10 ms·
In 1997, the company was at its lowest point. 70% of the products were cancelled, 3000 jobs were cut. Running a library was certainly an untenable luxury. If J
by brianpan 4y ago
In 1997, the company was at its lowest point. 70% of the products were cancelled, 3000 jobs were cut. Running a library was certainly an untenable luxury.
If Jobs was short-sighted it was because Apple was literally weeks away from bankruptcy.
- musicale 4y agoJobs and Apple were certainly in severe cost cutting mode (and cutting in general - even profitable parts that Jobs thought diluted Apple's focus) but closing the library probably wasn't needed to save Apple. Librarians were a drop in Apple's cost bucket (vs. useless middle managers who survived Jobs, hundreds of millions in restructuring costs, the $75M repurchase of Power Computing's macOS license, etc.) and the productivity and morale benefit from the library was likely greater than its cost. A glib Jobsian "they should know all that already" was also simply wrong. In any case, a few years later Apple could easily afford it, but it was gone forever.