Apple Fools: Times the House of Jobs went horribly awry

Re: Newton

.. as amply demonstrated by Microsoft :).

They aren't alone. Actually you could see Microsoft as being at the top of the decline that others such as Nokia or Novell. In all cases, what you see them doing is exactly what Apple's execs did at the time when they were first chucking Jobs out and it might have worked too if those same execs had any real idea when it came to innovation. The trouble is that too many of these companies fall into the hands of beancounters who only see these companies in terms of current sales and have no idea about trying things out, risk and so forth.

The article, for example, mentions Acorn. This was the company that brought the ARM into being (the chip name predated the company by a few years - the original name was the Acorn RISC Machine) and demonstrated its uses in its Archimedes and Risc PC ranges of computers yet, in the midst of preparation for a new machine that could have yet again leapfrogged the competition of the time, they were summarily clobbered by a bunch of beancounters who decided that the future wasn't in that sort of thing. They weren't prepared to risk anything, instead asset-stripping the company then going on their merry way. Acorn didn't stand a chance.

I may not have had much time for Steve Jobs but it can't be denied that Apple is a pale shadow now of what it was a scant four or five years ago and, since you mention it, Microsoft isn't either. Each continues to throw out ideas but without a clear direction other than that dictated by the bottom line which, so it seems, is the only thing a beancounter is interested in.

Re: Newton

In 1996, Apple's Mac OS was reaching the end of its technological life. It needed another OS and was casting around on how to make this happen. It's Mac product range was getting confused and people were moving over to PCs. Ironically the Newton took 5 years to mature but by then it was due for a rewrite too.

Apple was in Triage. It needed a loan from Microsoft, the partial sale of its stake in ARM and the iMac G3, which helped rejuvenate the Mac OS product line in 1998 until OS X could come through in 2001, to survive.

You can put the boot into Microsoft, but actually the challenges Apple and other tech companies face, at a certain level, are remarkably similar. Sooner or later your base technologies get long in the tooth and then you've got to cast around for a replacement. Hopefully you can do it while cash flow is good.

Further irony: the tech platform closest to the Newton in usability (HWR, stylus support, portability) is Windows 10 and the Asus Vivotab or Lenovo 8" ThinkPad tablets.

Re: 1985-1997 missteps???

Well, the thing is, Apple is not burning through their pile of cash at the moment, they are adding to it. Net profit for the last quarter of 2015 was $11.1 billion.

"The Company posted quarterly revenue of $51.5 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion, or $1.96 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $42.1 billion and net profit of $8.5 billion, or $1.42 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 39.9 percent compared to 38 percent in the year-ago quarter."

Re: 1985-1997 missteps???

Have you seen any of the tat they have produced in the last few years?

If they fell into a barrel of tits they would come out sucking their thumbs!

By all accounts St. Jobs was a nightmare to deal with, but you have to grudgingly admit he really knew what he was about - or at least stood his ground even if he was wrong!. Everyone else at 1 infinite loop (what an appropriate address) not so much, I guess the last person Jobs would consider working for was Jobs.

I'd be careful with confirmation bias. Steve Jobs made mistakes too, but they were somewhat less enthusiastically advertised :).

Re: Newton fishing

Newton was first spun out into a standalone subsidiary of Apple, called Newton, Inc (Claris was similarly split out); later, it was "spun-in" to Apple again, mainly so that Jobs could shut it down.

Newton's last product line was "eMate" a small laptop form-factor aimed at the US school market (and a forerunner of the design language that would appear with PowerBookG3/iMac/iBook). It did okay, and looked like opening a new market, but maybe someone in Apple saw it as a threat to Apple's own, higher margin, computer sales into that market.

But the big benefit of Newton was the investment in ARM Holdings. There were only two things that kept the company running through 1997: income from the ARM shares and the $400M settlement/investment from Microsoft.

I briefly worked on the "Tanzania" 4400-series PowerMacs - I wouldn't class it as a failure, though. By the standards of the time, it actually sold well. More importantly, it provided a lot of experience about reducing Apple's dependence on expensive components, particularly its reliance on SCSI for mass-storage; a year later, iMac arrived, with many of the same PC-parts-bin bits inside, just in a fancier case.

The hardware "failures" had all occurred before the likes of the 4400 came out. The real damage to Apple was done by the bewildering "Performa" range, where some were decent, and others were complete dogs, and even people inside Apple had trouble remembering which was which.

Re: Bah!

Nope. I think you are confusing the Newton and the Palm PC.

Palm used a pen and Grafitti handwriting (a modified alphabet you needed to learn) to input data. "Stupid chicken scratches" is a very good description of that. The Newton would learn to recognize its users handwriting. Like I posted above, one of the things that worked in the last series (but not in the first*, second,...). The pen was needed because the touchscreens we have today were not around yet. There is no reason to assume the handwriting recognition couldn't have been ported to a finger-sensitive screen.

*It really was a lot like this. Drove you mad when you wanted to get stuff done, good fun at parties.

Re: So many gaffes

It's just a MK I thing.

- First Ipod: FireWire only, Mac only. 'Only' 5GB. Three times the price of a MD player.

- First iPhone - no 3G

- First iPad - didn't receive nearly as many OS updates as the MK II product.

It isn't just an Apple thing. Sony, internally, saw product range lifespans as being like a day, from sunrise to sunset. Mk I was 'build it any way you can'. MK II was the 'iconic' version being more refined, and bought by more people than just the first adopters. Sony would then produce themes and variations. And yes, Steve Jobs had a friendly relationship with the tops executives at Sony. In turn, the father of the Playstation and VAIO was a fan of Essingler's Mac design languag, and Sony's design team would use Macs. (Source: Digital Dreams. The Work of the Sony Design Centre - ISBN: Google it yourself)

What we forget in the UK is that Apple only sold the iPhone through one network, and insisted that they didn't take the piss on data charges.