also Apple's trajectory in the late 90s. The confluence of factors that led to its demise and rise were many and extraordinary. The MSFT influx is in my mind the most memorable. Apple was definitely in survival/death mode and could have just coasted and rode to the end until they got snatched up by someone like say, counterfactually now, Adobe in say 2003. They'd be another company on that pile of once great machines of the mighty who faltered. I should probably disclose I've never liked their products. I've got an obscure collection too; a magic link, newton, nextstation - I had a 1983 pre-production mac, early snow-white design language hardware - I've never worked there but I think I have pretty deep exposure to them and I've always found their stuff to be overpriced shoddy ostentatious appliances. And that's enough gasoline on this fire from me.

prox 4y ago

Guy Kawasaki also talks about his time at Apple. There were definitely problems, I mean Guy was one of the software evangelists to get more software getting produced which was a BIG problem. After C64 you got the Amiga (graphics) and Atari ST (music) who took a lot of the marketshare for easy to use GUI os’es. Also games were big on both. PC was still predominantly business until games like Doom and the first audioboards/videocards and the CD-ROM.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I have been programming Apple software since 1986. That means that I have been through a lot of changes, and watched Apple expand and contract; numerous times. I used to regularly get sneers from "PC people," about how I was holding onto a "dead baby," and should just let go, and learn Windows. It got fairly infuriating. Geeks can be pretty insulting (just spend some time, wandering around the comments of this very venue, and we're quite well-behaved, hereabouts). Kinda glad I stuck it through, though.

Someone 4y ago

> Then he came in as a hail-mary and got $150mil from Microsoft to stay in business a few extra months That was the outcome of a process that started years earlier, when Jobs wasn’t at Apple. I wouldn’t describ3 it as “got”, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company: The lawsuit "Apple Computer v. San Francisco Canyon Co.", filed on December 6, 1994, alleged that the San Francisco Canyon Company used some of the code developed under contract to Apple in their additions to Video for Windows. Apple expanded the lawsuit to include Intel and Microsoft on February 10, 1995, alleging that Microsoft and Intel knowingly used the software company to aid them in stealing several thousand lines of Apple's QuickTime code in their effort to improve the performance of Video for Windows. On March 3, 1995, a Federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that prohibited Microsoft from distributing its current version of Video for Windows […] In August 1997, Apple and Microsoft announced a settlement deal. Apple would drop all current lawsuits, including all lingering issues from the "Look & Feel" lawsuit and the "QuickTime source code" lawsuit, and agree to make Internet Explorer for Mac the default browser on the Macintosh unless the user explicitly chose the bundled Netscape browser. In return, Microsoft agreed to continue developing Office, Internet Explorer, and various developer tools and software for the Mac for the next 5 years, and purchase $150 million of non-voting Apple stock