
Apple’s Macintosh Computer Turns 30: Did You Know It Almost Failed?.com - rbanffy
http://techland.time.com/2014/01/24/apples-macintosh-computer-turns-30-did-you-know-it-almost-failed/
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PaulHoule
Almost failed over and over again.

Jobs was afraid the Apple 2 would get obsolete fast.

Made the Apple 3. That computer was so FUBAR they wouldn't let you try it at
the computer store because it might burn up.

Made the Apple LISA, way too expensive.

Made the Mac with just a lot of memory to be useful.

Apple bet on the the wrong horse, Motorola didn't want to make the 68k
anymore.

Meanwhile the 6502-based Apple 2 series had lasted longer than anyone had
expected. Apple cripples the Apple 2gs so you will buy a more expensive mac.
In an alternate timeline the Apple 2gs might been gradually upgraded and take
the place of the PowerPC Mac. But no...

PowerPC Macs struggle through the 1990s. The web gradually destroys Mac OS
Classic. The OS that was designed to shoehorn an impossible demo into 128k of
RAM was designed on the assumption that events rain in slowly from the
keyboard and mouse. Add the internet to that and you find it is all a mess of
race conditions.

Add locks to avoid the race conditions and you don't have so many crashes but
then the computer is always freezing up for a few moments here and there...

Apple tried to modernize the operating systems a few times, took Mac OS X as a
last ditch effort, succeeded.

Then PowerPC became unviable, Apple switches to Intel.

Apple uses the Mac as a springboard to launch the iPod, then the iPhone.

The Mac suffers from the dominance of the iPhone much as Apple 2gs suffered
from the Mac.

Apple harvests from the Mac brand, focusing on "thin and light" at the expense
of everything else.

What next?

