Twelve Years of Apple without Steve Jobs
1985 Apple is losing sales due to the advent of the IBM PC, a better computer than what they could offer in Cupertino. The company left Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith - the key figures of the project Macintosh, seriously thinking about leaving the company and Steve Wozniak.
Steve Jobs, who founded Apple Computer at 21, became a millionaire at 23, and managed to fly out of his own company at 30. We all remember John Scully and his growing confrontation with Jobs. After the latter, in the absence of the former head of Pepsico, attempted a coup on the board of directors, on May 24, 1985, Jobs was fired from his position as head of the Macintosh department.
After five months of total disregard - he just stopped going to work, but no one noticed - Jobs also refused from the post of chairman of the board of directors of the company. Jobs was not taken to the Shuttle, at some stage his candidacy was actually considered for space flight. By the way, here he was very lucky - the teacher Krista McLiff, who was chosen instead of him, died at the start of the Challenger. He also rejected the idea of ​​founding a computer company in the Soviet Union, having adopted a telemaster for a scout during his visit to Moscow. In the same year, he spent $ 7 million on the launch of NeXT.
')
It so happened that Steve Jobs is synonymous with Apple. We mention the chapter, and we mean the most expensive brand in the world . And there is nothing surprising that any Jobs biography is an Apple biography.
But it also makes those years when he was removed from her leadership, falling out of our sight. Almost all the works about Jobs' life do not tell anything about what happened at Apple in the period from 1985 to 1997, they stop at his work at NeXT and Pixar, but not at the life of Apple. The best thing you can find out is that the company has quietly stagnated.
Here we will talk about ten of the many products that have seen the light over these twelve years without Jobs. Some of them were failures and were not particularly remembered, and some were either successful or in some other way affected the future of Apple.
The first battery-powered Macintosh computer was released in 1989. The machine weighed 7.2 kilograms (most of it was occupied by a lead-acid battery) and had 1 megabyte of RAM with the possibility of increasing to 9, the later-released backlit model had 8 megabytes of RAM. The heart was a Motorola 68000 processor running at 16 MHz. External drives were presented in three configurations: with a single floppy disk drive, with two or with a floppy disk drive and a special 40-megabyte hard drive Conner CP-3045 with low power consumption. The computer was running OS System 6 and System 7.
The cost of the device was 6500 dollars.
In general, despite the accolades of critics, the model was unsuccessful. The computer could not work on the network due to the weakness of the power supply, and in some cases the hard drive could not unwind.
A new Apple laptop was first shown at COMDEX in October 1991. It had a nine-inch, black-and-white backlit display with a resolution of 640 Ă— 400 pixels, a 20-40 MB hard drive, and the same Motorola 68000 processor operating at the same frequency and 2-8 MB of RAM. This "half" version of Macintosh Portable cost only $ 2,300. The computer weighed about 2.2 kilograms and worked with System 6.
Scully personally followed the project begun in 1990. One million dollars was spent on its marketing, but revenue was a billion in the very first year. Users soon began to neglect the model 100 and more and more actively bought models 140 and 170, because they had a floppy drive. The model was so successful that the marketing name PowerBook survived even rearrangements after Jobs returned, and existed before the baton in 2006 took over the MacBook brand.
From 1992 to 1997, Apple released a more compact PowerBook model. The computer weighed just 1.86 kilograms and was 36 millimeters thick, it was slightly wider than a sheet of A4 paper (280 Ă— 220 mm).
Different models had different characteristics: from 4 to 56 megabytes of RAM, variants of Motorola 68030 and 68040 processors, and PowerPC 603e in PowerBook Duo 2300c.
The computer owes its name to the possibility of connecting to the Duo docking station via a 156-pin connector , which gave full access to both the laptop's central processor and the data buses. In a Duo-dock, a closed laptop was inserted like a cassette into a video player, and as a result, a full-sized computer powered by an electrical network with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and all standard ports was obtained. The dock could have a disk drive, an additional second-level processor cache, a math coprocessor, additional video memory, and NuBus expansion slots, thanks to which up to 3 monitors could be connected.
In addition, mini and micro docks were available, the popularity of which was caused by various third-party solutions. These docking stations made it possible to connect multiple devices: Ehthernet, NTSC and PAL video outputs, external speakers, a display, and others.
The first Apple Pocket PC, Newton, was released in 1987, and in 1993, the MessagePad appeared. This was a major upgrade to the Newton line. The original MessagePad had an ARM 610 RISC processor, characteristic for all Newton devices, operating at 20 MHz, enough for all RAM 640 kilobytes, 4 megabytes of internal storage, 9.6 kb / s modem, black and white display with a resolution of 336 Ă— 240. The weight of the device was about 640 grams.
On August 2, 1993 at the Boston Macworld Expo MessagePad was the most popular product, and easily went for $ 900 apiece. In the wide sale of PDAs entered at a price of $ 700. In the first three months, 50 thousand devices were sold.
The implementation of handwriting input is interesting: in the early versions of the operating system, there was the Calligrapher system from the Russian company Paragraph. The recognition system learned to recognize the input of a specific person, but sometimes it was not accurate, it was even ridiculed in The Simpsons in the Lisa on Ice series. Yes, that cartoons, she was completely harassed by critics.
Another negative quality was the lack of the ability to connect a PDA to a desktop computer, although this was added in later models. The handwriting recognition quality has also been fixed. Thanks to this, even today Apple Newton is valued in the market of the old "iron" is higher than the model of the same time period. In 2006, CNET compared the Apple MessagePad 2000 with the Samsung Q1, and Newton was preferred.
This was Apple’s first attempt to integrate a computer with a TV. A total of 10 thousand devices were released. Macintosh TV began selling in October 1997 for $ 2,097.
The operating system is System 7, you can upgrade to Mac OS 9.1. In fact, it was the LC 520 in a black case with a TV tuner, which allowed you to watch TV on a 14-inch screen, not rising from the workplace. It sounds somewhat tempting, but the implementation has let it down: you can either watch TV or work - you cannot move the window with the picture of television. This test helped in the future, the TV tuner was a popular option in the Performa and LC model range.
Included was a remote control capable of also working with Sony TVs. Interestingly, this was the first Macintosh in black color. Inside, there were 5 MB of RAM, a Motorola 68030 processor with a 32 MHz operating frequency, 512 KB of video memory (maximum resolution 640 Ă— 480), an optical disc drive and a hard disk of 160 megabytes.
The 1995 model had a very strong “iron”: PowerPC 604 or 604e processors operating at 120 to 200 MHz, depending on the model, the mezzanine board allowed quick replacement and configuration of two 180 MHz processors. It was the first Mac to have PCI ports; there were six of them all, one of which was always occupied by the video card.
The computer was running System 7.5, but with some modifications, you can put Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on it, which makes it the oldest Mac on which Mac OS X stands.
Powerful stuffing made the model attractive for graphic designers and people involved in music.
Work on the project went together with Philips. The 1993 1993 PowerCD should have become a separate, self-contained and portable CD player that could read ordinary computer CDs and photo discs (Kodak format was supported) paired with Mac via a SCSI port, audio system or TV.
This failed attempt to create the first Apple non-computer and non-computer peripheral device for the computer is due to the success of Newton, after which in Cupertino they saw new markets for their electronics. Yes, all desktop Macs already had a CD-ROM drive, but it was not yet in the PowerBook. The Mac Like Things department managed to create only PowerCD and AppleDesign Powered Speakers columns before its conversion to the New Media Group.
20 years ago, Kodak, together with Apple, launched a project for a digital camera, the resolution of which sounds ridiculous by today's standards - this is just 0.3 megapixels (640 Ă— 480). Modern smartphones and front camera are many times better, but it was one of the first consumer cameras. Often it is called the very first, for example, as Time Magazine characterized it, although the first was Logitech FotoMan.
There were 3 models: 100 and 150 were compatible with both Windows and Apple Macintosh, and 200 officially worked only with Macs. “Officially” is because the 200th model was almost completely analogous to the Fuji DS-7 and Samsung's Kenox SSC-350N, so you can still get it to work with Microsoft's operating systems.
Its other characteristics were as modest as the resolution: QuickTake, PICT formats were supported, while models 150 and 200 also supported BMP, JPEG, PCX and TIFF. Inside was a megabyte EPROM memory or 2-4 megabytes of SmartMedia card in later models. The cost of three models was 749, 700 and 600 dollars. Here, for clarity, a picture with QuickTake 150.
Yes, Apple released a game console, and this is not even a joke. However, there is nothing much to be surprised about, today the Cupertino company is in charge of one of the largest markets for mobile games, and this does not shock anyone.
The 1996 console used the PiPP! N multimedia platform to create an inexpensive device with the capabilities of a four-speed optical disc drive. Also Bandai Pippin was able to work with the network via a modem at 14.4 kb / s. System 7.5.2 ran a 66-MHz PowerPC 603 processor and 16-bit graphics. Many devices could be connected to the console, including an Apple printer.
A total of 42 thousand devices were sold, and, in general, it all ended in a silent failure. The console mainly lacked software: less than 80 games and applications were available in the Japanese market, only 18 games were available in the USA.
Apple was late: the company's 20th anniversary happened on April 1, 1996, and the model of the twentieth anniversary was shown at the MacWorld Expo on January 7 of the following, 1997. The price tag of 7499 dollars clearly said: this is a model for a high management table. In general, a price of $ 9,000 was expected, but later it was lowered to $ 3,500. And this is not surprising: the Power Macintosh 6500 with similar characteristics cost $ 2,999, which clearly signaled an overpriced price for TAM. As a rule, the new Apple computer model is sold for exactly a year, and when the time came to an end, the price dropped even to 1995 dollars.
The design departed from bored in the rulers of all manufacturers of plastic parallelepipeds. For this model, a futuristic design and a color of metallic colors were chosen, which is why TAM has appeared in several films. Inside were a PowerPC 603e processor running at 250 MHz and with a second-level cache up to 1 megabyte, 2 RAM slots expandable up to 128 MB, a two-gigabyte hard drive, an Apple SuperDrive, and a four-speed compact disc drive. Supported resolution up to 800 Ă— 600 and 16-bit colors.
A total of 11,601 computers were sold, Wozniak and Jobs received one by one. Today, TAM has a high collection value in certain circles of loyal Apple fans.
In 1997, as a result of the acquisition of NeXT Software by Epple, Steve Jobs was again among his native environment. It was also profitable for him - NeXT no longer made its perfect, but too expensive computers for the consumer market and shrank to a small company of 240 people supplying software. After that, Apple began a variety of personnel changes, everything moved in, abandoned something, listened to something, despite the fact that Jobs was just a consultant. Over the years at the helm, Jobs was able to change Apple beyond recognition.
Was it for the better? Certainly, yes, this may indicate at least the increasing by the end of the nineties frivolity and often the failure of the cemetery exhibits of equipment, which we can see above.
This is evidenced by financial performance: for twelve years, without one of its creators, Apple’s market share fell from 16 percent to 4, and with Jobs the Cupertino-based company became the most expensive in the history of mankind .
Based on ABC News , The Apple Revolution , Wikipedia.org and Engadget .
Steve Jobs, who founded Apple Computer at 21, became a millionaire at 23, and managed to fly out of his own company at 30. We all remember John Scully and his growing confrontation with Jobs. After the latter, in the absence of the former head of Pepsico, attempted a coup on the board of directors, on May 24, 1985, Jobs was fired from his position as head of the Macintosh department.After five months of total disregard - he just stopped going to work, but no one noticed - Jobs also refused from the post of chairman of the board of directors of the company. Jobs was not taken to the Shuttle, at some stage his candidacy was actually considered for space flight. By the way, here he was very lucky - the teacher Krista McLiff, who was chosen instead of him, died at the start of the Challenger. He also rejected the idea of ​​founding a computer company in the Soviet Union, having adopted a telemaster for a scout during his visit to Moscow. In the same year, he spent $ 7 million on the launch of NeXT.
')
It so happened that Steve Jobs is synonymous with Apple. We mention the chapter, and we mean the most expensive brand in the world . And there is nothing surprising that any Jobs biography is an Apple biography.
But it also makes those years when he was removed from her leadership, falling out of our sight. Almost all the works about Jobs' life do not tell anything about what happened at Apple in the period from 1985 to 1997, they stop at his work at NeXT and Pixar, but not at the life of Apple. The best thing you can find out is that the company has quietly stagnated.
Here we will talk about ten of the many products that have seen the light over these twelve years without Jobs. Some of them were failures and were not particularly remembered, and some were either successful or in some other way affected the future of Apple.
Macintosh Portable
The first battery-powered Macintosh computer was released in 1989. The machine weighed 7.2 kilograms (most of it was occupied by a lead-acid battery) and had 1 megabyte of RAM with the possibility of increasing to 9, the later-released backlit model had 8 megabytes of RAM. The heart was a Motorola 68000 processor running at 16 MHz. External drives were presented in three configurations: with a single floppy disk drive, with two or with a floppy disk drive and a special 40-megabyte hard drive Conner CP-3045 with low power consumption. The computer was running OS System 6 and System 7.
The cost of the device was 6500 dollars.
In general, despite the accolades of critics, the model was unsuccessful. The computer could not work on the network due to the weakness of the power supply, and in some cases the hard drive could not unwind.
PowerBook 100
A new Apple laptop was first shown at COMDEX in October 1991. It had a nine-inch, black-and-white backlit display with a resolution of 640 Ă— 400 pixels, a 20-40 MB hard drive, and the same Motorola 68000 processor operating at the same frequency and 2-8 MB of RAM. This "half" version of Macintosh Portable cost only $ 2,300. The computer weighed about 2.2 kilograms and worked with System 6.
Scully personally followed the project begun in 1990. One million dollars was spent on its marketing, but revenue was a billion in the very first year. Users soon began to neglect the model 100 and more and more actively bought models 140 and 170, because they had a floppy drive. The model was so successful that the marketing name PowerBook survived even rearrangements after Jobs returned, and existed before the baton in 2006 took over the MacBook brand.
Powerbook duo
From 1992 to 1997, Apple released a more compact PowerBook model. The computer weighed just 1.86 kilograms and was 36 millimeters thick, it was slightly wider than a sheet of A4 paper (280 Ă— 220 mm).
Different models had different characteristics: from 4 to 56 megabytes of RAM, variants of Motorola 68030 and 68040 processors, and PowerPC 603e in PowerBook Duo 2300c.
The computer owes its name to the possibility of connecting to the Duo docking station via a 156-pin connector , which gave full access to both the laptop's central processor and the data buses. In a Duo-dock, a closed laptop was inserted like a cassette into a video player, and as a result, a full-sized computer powered by an electrical network with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and all standard ports was obtained. The dock could have a disk drive, an additional second-level processor cache, a math coprocessor, additional video memory, and NuBus expansion slots, thanks to which up to 3 monitors could be connected.
In addition, mini and micro docks were available, the popularity of which was caused by various third-party solutions. These docking stations made it possible to connect multiple devices: Ehthernet, NTSC and PAL video outputs, external speakers, a display, and others.
Newton messagepad
The first Apple Pocket PC, Newton, was released in 1987, and in 1993, the MessagePad appeared. This was a major upgrade to the Newton line. The original MessagePad had an ARM 610 RISC processor, characteristic for all Newton devices, operating at 20 MHz, enough for all RAM 640 kilobytes, 4 megabytes of internal storage, 9.6 kb / s modem, black and white display with a resolution of 336 Ă— 240. The weight of the device was about 640 grams.
On August 2, 1993 at the Boston Macworld Expo MessagePad was the most popular product, and easily went for $ 900 apiece. In the wide sale of PDAs entered at a price of $ 700. In the first three months, 50 thousand devices were sold.
The implementation of handwriting input is interesting: in the early versions of the operating system, there was the Calligrapher system from the Russian company Paragraph. The recognition system learned to recognize the input of a specific person, but sometimes it was not accurate, it was even ridiculed in The Simpsons in the Lisa on Ice series. Yes, that cartoons, she was completely harassed by critics.
Another negative quality was the lack of the ability to connect a PDA to a desktop computer, although this was added in later models. The handwriting recognition quality has also been fixed. Thanks to this, even today Apple Newton is valued in the market of the old "iron" is higher than the model of the same time period. In 2006, CNET compared the Apple MessagePad 2000 with the Samsung Q1, and Newton was preferred.
Macintosh tv
This was Apple’s first attempt to integrate a computer with a TV. A total of 10 thousand devices were released. Macintosh TV began selling in October 1997 for $ 2,097.
The operating system is System 7, you can upgrade to Mac OS 9.1. In fact, it was the LC 520 in a black case with a TV tuner, which allowed you to watch TV on a 14-inch screen, not rising from the workplace. It sounds somewhat tempting, but the implementation has let it down: you can either watch TV or work - you cannot move the window with the picture of television. This test helped in the future, the TV tuner was a popular option in the Performa and LC model range.
Included was a remote control capable of also working with Sony TVs. Interestingly, this was the first Macintosh in black color. Inside, there were 5 MB of RAM, a Motorola 68030 processor with a 32 MHz operating frequency, 512 KB of video memory (maximum resolution 640 Ă— 480), an optical disc drive and a hard disk of 160 megabytes.
Power Macintosh 9500
The 1995 model had a very strong “iron”: PowerPC 604 or 604e processors operating at 120 to 200 MHz, depending on the model, the mezzanine board allowed quick replacement and configuration of two 180 MHz processors. It was the first Mac to have PCI ports; there were six of them all, one of which was always occupied by the video card.
The computer was running System 7.5, but with some modifications, you can put Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on it, which makes it the oldest Mac on which Mac OS X stands.
Powerful stuffing made the model attractive for graphic designers and people involved in music.
Powercd
Work on the project went together with Philips. The 1993 1993 PowerCD should have become a separate, self-contained and portable CD player that could read ordinary computer CDs and photo discs (Kodak format was supported) paired with Mac via a SCSI port, audio system or TV.
This failed attempt to create the first Apple non-computer and non-computer peripheral device for the computer is due to the success of Newton, after which in Cupertino they saw new markets for their electronics. Yes, all desktop Macs already had a CD-ROM drive, but it was not yet in the PowerBook. The Mac Like Things department managed to create only PowerCD and AppleDesign Powered Speakers columns before its conversion to the New Media Group.
Apple QuickTake
20 years ago, Kodak, together with Apple, launched a project for a digital camera, the resolution of which sounds ridiculous by today's standards - this is just 0.3 megapixels (640 Ă— 480). Modern smartphones and front camera are many times better, but it was one of the first consumer cameras. Often it is called the very first, for example, as Time Magazine characterized it, although the first was Logitech FotoMan.
There were 3 models: 100 and 150 were compatible with both Windows and Apple Macintosh, and 200 officially worked only with Macs. “Officially” is because the 200th model was almost completely analogous to the Fuji DS-7 and Samsung's Kenox SSC-350N, so you can still get it to work with Microsoft's operating systems.
Its other characteristics were as modest as the resolution: QuickTake, PICT formats were supported, while models 150 and 200 also supported BMP, JPEG, PCX and TIFF. Inside was a megabyte EPROM memory or 2-4 megabytes of SmartMedia card in later models. The cost of three models was 749, 700 and 600 dollars. Here, for clarity, a picture with QuickTake 150.
Bandai pippin
Yes, Apple released a game console, and this is not even a joke. However, there is nothing much to be surprised about, today the Cupertino company is in charge of one of the largest markets for mobile games, and this does not shock anyone.
The 1996 console used the PiPP! N multimedia platform to create an inexpensive device with the capabilities of a four-speed optical disc drive. Also Bandai Pippin was able to work with the network via a modem at 14.4 kb / s. System 7.5.2 ran a 66-MHz PowerPC 603 processor and 16-bit graphics. Many devices could be connected to the console, including an Apple printer.
A total of 42 thousand devices were sold, and, in general, it all ended in a silent failure. The console mainly lacked software: less than 80 games and applications were available in the Japanese market, only 18 games were available in the USA.
Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM)
Apple was late: the company's 20th anniversary happened on April 1, 1996, and the model of the twentieth anniversary was shown at the MacWorld Expo on January 7 of the following, 1997. The price tag of 7499 dollars clearly said: this is a model for a high management table. In general, a price of $ 9,000 was expected, but later it was lowered to $ 3,500. And this is not surprising: the Power Macintosh 6500 with similar characteristics cost $ 2,999, which clearly signaled an overpriced price for TAM. As a rule, the new Apple computer model is sold for exactly a year, and when the time came to an end, the price dropped even to 1995 dollars.
The design departed from bored in the rulers of all manufacturers of plastic parallelepipeds. For this model, a futuristic design and a color of metallic colors were chosen, which is why TAM has appeared in several films. Inside were a PowerPC 603e processor running at 250 MHz and with a second-level cache up to 1 megabyte, 2 RAM slots expandable up to 128 MB, a two-gigabyte hard drive, an Apple SuperDrive, and a four-speed compact disc drive. Supported resolution up to 800 Ă— 600 and 16-bit colors.
A total of 11,601 computers were sold, Wozniak and Jobs received one by one. Today, TAM has a high collection value in certain circles of loyal Apple fans.
In 1997, as a result of the acquisition of NeXT Software by Epple, Steve Jobs was again among his native environment. It was also profitable for him - NeXT no longer made its perfect, but too expensive computers for the consumer market and shrank to a small company of 240 people supplying software. After that, Apple began a variety of personnel changes, everything moved in, abandoned something, listened to something, despite the fact that Jobs was just a consultant. Over the years at the helm, Jobs was able to change Apple beyond recognition.
Was it for the better? Certainly, yes, this may indicate at least the increasing by the end of the nineties frivolity and often the failure of the cemetery exhibits of equipment, which we can see above.
This is evidenced by financial performance: for twelve years, without one of its creators, Apple’s market share fell from 16 percent to 4, and with Jobs the Cupertino-based company became the most expensive in the history of mankind .
Based on ABC News , The Apple Revolution , Wikipedia.org and Engadget .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/362741/
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