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101 Ways to Save Apple (1997)
- shna 12y agoOne very insightful person Daly is.
- johnnyfaehell 12y agoSo they went middle of the field and went with option 50? > 50. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development Worked out for them.
- sambeau 12y agoThis one too: > 76. Make damn sure that Rhapsody runs on an Intel chip. Write a Windows NT emulator for Rhapsody's Intel version. (although Parallels & VMWare did the latter part)
- Tloewald 12y agoThe first Rhapsody ran on Intel and you could compile Cocoa apps to run on (bare) Windows NT.
- peteri 12y agoLike number 31 price is a bit off but Telco bundle pricing makes it pretty much correct. 31. Build a PDA for less than $250 that actually does something: a) cellular email b) 56-channel TV c) Internet phone.
- florianletsch 12y ago> 101. Don't worry. You'll survive. It's Netscape we should really worry about. Why did no one listen?
- joeblau 12y agoWow he was spot on. The memories of netscape live on though Mozilla.
- kjjw 12y ago"5. Straighten out the naming convention. Link model numbers to processor speed. When buying a 3400 laptop computer, what, exactly, are you getting? Unless you study the brochures, you don't know how it compares with its competition. On the other hand, Wintel talks explicitly about processor speed. It's a Pentium 200-MHz box." Urgh. And while we're at it, why on earth did Apple never plaster their hardware with "Intel Inside" and "NVIDIA" stickers? How else am I supposed to know that my laptop has an Intel chip and an NVIDIA chip?!?! Surely everyone wants to know this!
- kosei 12y agoI think the important thing is clarity of what you're getting (and how to compare) - not specifically detailing parts. I still don't understand how this isn't industry standard. The process of buying a computer (non-Mac) these days is still as confusing as it's ever been without doing hours of research. For instance, how do I compare two PCs: A: Intel Core i7-4770 3.4 GHz and NVIDIA Geforce GT 620 B: FX-Series Eight-Core FX-8350 4 GHz and NVIDIA GeForce GTX760 Even when you clarify some of the parts, it's frustrating. What Apple does well (and frankly Dell and some other companies within their own ecosystems) is to add a bit more clarity even if it's still a bit opaque (iPhone 5 > iPhone 4, and the fact that all mac parts are relatively similar, just with stair-stepped upgrades).
- jiggy2011 12y agoBack in 1997 CPU clock speeds actually mattered, there was a substantial difference between what could be done with a 100Mhz Pentium and a 166Mhz Pentium (with MMX!). In 2014 it is screen size / resolution or storage that matters.
- potatolicious 12y ago$$$ - Intel and Nvidia paid for the placement. The same reason why Dell, Toshiba, et al bundle a bunch of crapware with your default install: it's paid placement. Of course, that doesn't mean it's a good idea - these companies continue to sacrifice their own brand and image in exchange for not a lot of money. You know your company has no product focus when it's willing to plaster shit all over its own products in exchange for a few bucks in extra margin.
- AdamFernandez 12y ago"1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing boxes." Good thing they didn't 'admit it'.
- mootothemax 12y ago"1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing boxes." Good thing they didn't 'admit it'. Isn't this essentially what they've done with Foxconn and the other China-based producers they work with?
- steven2012 12y agoNo. What they meant is to be a software-only company, ie. compete with MSFT without the liability of hardware.
- jiggy2011 12y agoBut plenty of the other suggestions are about building hardware.
- Eric_WVGG 12y agoThey're competing ideas from different industry-folk. There's a ton of contradiction in the article, and that was kind of the point.
- mootothemax 12y agoNo. What they meant is to be a software-only company, ie. compete with MSFT without the liability of hardware Disagree. Apple had half-tried and experimented doing this with the "official" clones programme, e.g. Power computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Official_Macintosh_clone_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#Official_Macint... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- bglnelissen 12y agoAlthough some were (retrospectively) bad ideas, I like 31 c: an internet phone.
- qzcx 12y ago"97. Have Pixar make 3001, A Space Odyssey, with HAL replaced by a Mac." They did and it was called "WALL-E"
- baldfat 12y agoHow am I missing WALL-E being anything like 2001? I still don't see the comparison.
- JohnBooty 12y agoIn general, they're very different movies, but both of them share the striking fact that you don't hear a single bit of spoken dialogue until ~15+ minutes into the movie.
- cecilpl 12y agoBecause space.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoFrom http://2001.wikia.com/wiki/HAL_9000 http://2001.wikia.com/wiki/HAL_9000 : In the 2008 Pixar animated film WALL-E, the starship Axiom's Autopilot ("Auto"), which is also the main villain of the film, has a glowing red camera, a low electronic voice and a hidden directive - deliberately reminiscent of HAL. WALL-E's pet cockroach is also named Hal, but it is also a reference to Hal Roach.
- yuchi 12y agoWhen WALL-E restarts the sound is the one from the Mac boot.
- Xixi 12y ago"7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store, flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple salespeople, and display everything like you're a living, breathing company and not a remote, dusty concept." They did that with CompUSA, if my memory serves well... and are still doing it in France in FNACs for instance.
- dtech 12y agoIn the whole of Europe (or at least the Netherlands) where there are not a lot of Apple stores they are very actively doing this. Some large electronic chains usually have an Apple section in their stores, often with an Apple salesperson on busy days.
- wil421 12y agoThey still do this at Best Buy.
- finalight 12y agoif apple did what the site suggest it wouldn't be apple
- mwfunk 12y agoWell, yeah, that's the point. In 1997, "being Apple" meant "going out of business". So it was absolutely telling them to stop being Apple so they could live to see 1998. It didn't pan out that way, but no one could have anticipated that at the time and it's kind of miraculous that they made it through that period with the essentials of the company intact.
- markm248 12y agoI wonder what James is up to these days.
- Eric_WVGG 12y agoJames just edited it. The contributions were from (ahem) Mark R. Anderson, Ronald P. Andring Sr., Andrew Anker, Carla Barros, Dave Barry, David Batstone, John Battelle, Michael Behar, Jackie Bennion, Gareth Branwyn, Van Burnham, Seth Chandler, Tom Claburn, Christine Comaford, Peter Corbett, John Couch, Douglas Coupland, S. Russel Craig, Mark Dery, David Diamond, Dennis Dimos, Nikki Echler, Laura Fredrickson, Jesse Freund, Simson Garfinkel, Steve Gibson, Tim Goeke, Jeff Greenwald, Jacquard W. Guenon, Joseph Haddon, David Hakala, Russell Hires, Rex Ishibashi, Dave Jenne, Amy Johns, Richard Kadrey, Philippe Kahn, Kristine Kern, Indra Lowenstein, Regis McKenna, Warren Michelsen, Russ Mitchell, Eugene Mosier, Nicholas Negroponte, Eduardo Parra, Lisa Picarille, John Plunkett, Gary Andrew Poole, Spencer Reiss, Jack Rickard, Louis Rossetto, Peter Rutten, Winn Schwartau, Kristian Schwartz, Brian Slesinsky, Richard Stallman, Carl Steadman, Don Steinberg, Julie Sullivan, Kathy Tafel, Ruth Tooker, Joel Truher, Watts Wacker, Michael Wise.
- jsun 12y agoThe writer was even money overall, but 2 for 10 in the top 10... not great If you are running a startup I don't know of a better way to convince yourself not to listen to the haters
- nkozyra 12y agoThis was explicitly not written by "the haters," though. >> So we surveyed a cross section of hardcore Mac fans and came up with 101 ways to get you back on the path to salvation.
- sjwright 12y agoApple ended up doing the following almost exactly as stated: 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 23, 25, 26, 33, 34, 37, 39, 50, 51, 62, 63, 70, 76, 83, 85, 87, 94, 95 and 98. And they pretty much did these in spirit: 5 (but even simpler), 4 (Steve did it), 8 (iTunes), 9, 12, 18, 22 (iPad), 31 (iPod Touch), 40, 41 (App store), 44 (Siri), 46, 52 (briefly), 54 (dumped not sold), 72 (USB instead), and 100 (either Final Cut or Pixlet). The remaining are either terrible ideas or intended only as humour.
- dtech 12y agoSome people say that the advice is stupid, but there is actually a lot of sensible things that they did at some point or another, some even being distinctly Apple-y: > 10. Get a great image campaign > 14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack. > 18. Stop being buttoned-down corporate and appeal to the fanatic feeling that still exists for the Mac > 23. Create a new logo > 25. Portables, portables, portables. > 31. Build a PDA for less than $250 that actually does something people usually pay less than $250 upfront for an iPhone > 34. Port the OS to the Intel platform (Identical to 76) > 37. Take advantage of NeXT's easy and powerful OpenStep programming tools to entice a new generation of Mac software developers Especially true for iOS > 39. Build a laptop that weighs 2 pounds > 50. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development > 51. Speak to the consumer. > 54. Sell off the laser printer business > 70. Simplify your PC product line > 72. Try the industry-standard serial port plug. Apple switched to USB pretty quickly if I remember correctly > 101. Don't worry. You'll survive
- snsr 12y agoAnother interesting one - > 59. Invest heavily in Newton technology, which is one area where Microsoft can't touch you. Build voice recognition and better gesture recognition into Newton, making a new environment for desktop, laptop, and palmtop Macs. Newton can also be the basis of a new generation of embedded systems, from cash registers to kiosks.
- Tloewald 12y agoThey also suggest dumping Newton, etc., which is what Jobs actually did.
- jonnathanson 12y agoExactly, which was the smart thing to do. As much as the idea of Newton had a lot of potential, and in as much as we can draw retrospective parallels between Newton's potential and that of iOS, Newton was simply wrong for its era. It was ahead of its time in many respects -- particularly, in that telephony would become the central driver behind the idea of getting everyone on the planet to carry a device around in their pockets. Newton predated ubiquitous cell phone usage (and cellular infrastructure). In other respects, Newton was not necessarily too "late," but perhaps insufficient. It was not a viable alternative to the productivity of laptops, nor could it have been, given the ecosystem that existed at the time. Could it have powered embedded devices? Sure, but to questionable profit-margin potential for Apple. Embedded devices was an extremely fragmented marketplace back in Newton's day. (Still is today, in many respects.) It's important to keep in mind that the iPhone worked because the world the iPhone depended upon was ready for it. The world that Newton would have depended upon did not exist when Newton debuted, and would not exist for the better part of a decade.
- Gracana 12y ago"Abandon the Mach operating system you just acquired" No, don't do that!
- mabhatter 12y agoThey trashed Mach and Rapsody and bought out NEXT to get Steve back full time. OSX is mostly updated NEXT, right down to Objective C and API names.
- twoodfin 12y agoRhapsody (with the underlying Mach kernel) was the NeXTSTEP stuff in a preliminary stage of Mac-ification. The strategy of what to do with the NeXT-based OS vs. what became known as "Classic" was in flux when Rhapsody saw its first developer previews, but ultimately Rhapsody was transformed into Mac OS X. The biggest additions, IIRC, were the Carbon APIs and the Aqua UI.
- crusso 12y agoExactly. And back then, getting "Steve back full time" wasn't what they were betting the farm on. More than anything, Apple was desperate for a next generation OS. Their choice was between NeXT's OpenStep and the BeOS. Obviously, they chose NeXT. Now in hindsight, due to Apple's success post Steve's return, many claim that he was the play all along. At the time, though, that wasn't the consensus of people I knew in and around the Apple sphere in Cupertino.
- Gracana 12y ago"64. Team up with Sony, which wants to get into the computer business in a big way - think Sony MacMan" That almost happened, sort of.[1] [1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Macintosh_Prototypes.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
- alphadevx 12y agoMaybe Wired should consider taking their archive offline.
- veidr 12y agoI remember reading this (on paper) in the 90s in college. It came across as worthless idiot blather then, as it does now with the benefit of hindsight. 1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing boxes. Wronger words than that have rarely been spoken.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoApple has definitely outsourced hardware production (as has the rest of the industry, mostly). I don't understand what your point is.
- veidr 12y agoIn the context of that article, 'outsource' meant letting other companies (such as the short-lived Mac clone maker Power Computing) manufacture hardware while Apple just licensed the software. (But also, the very best Macs, which command the highest prices, are currently made at Apple's facility in Austin, TX.)
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoThe Mac Pros are assembled in Austin because they are high value and low volume (just like DELL still assembles servers nearby in round rock). At any rate, 2014 is very different from 1997, and outsourcing has become ubiquitous, just not exactly in the way that was foreseen.
- mhurron 12y ago> currently made at Apple's facility in Austin, TX Assembled in the US, not made. It's cheaper to ship boxes from China, where they were made, full of components that stack than it is to ship assembled products that leave a bunch of empty space. And under US regulations you still get to slap a 'Made in the USA' sticker on it and charge even more.
- sixothree 12y ago
- asaddhamani 12y ago"60. Abandon the Mach operating system you just acquired and run Windows NT kernel instead. This would let Mac run existing PC programs. (Microsoft actually has Windows NT working on Mac hardware. It also has emulation of Mac programs with NT running on both Power PC and x86.)"
- gone35 12y agoNot all advice given was that bad. From the article, towards the end: "Make a lightweight, portable, palmtop Mac. Ideally, it should be a wearable, with a private eye screen and some sort of half-keyboard. If Apple can't manufacture this, it could make a deal with another hardware maker. Wearables are the future." - Marvin Minsky, AI pioneer
- yuhong 12y agoThinking about this period, I think they once got the Blue Box running on NuKernel, which is what Copland should have been in the first place.
- Eric_WVGG 12y agoThis was a Wired magazine classic. They should have run a “101 Ways to Save Microsoft” sequel before the Ballmer retirement.