
Apple Survived ’80s Thanks To Aldus PageMaker - davidedicillo
http://www.cultofmac.com/apple-survived-80s-thanks-to-one-piece-of-software-says-guy-kawasaki/90024
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michaelpinto
That's true, but a bit of simplification. The golden triangle were Apple
LaswerWriter, Postscript from Adobe and PageMaker from Aldus. All of those
three key technologies needed to be in place for the other technology to work.

Aldus was later acquired by Adobe, but it was an amazing software company. Not
only did it produce PageMaker, but it also created Freehand, Persuasion (pre-
PowerPoint!) and later After Effects which is still alive and well today.

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jws
The Apple LaserWriter is an interesting product. The existence of affordable,
full graphic laser printers created the market that Apple would dominate, but
it wasn't important to Apple to own the laser printer market itself. Corporate
inertia took some time to realize that and let the printer companies fight to
the bottom.

Nine years later Apple repeated with digital cameras. Digital cameras were
expensive and not widely marketed in 1994[1], three years later after the
QuickTake 100 had put a stake in the ground for price and brought digital
cameras in front of people's eyes Apple was irrelevant in the then huge market
and exited (under the newly returned Steve Jobs' axe). This was a win for
Apple's Macintosh platform which at the time was perceived as superior for
"graphic things".

In an alternate universe, where Apple decided to make their money on iTunes
sales, the iPod could have gone the same way, the problem being that
"reselling other people's music" doesn't provide enough to differentiate your
experience to your users.

EOM

[1] I was looking at disrupting the MLS at the time. We ultimately decided
that their business practices were too formidable, but a $700 640x480 camera
would have kicked the snot out of the messy little black and white photos MLS
used at the time.

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phlux
Pagemaker 5 is still one of my all time favorite apps.

In fact, I think that it is STILL better than word and most other apps.

The reason is that the app acts more like a visio than a word processor.

In word, your editing text on a sheet. In pagemaker you organized elements and
objects which were test-block objects or images.

I actually had just commented on this program recently, there are still very
few apps that work as well.

I wish it hadn't died in the form that it was.

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noblethrasher
To be fair, MS Word is for _word_ processing whereas PageMaker is for _page_
layout. You invite pain and suffering when you try to use either as a
replacement for the other.

