
Ways to save Apple (1997) - 666_howitzer
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple_pr.html
======
stevebot
Funny how some of these are way off, while others are pretty spot on:

7\. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store,
flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple
salespeople, and display everything like you're a living, breathing company
and not a remote, dusty concept.

~~~
wtallis
I particularly love the ones that are both right and wrong:

72\. Try the industry-standard serial port plug. RS-422 should be a last
resort.

(They replaced RS-422 not with RS-232, but USB)

14\. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves
from the pack. [...] We'd all feel better about shelling out the bucks for a
Power Mac 9600 if we could get a tower with leopard spots.

(Obviously Wired shouldn't be handing out design advice.)

28\. Don't lose your sense of humor. Build a very large life preserver and
display it in front of your Cupertino, California, headquarters.

(Their new headquarters _is_ the life preserver.)

44\. Continue your research in voice recognition. It's the only way you're
going to compete in videoconferencing and remote access.

(That's totally not what Siri is for.)

76\. Make damn sure that Rhapsody runs on an Intel chip. Write a Windows NT
emulator for Rhapsody's Intel version.

(They switched to Intel purely for the sake of Intel, and never made that
Windows emulator.)

~~~
mcintyre1994
Was it the Intel switch that enabled bootcamp though? That's clearly a better
solution than maintaining a windows emulator, but does it meet the same point?

~~~
eurleif
Not only did it enable Boot Camp, it also enabled third party Windows VMs like
Parallels and Virtual box, and third party Windows API reimplementations
(namely Wine)

~~~
schappim
We already had 3rd party emulators running VMs on PowerPC (and they were slow
as molasses), what Intel allowed was 3rd party VMs to run FAST!

~~~
pdpi
We had emulators, not VMs.

------
lyinsteve
>50\. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product
development.

------
MiguelVieira
If you'd bought $10,000 of AAPL stock when this article was published (June
1997), it would be worth about $523,000 today, excluding dividends.

~~~
esusatyo
If I told you to buy $10,000 of Blackberry stock today, would you do it?

Buying AAPL in 1997 is as crazy as buying Blackberry today. The difference is
Steve Jobs, but some people thought he was nuts too back in 1997.

~~~
BillFranklin
Didn't Steve jobs sell 1.5 million shares in 1997? It caused a 12 year low in
the company's stock price..

[http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Steve-Jobs-
Confirms-A...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Steve-Jobs-Confirms-
Apple-Stock-Sale-2812791.php)

~~~
adventured
Jobs made several poor decisions around Apple's stock, including after he came
back. A few choices cost him billions of dollars (which would now be tens of
billions for his wife). Fortunately for him, money wasn't something that he
obsessed over.

~~~
microtherion
You're talking about a guy who got in trouble for having his subordinates make
up a fictitious board meeting to get a better strike price for his options.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/06/steve-
job...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-
obituary-the-backdated-options-scandal/)

------
jasonlmk
> 98\. Testimonials. Create commercials featuring real-life people in
> situations where buying a Mac (or switching to a Mac) saved the day.

This is an example of one thing that Apple gets really right. For some reason,
other companies have found it really difficult to achieve the success that
Apple has with their commercials and branding. Some (in my opinion) great work
by Apple:

1\. 2013 Christmas Commercial
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v76f6KPSJ2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v76f6KPSJ2w))

2\. Shot on iPhone6 ([https://www.apple.com/au/iphone/world-
gallery/](https://www.apple.com/au/iphone/world-gallery/))

------
acqq
> 24\. Pay cartoonist Scott Adams $10 million to have Dilbert fall in love
> with a Performa repairwoman.

I can bet this was submitted by Scott Adams himself. It's sounds completely
like him.

And that gives you the idea of the worth of these "101 ways" even at the
moment they were published.

------
JacobAldridge
tl;dr _" 101\. Don't worry. You'll survive. It's Netscape we should really
worry about."_

------
hoodoof
Kinda weird how much of this is the opposite of what worked.

~~~
Gustomaximus
I felt reading this is what life for a CEO must be like. To be continually
bombarded with 101 ways to do the job. 80%+ are wrong, from people who
absolutely believe at the time they are correct.

~~~
macspoofing
I think it's worse than that. You don't know the right answer, nobody else
knows the right answer, and the only way get by is to guess and hope you get
lucky. Apple got lucky. They built the iPod, which in hindsight, was a trans-
formative product, but at the time it wasn't so obvious.

~~~
DrStalker
At the time it was a heavy music player with an annoying interface that only
worked for mac users and was useless forever if you dropped it and the hard
drive broke.

They fixed all those problems later versions, but the initial device was
underwhelming to a lot of people.

~~~
mcphage
I had an early one, and loved it. It's been slowly forgotten about over time,
but the scroll wheel interface was an amazing innovation. Even years later I'd
see people with MP3 players with up and down buttons struggle to scroll
through a large list, whereas the scroll wheel made it comfortable, fast, and
easy to control.

------
DigitalSea
I love reading posts from the past like this, ironic how things actually
played out for Apple. Interestingly a few of the points actually happened,
specifically; point #7, point #12, point #14 and more interestingly "39\.
Build a laptop that weighs 2 pounds." \- kind of fitting that this played out
for Apple focusing on thinner and lighter products than competitor offerings.

This takes me back to the days leading up the new release of the first iPhone.
Everyone was predicting that an Apple phone would fail, that Apple should
stick to what they know and in a short amount of time they proved everyone
wrong and became the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

~~~
ColinDabritz
These were interesting to me:

16\. Take better care of your customers -- Apple support is pretty good,
especially if you can get to a store

26\. If you sell it, make it -- Their supply chain integration and control is
impressive today

38\. Make it easier for ISVs to make applications -- The app store and the
development ecosystem is important for apple

50\. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development
-- This paid off hugely

53\. Recharge your strategy for Europe -- Apple is a very global company and
is pushing into lots of markets

59\. Invest heavily in Newton technology -- Apple parked that particular
project, but the iPhone and iPad followed

Some clearly joke entries, and some misses and terrible ideas, but definitely
some interesting insights as well.

------
gambiter
> 31\. Build a PDA for less than $250 that actually does something: a)
> cellular email b) 56-channel TV c) Internet phone.

Here, here! If it's a measly 55-channel toy, I'm sending it back.

------
wyldfire
> 97\. Have Pixar make 3001, A Space Odyssey, with HAL replaced by a Mac.

Kinda like Wall-E's charge-cycle-complete boot sound and EVE's iPod-inspired
design.

------
pdxgene
I remember reading this in 1997, about a year after I switched from the awful
Mac Performa that I had used in college and dragged out west with me to the
first in a series of increasingly uninspiring beige WinTel boxes. It would be
nine years before I switched back.

It's really easy to engage in hindsight-powered analysis. This article seemed
perfectly reasonable at the time.

------
molmalo
There are some very interesting things here... Some jewels that proved to be
very accurate, and some that were way off... But i think that the positive
ones are winning...

#1 - Foxconn.

#2 - OSX for computers, iOS -> iPhone, iPad, AppleTv

#3 - Debatable, but one could argue that Apple Store did this at first

#4 - Steve Jobs listed in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
dollar_salary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary)

#5 - iPhone #, iPad #, but not related with speeds, besides of "greater
number, greater speed"

#7 - Apple Stores

#8 - 1998. I still remember the ad with Shes A Rainbow

#10 - Well, they did build an enormous image.

#9, #11, #12 - Or... do just the opposite xD

#13 - Hello, I'm a PC.

#14 - Again, 1998. G3, and everything that came next...

#15 - Say Hello to China!

#16 - YMMV :)

#17, #18 - This will contradict the next one. A corporate won't buy based on
fanaticism (at least in theory... I hope...)

#19 - They did what they could, with what was available back then.

#21 - With this item and #31... I really don't know what to think...

#22 - #24 - No, no, no.

#25 - Portables and mobile! That was the future back then. And they did...
eventually. # 26 - Here comes China again!

#27 - Or... make it _expensive_... I mean... _exclusive_

#30 - Secure the hearts and wallets of college students, OK. But with
marketing.

#31 - What kind of advice is this?? That will NEVER, EVER work, cellular
email? _Internet Phone_ ??? ... Oh.. wait.

#32 - Always start with: We have sold X number of Y!

#34 - Done.

#36 - Hello iBook

#37 - Ok. Hello OSX

#39 - Easier said than done. Tech was not there yet. But eventually...

#40-43 - It didn't matter.

#44 - Or just buy someone who does... Hello Siri

#47 - New upgrade path: just buy the new device.

#50 - Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants -> OK!

#51 - Speak with both, but mostly to the consumer, yes. (through ads, and paid
journalists...) #53 - And sell everything from Ireland!

#54 - Ok

#59 - You can't have #15 (dump newton) and this (invest heavily in newton
technology)... choose one. One could say Apple choose #59.

from here, a lot of the items seem like jokes...

#60 - Again, contradicting with previous items.

#63 - Ok. #70 - Ok! #76 - Ok, and bye bye PowerPC Eventually.

#94 - Maintain differentiation between Wintel and Apple... Even when using
intel technologies, _we are not a PC_.

#95 - Hello, I'm a Mac.

#101 - Bingo!

~~~
EricSu
#5 - I'm young so I think it's interesting (and super informative) that people
believed in a naming convention that immediately tells you what hardware
you're getting. The rise of frilly landing pages and just-look-at-the-
computer-case-not-the-numbers marketing makes it frustrating for hardware-
oriented shoppers like me to find what I want efficiently (basically I think
#14's "pretty box" solution gained a little too much traction in the marketing
aspect)

------
Lancey
> 8\. Buy a song. Last year, it would have been "Respect" by Aretha Franklin.
> This year, maybe it's "Ain't too Proud to Beg."

Why buy one song when you can buy all of them?

------
Eric_WVGG
this has made Hacker News many, many times

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7877980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7877980)

------
mikeechoalpha
31c was a pretty good idea

------
mami
1\. limewire

------
JacobAldridge
Single page:
[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple_pr.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple_pr.html)

~~~
dang
Thanks. Url changed from
[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple.html).

------
terminus
Ye, Gods. Yet another Apple story.

They are a for profit (and quite a lot of it) corporation that makes shiny
gadgets.

Why do we keep talking about them incessantly? If we are not talking about
what Apple is doing now, then we are talking about what somebody said about
Apple 20 years ago.

I'm of course making the problem worse or meta-worse, if you will, by talking
about talking about Apple, but I just don't understand this whole deification
of a profit making entity.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Apple is one of the most important and influential tech companies in the world
right now. There's a lot of Apple articles for the same reason there's a lot
of Google/Amazon/Facebook articles.

They also have a lot of pretty devoted fans, but don't confuse ponderings on
the industry with fanboyism.

~~~
terminus
> Apple is one of the most important and influential tech companies in the
> world right now.

No. You are confusing admired with influential.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
No, I really don't think I am. Apple essentially created the modern smartphone
market. Android was Google saying "We've got to get in on that." You're going
to accuse me of fanboying now, but I've never owned an iOS device; I think
Android is better and I wouldn't use anything else. But without the iPhone,
Android as we know it would not exist.

You don't like Apple or Apple products, and that's fine and fair, but you are
confusing your personal opinion with the actual state of the market. Quality
and influence aren't always related, much as we might wish it were otherwise.

~~~
terminus
This is not about Android or iPhone. Or Google or whoever. I'll happily
acknowledge that Apple sells well thought out products.

I stand by what I said earlier. There's too much of a cult of personality
associated with Apple. Why do we shrink our worldview to gossipy discussions
of a corporation. Tell me something interesting, something edifying that came
up in this discussion?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _This is not about Android or iPhone. Or Google or whoever. I 'll happily
> acknowledge that Apple sells well thought out products._

You specifically said that I was wrong to call them influential. I think
Android demonstrates that they are. That makes it relevant.

> _I stand by what I said earlier. There 's too much of a cult of personality
> associated with Apple. Why do we shrink our worldview to gossipy discussions
> of a corporation. Tell me something interesting, something edifying that
> came up in this discussion?_

Past predictions about the future of the industry have always had currency on
Hacker News, from pre-electronic sci-fi like Wells' World Brain to Engelbart's
1968 "mother of all demos" to mid-'90s attempt to get a handle on the
internet, and so on and so forth. Apple wasn't terribly relevant in the
mid-'90s, but they _had been_ relevant (the Apple II, bringing Xerox's GUI
ideas to the home desktop), and as it turned out they would be relevant again.
This particular article is not exactly a giant of the genre, but it's a window
into the conditions of the time and what people cared about and anticipated.

~~~
terminus
You are right about Android and Xerox's GUI. (There were others who were
thinking in a similar direction (Openmoko for one), and I would argue that
both of these things would have happened anyway. But Apple definitely moved
the state of the world forward.)

However, my larger point is that Apple produces things of only one color --
things that you can exchange over the counter against money. Black box objects
that are essentially consumer electronics -- things that die in 2, 4, 7,
whatever years.

Contrast that with most other tech companies. Even if I don't care a whit
about what they sell (witness IBM, Microsoft, Facebook -- I don't use any of
their products directly) -- I (and the world) profit from their research and
that gives them greater longevity than Apple.

So to correct what I said -- admired but not long term influential.

