

How to Save Apple from 1997 - cjoh
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple_pr.html

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dmoney
I read the headline as: 1997 is somehow threatening Apple.

~~~
dejb
I read it is being: How to save Apple from making the same mistakes that lead
to it being in such a bad state in 1997.

The current iPhone vs Android battle could turn out to be a repeat of 1995.
Only time will tell.

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dasil003
_Chrysler nearly went under in the late 1970s and came back to lead its
industry_

Uhhh...

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ciscoriordan
"97. Have Pixar make 3001, A Space Odyssey, with HAL replaced by a Mac."

Looks like some of that found its way into WALL-E.

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duskwuff
_60\. Abandon the Mach operating system you just acquired and run Windows NT
kernel instead._

Bwa ha ha. Funny how that bit worked out...

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quellhorst
Umm, if anyone is troubled its Dell. I have tried ordering servers, monitors
and UPSs from them multiple times this month and their website failed. I was
able to place an order with them today via the phone, but it took over and
hour and had to repeat all of the data they already had on my online account.

~~~
protomyth
I would have to agree with that. I buy a lot of Macs, but Dell was always my
goto PC / Windows server company. They seem to have lost there way and
actually make it hard to buy stuff from them.

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ams1
eerie premonition:

    
    
      We'd all feel better about shelling out the bucks
      for a Power Mac 9600 if we could get a tower with leopard spots.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
That Blue Dalmatian iMac
([http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_500_fp...](http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_500_fp_bd.html))
must've been the ugliest computer Apple ever sold...with the possible
exception of the Flower Power iMac ([http://www.applegazette.com/imac/flower-
power-imac-named-one...](http://www.applegazette.com/imac/flower-power-imac-
named-one-of-the-ugliest-tech-products-ever/))

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MikeCapone
You might think it's funny, but a lot of the advice that people are giving to
Apple right now will look like this in 10 years.

~~~
tjogin
A lot of it looks like this even today.

It's funny that people, even _today_ , are giving Apple advice on how they
should change their business strategies, considering that Apple is hugely
successful and extraordinarily profitable.

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sammcd
93\. Develop a way to program that requires no scripting or coding.

I was going to come here and comment on how stupid and impossible this idea
is. I then remembered that prototypes of many of my first mac applications
where simply Interface Builder and bindings.

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wtallis
I think since Interface Builder had been around for many years by the time the
article was written, we can write this one off as author ignorance rather than
give him the benefit of the doubt.

~~~
sammcd
Very good point. I had forgotten my timeline, IB was clearly a part of NeXt
which had been recently acquired.

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seiji
If you remove all the jokes in the list, you basically get the Apple corporate
roadmap for the past ten years.

~~~
wtallis
Really? It seems to me that half of those items are the exact opposite of what
worked well for Apple, and many of the things from the list that Apple tried
didn't work out so well (eg. 63, about embracing Java).

I think Apple's formula for success over the past decade boils down to three
key elements:

1\. Throwing out all the old hardware and software designs

2\. Taking NeXTSTEP mainstream

3\. Jonathan Ive

Number 1 in my list was only weakly expressed by the Wired list, number 2 was
said in some ways, but there were also some conflicting suggestions, and
number 3 was completely unanticipated, despite being by far the most important
factor.

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staunch
What do you actually know about what Jonathan Ive has done at Apple? I've
never read any books or insider accounts of what kind of contribution he
makes, so I don't know much about him. I find it mystifying that he's built up
such a reputation that some consider him the most important factor in Apple's
resurgence.

Even if he is the best industrial designer in the world, does that really
account for Apple's success? What about the people designing the software and
the hardware internals? Aren't those roles _at least_ as important?

~~~
wtallis
I was being a bit facetious in listing just Ive, but I don't think it's a
stretch to say that his industrial design department has been that important
to Apple's success. Most notably, the iPod is almost certainly the product
that gave Apple the financial stability to develop OS X into what it is today,
and to undertake the Intel transition that enabled them to take over the high-
end computer market. If the iPod had been only slightly better than the other
mp3 players of the time, Apple probably wouldn't have been able to make much
profit off it or the iTunes Media Store.

~~~
replicatorblog
The iPod was the big driver, but it was the software/hardware ecosystem, the
content, the ads, as well as the design that made it a success. There were
full/touchscreen phones before the iPhone. I don't think it was the clunky ID
that kept them from being successful. It was poor feature design,
implementation, and crappy software.

That said Ive is awesome, the products are lustworthy, but too much credit for
the "design" is given to the ID team.

~~~
wtallis
I think you're confusing the circumstances of the introduction of the iPod and
the iPhone. I certainly agree with you that the iPhone's success is only
minimally related to industrial design, and mostly due to a well-designed
operating system and ecosystem.

The iPod, on the other hand, was on the market for a year and a half before
the iTunes store opened. Its competitors were the likes of the Creative NOMAD
players, which were very much clunky, some even in comparison to portable CD
players. The iPod software certainly wasn't revolutionary. It was the physical
interface, centered around the clickwheel and far simpler than the competition
that was so groundbreaking. As slashdot so famously and bluntly put it, the
iPod was downright lame in most other respects.

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amadiver
They seem to have taken this advice to the extreme:

Buy a song. Last year, it would have been "Respect" by Aretha Franklin. This
year, maybe it's "Ain't too Proud to Beg."

