

Is 2011 like 1994 for Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and the Web? - frederickcook
http://scobleizer.com/2010/04/11/is-2011-like-1994-for-apple-twitter-facebook-and-the-web/

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emanuer
I must agree, Apple failed in the 90s because they did not reach a critical
mass of developers.

Today they have more developers then they would need.

Still their tactics has one weak point; They must deliver the best product in
the market. In the moment there is a better Product, with a better OS and it
is open, the users and developers would abandon the "Apple Empire".

The loyalty and "fanboyism" for the Apple brand is not for Apple itself, but
for the high quality products they consistently produce.

~~~
jared314
I thought Apple failed in the 90s because they tried to go mainstream.

~~~
ahoyhere
Everybody above in this thread of "Why Apple failed in the 90s" -- you're
focusing on tiny facets of why they had so many problems, so let me tell you
the true story.

As someone who was there, covering the whole Apple saga, going to the
tradeshows, etc., etc., I can tell you what the problems really were.

1\. Quixotic, inconstant leadership that didn't understand technology and also
didn't have a vision. Nobody has run Apple better than Jobs 1.0, much less
Jobs 2.0.

2\. That lead to a lack of focus in the product arena, trying this, trying
that, producing printers, scanners, way too many types of Mac, home gaming
devices without a chance, trying to do everything at once. With so many
failures, and products killed or abandoned left or right, the company had lots
its spirit and so did the employees.

It's especially amazing to look at the Apple Design book, which has many
photos of gorgeous and amazing prototypes from the design group made during
the 90s, which of course never made it to the light of day. Except the TAM.

3\. When all that scrabbling failed, the (silly) leadership decided that the
reason Microsoft won was OS licensing. That may be strictly true, but Apple
had always been built as a hardware company, and the attempted head transplant
nearly killed it. (That's why the first thing Jobs did when he was back was to
call in the Power Computing, etc., licensing deals.)

4\. Entré doomed retail deals with sales channels that were more like shit
channels. Seriously? BestBuy in the 90s? Bad idea.

5\. And, of course, they had crap-all for a future OS roadmap. Copland was
doomed and years late.

All of the above comes down to ignorant leadership. Scully, Amelio, they were
all unfocused and impotent at best and deeply incompetent at worst.

When NeXT bought Apple for -$400 mil, and Jobs came back, grown up a lot as a
human being, it was like when a missing parent shows up after a kid has been
living on his own, building forts, skipping school, making a mess and eating
ice cream all day.

At first, it seems terrible, but secretly the kid is relieved and glad that
some discipline, somebody who knows better, has finally returned.

Jobs cleaned house. He tore down the forts and restored the living areas to a
semblance of adulthood (bye bye Power Computing). He took away the ice cream
(bye bye Newton, sniff). He made the employees go back to school… he's a
demanding and exacting boss, with a clear vision, and not afraid to tell
people when their work is not measuring up.

And Apple grew up.

End of story.

\------

Did Apple lose developers to Windows? Extremely few. The people who were with
Apple in the 90s were almost exclusively hardcore fans.

Did Apple not have as much software as Windows? Yes, but it was of higher
quality; Windows has never had a shareware community (so willing to pay) like
Macs have always had. There was a tight-knitness there that existed nowhere
else.

Did they lose distribution of physical software packages in stores? Yes. See
their retail woes above. This was a symptom, not a cause. Any retailer would
be pissed that they were expected to carry 15 models of Mac that were
practically indistinguishable from each other. A huge amount of Mac software
was high-quality, professional shareware, downloaded or copied on floppy disks
at Mac user groups.

Was trying to 'go mainstream' the problem? No, it was a tiny facet of the core
issue -- worthless leadership.

\-----

I also don't get why anyone would say "Why Apple failed in the 1990s" -- since
it's still around, and has boatloads of cash, the core principles are still
the same as they ever were. They were just buried for a while under fear.

Apple was never truly near death. You can't trust the news media and internet
gossip, since they've been predicting Apple's death for 20 years.

Apple has always kept boatloads of cash on hand and its IP was extremely
valuable. Throughout much of the 90s, its cash reserves were higher than its
stock price * outstanding issues.

Apple could have chugged on for another decade with no problem.

~~~
emanuer
This is what I love about Hacker News. I think it is one of those rare few
places where one voices his/her opinion and gets back an amazing, intelligent,
well thought through response. As I have not been in the business in the 1990s
I can only rely on records of people who saw it first hand. I enjoyed your
post so much, because it is a very thorough explanation for an issue I heard
only very onesided opinions so far.

~~~
ahoyhere
Glad you liked it.

What I strongly dislike about HN is how such a high percentage of commentors
feel that, because they are smart in a given topic, they can hold forth on any
topic.

I'm tired of seeing people get the facts so wrong about Apple, Apple's
history, the legality or precendents for 3.3.1, etc., etc., etc.

Not because I care. The truth doesn't care, it just goes on being true. But
because it's a bunch of people who have no clue, arguing with other people who
also have no clue. It's like a contest for who can make up the most shit.

There are tons of books that detail Apple's history. If you want to learn
about Apple, read Accidental Empires, Apple Confidential 2.0, West of Eden,
Insanely Great: Life and Times. There's the book Wozniak co-wrote, taht told
his side of the story, and there are several books that focus on Jobs.

Gil Amelio even wrote a whine-ography called Firing Line. Sculley wrote one
called, if you can believe it or not, Odyssey.

Apple didn't happen in Ancient Mesopotamia, it happened in the 1970s. There is
massive amounts of documentation. There's absolutely no excuse to debating it
in ignorance.

And there's tons to gain from studying Apple, because it's got a fascinating
history and had an unbelievably enormous impact on what the tech world looks
like today.

There are plenty of people on HN making the same stupid mistakes that nearly
"killed" Apple as a successful company (regardless of how much cash they had).

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." - Twain

------
volida
Maybe the world is just too big for only one platform.

------
pinstriped_dude
Why does he write "baaaahhhhssstttaaaarrrrdddddssss" when he means to write
"bastards" ?! Reads very silly to me. Is he trying to be cute? Or trying to
get around content-blocking systems? (One would think he could just write
"batsards")

------
gojomo
I like the analogy between the 2010 Time iPad app (and similar worse-than-the-
web publisher-specific apps) and 1994's Pointcast: similarly pretty but
equally doomed.

~~~
DannoHung
Maybe, maybe not. If anything, I think that the current interest in these
sorts of apps is because they can cache content. The network is not pervasive
yet, thus using a web browser to view all of it is impractical.

When you can reliably browse the web at broadband speeds in a car going
through Bumfuck, Appalachia, the web will emerge triumphant again.

~~~
warfangle
More important than Bumfuck, Appalachia is Thirty Feet Below The Sidewalk On
the Train, Big City.

~~~
pavlov
Providing 3G in the subway does not appear to be a problem in cities like
Tokyo and Helsinki. Big City, USA will figure it out soon.

------
malcognition
More like 1775 malcognition.com

