
101 Ways to Save Apple (1997) - leorocky
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple_pr.html
======
dtech
Some people say that the advice is stupid, but there is actually a lot of
sensible things that they did at some point or another, some even being
distinctly Apple-y:

> 10\. Get a great image campaign

> 14\. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate
> yourselves from the pack.

> 18\. Stop being buttoned-down corporate and appeal to the fanatic feeling
> that still exists for the Mac

> 23\. Create a new logo

> 25\. Portables, portables, portables.

> 31\. Build a PDA for less than $250 that actually does something

people usually pay less than $250 upfront for an iPhone

> 34\. Port the OS to the Intel platform

(Identical to 76)

> 37\. Take advantage of NeXT's easy and powerful OpenStep programming tools
> to entice a new generation of Mac software developers

Especially true for iOS

> 39\. Build a laptop that weighs 2 pounds

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

> 51\. Speak to the consumer.

> 54\. Sell off the laser printer business

> 70\. Simplify your PC product line

> 72\. Try the industry-standard serial port plug.

Apple switched to USB pretty quickly if I remember correctly

> 101\. Don't worry. You'll survive

~~~
enscr
Most of them are very generic, pragmatic & terse statements. It depends on
which side you are looking at.

> 14\. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate
> yourselves from the pack.

99% companies would benefit from this.

> 10\. Get a great image campaign

Sure, why not? That's true for every company, Intel, BMW, Microsoft, you name
it. All want a great image campaign. Ultimately it's the product that makes
the image campaign 'exclusive'

> 34\. Port the OS to the Intel platform

That was an obvious one.

>> Apple switched to USB pretty quickly if I remember correctly

The 30-pin dock & then the lightning connector. Not exactly industry standard
at both ends

~~~
croddin
>> The 30-pin dock & then the lightning connector. Not exactly industry
standard at both ends

This was before the iPhone. They switched to USB on Macs at least. At that
time they were using other proprietary connectors like ADB and Firewire.

~~~
twoodfin
Firewire (IEEE 1394) didn't show up on Macs until 1999, well after they had
begun to support USB.

------
kjjw
"5\. Straighten out the naming convention. Link model numbers to processor
speed. When buying a 3400 laptop computer, what, exactly, are you getting?
Unless you study the brochures, you don't know how it compares with its
competition. On the other hand, Wintel talks explicitly about processor speed.
It's a Pentium 200-MHz box."

Urgh. And while we're at it, why on earth did Apple never plaster their
hardware with "Intel Inside" and "NVIDIA" stickers? How else am I supposed to
know that my laptop has an Intel chip and an NVIDIA chip?!?! Surely everyone
wants to know this!

~~~
ebbv
You mock but meaningless model numbers are awful and they were banished from
Apple a long time ago.

~~~
kjjw
I'm not mocking the loss of meaningless model numbers. I'm mocking the
suggestion to switch one lot of meaningless numbers for another.

------
sjwright
Apple ended up doing the following almost exactly as stated: 6, 7, 10, 11, 13,
14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 23, 25, 26, 33, 34, 37, 39, 50, 51, 62, 63, 70, 76, 83,
85, 87, 94, 95 and 98.

And they pretty much did these in spirit: 5 (but even simpler), 4 (Steve did
it), 8 (iTunes), 9, 12, 18, 22 (iPad), 31 (iPod Touch), 40, 41 (App store), 44
(Siri), 46, 52 (briefly), 54 (dumped not sold), 72 (USB instead), and 100
(either Final Cut or Pixlet).

The remaining are either terrible ideas or intended only as humour.

------
AdamFernandez
"1\. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware
production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft
without the liability of manufacturing boxes."

Good thing they didn't 'admit it'.

~~~
mootothemax
_" 1\. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware
production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft
without the liability of manufacturing boxes."

Good thing they didn't 'admit it'._

Isn't this essentially what they've done with Foxconn and the other China-
based producers they work with?

~~~
steven2012
No. What they meant is to be a software-only company, ie. compete with MSFT
without the liability of hardware.

~~~
jiggy2011
But plenty of the other suggestions are about building hardware.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
They're competing ideas from different industry-folk. There's a ton of
contradiction in the article, and that was kind of the point.

------
florianletsch
> 101\. Don't worry. You'll survive. It's Netscape we should really worry
> about.

Why did no one listen?

~~~
joeblau
Wow he was spot on. The memories of netscape live on though Mozilla.

------
johnnyfaehell
So they went middle of the field and went with option 50?

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

Worked out for them.

~~~
sambeau
This one too:

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

(although Parallels & VMWare did the latter part)

~~~
Tloewald
The first Rhapsody ran on Intel and you could compile Cocoa apps to run on
(bare) Windows NT.

------
Xixi
"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."

They did that with CompUSA, if my memory serves well... and are still doing it
in France in FNACs for instance.

~~~
dtech
In the whole of Europe (or at least the Netherlands) where there are not a lot
of Apple stores they are very actively doing this. Some large electronic
chains usually have an Apple section in their stores, often with an Apple
salesperson on busy days.

------
veidr
I remember reading this (on paper) in the 90s in college.

It came across as worthless idiot blather then, as it does now with the
benefit of hindsight.

    
    
        1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. 
        Outsource your hardware production, or scrap 
        it entirely, to compete more directly with 
        Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing
        boxes.
    

Wronger words than that have rarely been spoken.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Apple has definitely outsourced hardware production (as has the rest of the
industry, mostly). I don't understand what your point is.

~~~
veidr
In the context of that article, 'outsource' meant letting other companies
(such as the short-lived Mac clone maker Power Computing) manufacture hardware
while Apple just licensed the software.

(But also, the very best Macs, which command the highest prices, are currently
made at Apple's facility in Austin, TX.)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The Mac Pros are assembled in Austin because they are high value and low
volume (just like DELL still assembles servers nearby in round rock). At any
rate, 2014 is very different from 1997, and outsourcing has become ubiquitous,
just not exactly in the way that was foreseen.

------
qzcx
"97\. Have Pixar make 3001, A Space Odyssey, with HAL replaced by a Mac." They
did and it was called "WALL-E"

~~~
baldfat
How am I missing WALL-E being anything like 2001? I still don't see the
comparison.

~~~
cecilpl
Because space.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
From
[http://2001.wikia.com/wiki/HAL_9000](http://2001.wikia.com/wiki/HAL_9000) :

In the 2008 Pixar animated film WALL-E, the starship Axiom's Autopilot
("Auto"), which is also the main villain of the film, has a glowing red
camera, a low electronic voice and a hidden directive - deliberately
reminiscent of HAL. WALL-E's pet cockroach is also named Hal, but it is also a
reference to Hal Roach.

------
peteri
Like number 31 price is a bit off but Telco bundle pricing makes it pretty
much correct.

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

~~~
MRSallee
> Like number 31 price is a bit off but Telco bundle pricing makes it pretty
> much correct.

In 2014 dollars, that $250 is nearly $400.

------
asaddhamani
"60\. Abandon the Mach operating system you just acquired and run Windows NT
kernel instead. This would let Mac run existing PC programs. (Microsoft
actually has Windows NT working on Mac hardware. It also has emulation of Mac
programs with NT running on both Power PC and x86.)"

------
bglnelissen
Although some were (retrospectively) bad ideas, I like 31 c: an internet
phone.

------
gone35
Not all advice given was that bad. From the article, towards the end:

 _" Make a lightweight, portable, palmtop Mac. Ideally, it should be a
wearable, with a private eye screen and some sort of half-keyboard. If Apple
can't manufacture this, it could make a deal with another hardware maker.
Wearables are the future."

\- Marvin Minsky, AI pioneer_

------
Gracana
"64\. Team up with Sony, which wants to get into the computer business in a
big way - think Sony MacMan"

That almost happened, sort of.[1]

[1]
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Macintosh_Prototypes.txt)

------
Gracana
"Abandon the Mach operating system you just acquired"

No, don't do that!

~~~
mabhatter
They trashed Mach and Rapsody and bought out NEXT to get Steve back full time.
OSX is mostly updated NEXT, right down to Objective C and API names.

~~~
twoodfin
Rhapsody (with the underlying Mach kernel) _was_ the NeXTSTEP stuff in a
preliminary stage of Mac-ification. The strategy of what to do with the NeXT-
based OS vs. what became known as "Classic" was in flux when Rhapsody saw its
first developer previews, but ultimately Rhapsody was transformed into Mac OS
X. The biggest additions, IIRC, were the Carbon APIs and the Aqua UI.

~~~
crusso
Exactly. And back then, getting "Steve back full time" wasn't what they were
betting the farm on. More than anything, Apple was desperate for a next
generation OS. Their choice was between NeXT's OpenStep and the BeOS.
Obviously, they chose NeXT.

Now in hindsight, due to Apple's success post Steve's return, many claim that
he was the play all along. At the time, though, that wasn't the consensus of
people I knew in and around the Apple sphere in Cupertino.

------
jsun
The writer was even money overall, but 2 for 10 in the top 10... not great

If you are running a startup I don't know of a better way to convince yourself
not to listen to the haters

~~~
nkozyra
This was explicitly not written by "the haters," though.

>> So we surveyed a cross section of hardcore Mac fans and came up with 101
ways to get you back on the path to salvation.

------
yuhong
Thinking about this period, I think they once got the Blue Box running on
NuKernel, which is what Copland should have been in the first place.

------
Eric_WVGG
This was a Wired magazine classic. They should have run a “101 Ways to Save
Microsoft” sequel before the Ballmer retirement.

------
markm248
I wonder what James is up to these days.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
James just edited it. The contributions were from (ahem) Mark R. Anderson,
Ronald P. Andring Sr., Andrew Anker, Carla Barros, Dave Barry, David Batstone,
John Battelle, Michael Behar, Jackie Bennion, Gareth Branwyn, Van Burnham,
Seth Chandler, Tom Claburn, Christine Comaford, Peter Corbett, John Couch,
Douglas Coupland, S. Russel Craig, Mark Dery, David Diamond, Dennis Dimos,
Nikki Echler, Laura Fredrickson, Jesse Freund, Simson Garfinkel, Steve Gibson,
Tim Goeke, Jeff Greenwald, Jacquard W. Guenon, Joseph Haddon, David Hakala,
Russell Hires, Rex Ishibashi, Dave Jenne, Amy Johns, Richard Kadrey, Philippe
Kahn, Kristine Kern, Indra Lowenstein, Regis McKenna, Warren Michelsen, Russ
Mitchell, Eugene Mosier, Nicholas Negroponte, Eduardo Parra, Lisa Picarille,
John Plunkett, Gary Andrew Poole, Spencer Reiss, Jack Rickard, Louis Rossetto,
Peter Rutten, Winn Schwartau, Kristian Schwartz, Brian Slesinsky, Richard
Stallman, Carl Steadman, Don Steinberg, Julie Sullivan, Kathy Tafel, Ruth
Tooker, Joel Truher, Watts Wacker, Michael Wise.

------
shna
One very insightful person Daly is.

------
finalight
if apple did what the site suggest

it wouldn't be apple

~~~
mwfunk
Well, yeah, that's the point. In 1997, "being Apple" meant "going out of
business". So it was absolutely telling them to stop being Apple so they could
live to see 1998. It didn't pan out that way, but no one could have
anticipated that at the time and it's kind of miraculous that they made it
through that period with the essentials of the company intact.

------
alphadevx
Maybe Wired should consider taking their archive offline.

