Speaker 1: Technology with tex Stuff from dot com. Hey there, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: a senior writer for how Stuff Works dot com and
Speaker 1: today we're going to continue the story of the history
Speaker 1: of the Macintosh computer. Now in our last episode, have
Speaker 1: to do a little you know, roundup of what happened.
Speaker 1: Previously on text Stuff, we covered how the mac was
Speaker 1: born out of strife. It was not an easy birth,
Speaker 1: as it turns out. There was a lot of argument
Speaker 1: going on arguing, i should say, going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: It started off as a low price computer. That was
Speaker 1: the intent that was supposed to make personal computers more
Speaker 1: accessible to the average person. And then Steve Jobs effectively
Speaker 1: took over the project and changed it significantly. Rather than
Speaker 1: having a cheap machine, it became an expensive alternative to
Speaker 1: the IBM personal computer that had just debuted in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties. So the IBM personal computer came out
Speaker 1: and actually posed a serious threat to Apple. Uh, the
Speaker 1: Macintosh was supposed to be an answer to that. The
Speaker 1: Apple two and Apple three lines were distinct, and more
Speaker 1: about them in a little bit, but the Macintosh was
Speaker 1: really supposed to redefine computing and to put Apple back
Speaker 1: on track to being ahead of the game, as it were.
Speaker 1: But what actually happened next, Well, we ended right around
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. Last time, nineteen eighty five. The Macintosh
Speaker 1: computer debuted in nineteen eighty four, and Apple was trying
Speaker 1: to rebound from a couple of big blows. Now. That
Speaker 1: first one came in nineteen eighty one. That's when IBM
Speaker 1: got involved in the personal computer market with its own PC.
Speaker 1: Before long, IBM PC sales were outpacing Apple to sales.
Speaker 1: And the second blow came ine that's when Apple launched Lisa.
Speaker 1: Lisa was a high end computer. It was a project
Speaker 1: that was being pushed primarily by Steve Jobs, one of
Speaker 1: the co founders of Apple. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
Speaker 1: were the two Steve's who founded the company. But Lisa
Speaker 1: was not a huge success. It had a graphic user
Speaker 1: interface or gooey g u i uh, and it had
Speaker 1: a mouse, which was very innovative for the time. The
Speaker 1: only other company that really played with graphic user interfaces
Speaker 1: and a computer mouse was Xerox, and they had only
Speaker 1: done it internally. They didn't make this a product that
Speaker 1: other other companies and consumers could go out and purchase
Speaker 1: Apple decided to change that. However, Lisa had a really
Speaker 1: hefty price tag. It was ten thousand dollars when it
Speaker 1: went on sale, and it was meant for business applications.
Speaker 1: But at that price, very few businesses we're willing to
Speaker 1: take the plunge. Remember, those are three dollars. That's significant,
Speaker 1: even more so than ten tho dollars is today. Ten
Speaker 1: dollars is already a huge amount of money. If you
Speaker 1: had just for inflation, you're talking around almost twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. So the g U I also ate
Speaker 1: up a lot of the computer's processing power. So not
Speaker 1: only did it cost a lot, but the operating system
Speaker 1: alone took up so much of the computer's processing power
Speaker 1: that you couldn't run very many applications on top of it.
Speaker 1: And that's not a great selling point, Like this is expensive,
Speaker 1: but at least you can't run much software on it.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make a really good tagline if you're trying
Speaker 1: to sell a computer, just an f Y I in
Speaker 1: case you ever want to make and sell computers in
Speaker 1: the future. Then you also had very few developers who
Speaker 1: are willing to put forth the effort to create programs
Speaker 1: for a computer or that was so elite, so expensive
Speaker 1: that it had a very small market. If you are
Speaker 1: in the business of making software and you have a
Speaker 1: limited amount of time and money on your hands, you
Speaker 1: want to dedicate that time and money toward projects that
Speaker 1: are likely to give you the biggest profit. And if
Speaker 1: you're talking about you know, the types of organizations that
Speaker 1: are willing to lay down ten grand per computer, that's
Speaker 1: a very small market. So software developers were not eager
Speaker 1: to jump on the bandwagon there. So Lisa was effectively
Speaker 1: a flop. It was kind of doomed from the start. Now,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned right at the beginning of this episode,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs effectively took over the Macintosh project. Now, this
Speaker 1: was after the then CEO of Apple demanded that Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs stop interfering with Lisa. Macintosh was a totally different project,
Speaker 1: and Steve Jobs, once he was pulled off the Lisa
Speaker 1: project and said you can't bother them anymore, looked around,
Speaker 1: saw the Macintosh project, which was completely independent, and said
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make that my pet project. And so he
Speaker 1: began to involve himself with or in the words of
Speaker 1: some of his UH contemporaries at the time interfere with
Speaker 1: the Macintosh project, and as a result, Macintosh transformed from
Speaker 1: a humble machine to an expensive consumer level device with
Speaker 1: a gooey and a mouse. It didn't have a graphic
Speaker 1: user interface before Steve Jobs got involved. It was initially
Speaker 1: priced at two thousand four dollars, which is expensive just
Speaker 1: for a basic computer today before you adjust for inflation.
Speaker 1: If you do adjust for inflation, that's more like five thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred bucks. That's a huge amount of money to
Speaker 1: ask to pay for a PC. So if you wanted
Speaker 1: a Macintosh when they first launched, you'd be plopping down
Speaker 1: the equivalent of fifty seven hundred dollars in today's money.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that the original plan was that
Speaker 1: this computer was supposed to cost five hundred dollars, which
Speaker 1: would be closer to twelve bucks today, which is still expensive. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to pay for a brand new computer,
Speaker 1: twar is closer to the top end of your of
Speaker 1: your basic machines. I mean, obviously, you can trick out
Speaker 1: a machine to be much more expensive than that if
Speaker 1: you want top of the line processors, UH graphics cards,
Speaker 1: cooling systems, all that sort of stuff. But if you're
Speaker 1: just buying off the shelf, twelve hundred dollars is already
Speaker 1: pretty expensive. It's not it's not the top end, but
Speaker 1: it's healthy, right Anyway, that was the initial goal was
Speaker 1: a five price point in four dollars, which would be
Speaker 1: about twelve today, and it blew that out of the water.
Speaker 1: I should point out, however, that this higher price tag
Speaker 1: is not entirely the fault of Steve Jobs. I don't
Speaker 1: want to give you that impression. It's true that Jobs
Speaker 1: added a lot of features that necessitated a price hike.
Speaker 1: No matter what, it was gonna cost more than five
Speaker 1: dollars because of the changes Steed Jobs made. But as
Speaker 1: for that price tag of two thousand four dollars, that
Speaker 1: credit really needs to go to the then Apple CEO,
Speaker 1: John's Scully. Scully reportedly decided that the initial price tag
Speaker 1: for the mac which was originally going to be fift
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, was too low. He actually said, fifteen hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: That's that's not high enough for us to really see
Speaker 1: a huge profit off that. So he knocked it up
Speaker 1: to and that way the Macintosh would see a profit
Speaker 1: margin of meaning you make over what you paid to
Speaker 1: create the computer. He didn't want to have a slim
Speaker 1: profit margin. However, of course, if you increase the price
Speaker 1: of a machine dramatically, then you're going to decrease the
Speaker 1: number of sales you make. So it's a very delicate
Speaker 1: balance figuring out how much to price a product so
Speaker 1: that you get the maximum amount of profit it from
Speaker 1: your investment. And Scully decided to go pretty hard for
Speaker 1: that investment with that profit margin. And this also began
Speaker 1: Apple's long history of being a company associated with the
Speaker 1: idea that it's hardware is overpriced. You've probably heard that
Speaker 1: if you've ever taken any look into Apple products, that
Speaker 1: you're paying a premium just for the Apple brand name
Speaker 1: because the products are priced more than what they would
Speaker 1: be priced by a competitor for an equivalent machine. That's
Speaker 1: not always the case, by the way, but it happened
Speaker 1: frequently enough in Apple's past that it became associated with
Speaker 1: the company's identity. People thought of Apple as being an
Speaker 1: elite company, that you were paying that extra price, and
Speaker 1: that you could be saving money if you just went
Speaker 1: with a different computer manufacturer, which in some some eras
Speaker 1: was absolutely true, just not in all eras. Back in
Speaker 1: those earliest days of Macintosh, It's certainly was the case
Speaker 1: that is undeniable now. Initial reviews of the Macintosh actually
Speaker 1: heaped a lot of praise on the computer. Consumer Reports
Speaker 1: wrote an absolutely glowing review of the original Macintosh, saying
Speaker 1: that the interface really transformed computing. The reviews stated that
Speaker 1: the interface, including the windows that it would use the
Speaker 1: mouse that you would use to navigate the gooey, were
Speaker 1: more than just gimmicks, which you know, you could have
Speaker 1: easily seen them as just being gimmicks. Everyone else was
Speaker 1: used to using text based interfaces and keyboards, so this
Speaker 1: wasn't a guaranteed success right all the gate. But Consumer
Speaker 1: Reports said, no, they got it right. This actually makes sense.
Speaker 1: They said that it actually transformed computing from a system
Speaker 1: of Labyrinthian rules to something that the average person could
Speaker 1: easily grasp. A Macintosh wasn't a cryptic machine that required
Speaker 1: the user to learn dozens of command line terms, like
Speaker 1: you know, various five old trees and ways to navigate
Speaker 1: between different directories. You didn't have to do that because
Speaker 1: it was all graphically presented for you and you just
Speaker 1: click on whatever it was you needed. It was a
Speaker 1: device that a novice could learn to navigate within like
Speaker 1: half an hour of using it. There were some drawbacks, however.
Speaker 1: That same consumer reports are You pointed out that the
Speaker 1: operating system on the Macintosh took up an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of the computer's processing power. The computer had enough memory
Speaker 1: to store about eight and a half pages of text
Speaker 1: after you factored in the operating system. That's text, not
Speaker 1: images or video or audio. All of that stuff would
Speaker 1: come later. Just eight and a half pages of text.
Speaker 1: That's all the memory it could have after you ended
Speaker 1: up booting up the operating system. This was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I was a real snob about gooey
Speaker 1: interfaces or gooey based computers. I hated the day that
Speaker 1: my dad decided to install Windows on our IBM compatible machine,
Speaker 1: which was similar in many ways to the mac operating system. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the reason I was upset about it was because
Speaker 1: the Windows operating system required so much of our computers
Speaker 1: ability to process information that it limited the kind of
Speaker 1: software we could run on it. If your software required
Speaker 1: more than what the computer could supply, you ran into problems.
Speaker 1: And I attributed a lot of that to the operating system.
Speaker 1: I much preferred DOSS, which was so slimmed down by
Speaker 1: comparison that you could run lots of different software on it. Well,
Speaker 1: the same thing was true with the early mac operating system.
Speaker 1: It just hogged up a lot of the initial Macintosh
Speaker 1: is uh abilities. And to be fair, the original Macintosh
Speaker 1: only had a kilobytes of memory, so it wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: packing an enormous amount of memory into that package. More
Speaker 1: and more software developers began to create programs that could
Speaker 1: only run and E environments, which kind of forced the
Speaker 1: issue to switch from the DOSS and other operating systems
Speaker 1: that involved command lines to shift over to graphic user
Speaker 1: interfaces because a lot of software ended up only being
Speaker 1: compatible with graphic user interface systems, and that helped force
Speaker 1: the issue. I still am bitter about that, even though
Speaker 1: today I probably wouldn't be able to If you put
Speaker 1: me in from an Apple to E or an early
Speaker 1: IBM PC that was just running DOSS, I wouldn't remember
Speaker 1: any of the commands besides d I R, which is
Speaker 1: directory for DOSS, I I would be lost. But I
Speaker 1: still a kind of bitter about all this. Now, I
Speaker 1: also be fair, I'm an elitist computer nerd type. I'm
Speaker 1: just an elitist computer nerd type who lacks the information
Speaker 1: to be able to effectively be an elitist, which is
Speaker 1: the saddest kind of nerd. Apple obviously you had really
Speaker 1: high hopes for that original Macintosh, but they had also
Speaker 1: had really high hopes for Lisa, and that didn't pan
Speaker 1: out back in nineteen eighty one, which was back when
Speaker 1: the Macintosh was still in development. It didn't debut till
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. Keep in mind, in ninety nineteen eight one,
Speaker 1: Apple had a plan, and their plan was that they
Speaker 1: would sell two point two million Macintosh computers by nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, by the end of nineteen eighty five, but
Speaker 1: that plan was based upon a launch date that would
Speaker 1: happen sometime in nineteen eighty two, because remember, back then
Speaker 1: they were still looking at creating a cheap alternative to
Speaker 1: the other computers like the Apple two and other competing
Speaker 1: computers on the market, So they had high hopes that
Speaker 1: they would be able to sell two point two million
Speaker 1: units by nineteen eighty five. The computer wasn't even available
Speaker 1: for purchase until nineteen eighty four, so that's set them
Speaker 1: back and even if they had launched in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: they would have had to sell around fifty thousand computers
Speaker 1: every month to hit that two point to a million
Speaker 1: mark within the end of They did have an enormous start.
Speaker 1: The Macintosh marketing department was great for the launch of
Speaker 1: the computer, and they sold quite a bit when they
Speaker 1: first went on the market because people were really excited
Speaker 1: about it. But after that initial excitement, they weren't able
Speaker 1: to capitalize on creating a momentum, and it died off
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. The marketing kind of failed after that initial launch.
Speaker 1: The Apple blew too much money early on and didn't
Speaker 1: have enough to support it throughout its initial launch, so
Speaker 1: after a successful couple of first months, sales dropped precipitously
Speaker 1: down to like five thousand units a month, way below
Speaker 1: the number they would need, So by the end of
Speaker 1: five they had not sold two point two million units
Speaker 1: as they had originally planned. It was more like two
Speaker 1: d fifty thousand units, a huge shortfall. The Macintosh was
Speaker 1: not quite a flop like Lisa, but it wasn't performing
Speaker 1: as well in the market as Apple had hoped. Now
Speaker 1: it was impressive, but it was suffering from a similar
Speaker 1: issue as Lisa. It didn't have a lot of applications
Speaker 1: available for it, and not as many as the competing
Speaker 1: IBM PCs had. Apple's then CEO admitted as much later
Speaker 1: on John Scully. He said, Yeah, we didn't do enough
Speaker 1: to develop software to run this computer. So while the
Speaker 1: computer was nice to look at, the graphic user interface
Speaker 1: was interesting, there just wasn't a whole lot to do
Speaker 1: with it. You didn't have things like spreadsheet programs. There
Speaker 1: was a severe lack of utility with their computer. Really.
Speaker 1: They only had two applications that Mac Wright, which was
Speaker 1: a word processing program, and they had Mac Paint, which
Speaker 1: was a simple graphics program. But that was about it.
Speaker 1: They didn't have the other stuff you would associate with
Speaker 1: other uters. So while it was user friendly, it didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of usability to it. Like there just
Speaker 1: wasn't enough to do so that also hurt McIntosh sales.
Speaker 1: Now you might also remember from our last episode, like
Speaker 1: I said, the CEO of Apple at this time was
Speaker 1: John Scully, whom Steve Jobs had lured away from PEPSI.
Speaker 1: The story is that Scully was kind of in line
Speaker 1: to become the chairman of the board over at Pepsi,
Speaker 1: but it was on a much longer timeline than Scully wanted,
Speaker 1: and that Steve Jobs was able to convince Scully to
Speaker 1: come over by saying to him, do you want to
Speaker 1: spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or
Speaker 1: do you want a chance to change the world. Once
Speaker 1: against Steve Jobs, master salesman, he could really have a
Speaker 1: turn of phrase and get you to believe in him
Speaker 1: even when the odds were stacked against him. Scully himself
Speaker 1: would say that that phrase really convinced him to come
Speaker 1: over to Apple, and he said so in a documentary,
Speaker 1: so you can actually check this out. It's a document
Speaker 1: are he titled Bloomberg Game Changers Steve Jobs. So it's
Speaker 1: part of a series. It was a really effective sales pitch,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, so Scullion Jobs initially worked really
Speaker 1: well together leading up to the Macintosh launch. Scully's predecessor
Speaker 1: was Mike Marcula, which in the last episode you might
Speaker 1: remember was the guy who stepped in to remove Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs from the Lisa project. Marcula was an early investor
Speaker 1: in Apple and had transitioned from CEO to board members,
Speaker 1: so he retired as CEO, he resigned um transitioning over
Speaker 1: to the board. He had told his wife that he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to stay on with Apple for very long,
Speaker 1: although he stayed on much longer than he initially meant to.
Speaker 1: He just stayed on in the capacity of member of
Speaker 1: the board as opposed to the CEO, and then John
Speaker 1: Scully took over the job as CEO. Now, John Scully
Speaker 1: would serve as the CEO from about to about nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: The three ish is really when we're looking at that
Speaker 1: transition effectively ninety three. Scully initially got along well with jobs,
Speaker 1: but when the Macintosh sales began to drop off, new
Speaker 1: tensions developed between the CEO and Apple's co founder, and
Speaker 1: that's not great when you have kind of clashing personalities
Speaker 1: at the top level of your company. Now, John Scully
Speaker 1: also has the dubious distinction of being on the America
Speaker 1: The Worst American CEOs list curated by Conde Nast. He's
Speaker 1: actually number fourteen on that list back when they published
Speaker 1: it a few years ago. Now more on why John
Speaker 1: Scully made that list as this episode progresses. Apple at
Speaker 1: the time had not completely switched over to the Macintosh
Speaker 1: line as its primary product. So you might think, oh,
Speaker 1: it went Apple to to Apple three to Macintosh and
Speaker 1: they discontinued the other computers, but that's not true. They
Speaker 1: were actually producing different lines of computers simultaneously, and Apple's
Speaker 1: structure was designed around this, where each product had its
Speaker 1: own division, so it wasn't like you had one big
Speaker 1: division of all these different products grouped together. You had
Speaker 1: an Apple two division and Apple three division, and a
Speaker 1: Macintosh division. You also had a Lisa division until they
Speaker 1: discontinued that product, so the Apple two and Apple three
Speaker 1: computers continued to be manufactured and sold by Apple, side
Speaker 1: by side with Macintosh computers. The Apple three ended up
Speaker 1: being a failure. It was a flop, very much like Lisa.
Speaker 1: It just didn't do so well. It was meant to be, again,
Speaker 1: a business level machine, not a personal computer, and it
Speaker 1: was priced as such, and there just wasn't enough there
Speaker 1: for businesses jump on board with it. There were cheaper
Speaker 1: IBM com uters coming out, so that was more attractive
Speaker 1: from an expense side of things, And like Lisa, there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of developers creating software for the Apple three,
Speaker 1: so it didn't make a whole lot of sense to
Speaker 1: invest in the Apple three platform if the IBM computer
Speaker 1: platform cost less and had more development, so companies weren't
Speaker 1: adopting the Apple three. But the Apple two continued to
Speaker 1: hold its own, so it was still a big product
Speaker 1: even as the Macintosh came online. Uh. The Apple two
Speaker 1: SEE computer debuted in nineteen eighty four. That was the
Speaker 1: same year that the Macintosh came out, so Apple too
Speaker 1: c uh stood for well, a more advanced Apple two computer. Actually,
Speaker 1: the letter system for Apple two computers is really confusing
Speaker 1: because the Apple to E came out in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three and then the Apple two C came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, so they weren't going in alphabetical order
Speaker 1: and is a bit more than a bit confusing. But
Speaker 1: the Apple to C was Apple's first compact model, so
Speaker 1: the C kind of stood for compact. The computer's hardware
Speaker 1: consisted of a case that had an incorporated keyboard and
Speaker 1: a five and a quarter inch disk drive, and the
Speaker 1: computer itself, which was separate from a monitor. It was
Speaker 1: just the computer. You could slide that into a base
Speaker 1: a stand essentially, and on top of the stand you
Speaker 1: could put your monitor, So the computer were kind of
Speaker 1: slot in underneath where the monitor was. The monitor would
Speaker 1: not sit directly on top of the computer case itself.
Speaker 1: Apple would continue to make computers in the two C
Speaker 1: line until n so the Apple two continued to go
Speaker 1: on sale to to hit store shelves while the Macintosh
Speaker 1: continued to evolve, so these separate products remained side by
Speaker 1: side for quite some time. Apple launched an enhanced version
Speaker 1: of the Apple to E in Night five, so the
Speaker 1: two E continued as well. It just got a bit
Speaker 1: of a beefier version than the one that had launched
Speaker 1: a couple of years earlier. It did not have a
Speaker 1: graphic user interface like the Macintosh, and Apple would continue
Speaker 1: to make these Apple to computers available for quite some time.
Speaker 1: In fact, that advanced to E would continue to be
Speaker 1: on sale until n so, extending pretty far. Like you
Speaker 1: would think that by nine three you would have just
Speaker 1: graphic user interface based computers, but you still had the
Speaker 1: Apple to E Enhanced And maybe one day I'll do
Speaker 1: an episode dedicated just to those Apple line computers to
Speaker 1: talk about the process of their evolution compared to Macintosh.
Speaker 1: But that's not really what this episode is about. I
Speaker 1: just went into touch base and explained that was going
Speaker 1: on at the same time as the development for the
Speaker 1: mac Now, in January, Apple tried to make the best
Speaker 1: of a bad situation and by launching the Macintosh XL.
Speaker 1: Only here's the thing, this was not the next Macintosh computer.
Speaker 1: It was actually a rebranding of a different computer, namely
Speaker 1: the Lisa two. So remember the Lisa was a flop.
Speaker 1: Then Apple decided to make a stripped down version of
Speaker 1: the Lisa computer and sell it for a lower price
Speaker 1: than that ten thousand dollar beast of a computer called Lisa.
Speaker 1: Lisa too did not do well in sales either, so
Speaker 1: then they rebranded it. They called it Macintosh XL because
Speaker 1: the Macintosh was doing alright initially, but they weren't able
Speaker 1: to move the Lisa two computers, so they rebranded it.
Speaker 1: They called it the XCEL. But it still didn't do
Speaker 1: so well, and by April they discontinued it. They stopped
Speaker 1: making the Macintosh XL. They still had a ton in inventory,
Speaker 1: but they weren't making more of them. They were able
Speaker 1: to offload some of the Macintosh XL devices with some
Speaker 1: big sales deals. So, for example, they sold five thousand
Speaker 1: of the XL Macintosh is to a company called sun
Speaker 1: remarketing back in nineteen eight seven. But ultimately a lot
Speaker 1: of those units never left Apple warehouses. They just sat there.
Speaker 1: And so in nineteen eighty nine they decided to take
Speaker 1: a note from the video game crash of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: You might remember, Atari decided to get rid of a
Speaker 1: lot of excess inventory by dumping them in landfills out
Speaker 1: in the desert. Apple ended up doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: only they dumped there's in the landfill in Utah instead
Speaker 1: of in a different states. So they all of those
Speaker 1: Macintosh XL computers ended up in a landfill in Utah.
Speaker 1: So somewhere in a Utah landfill, if you dig down,
Speaker 1: you would be able to find old Macintosh XL Lisa
Speaker 1: two computers. But don't do. That will be a colacily
Speaker 1: bad idea and you could very easily injure yourself if
Speaker 1: you dug in the wrong landfield. Phil Plus you'd probably
Speaker 1: be trespassing. So I'm officially telling you do not go
Speaker 1: searching for the Macintosh x L because even if you
Speaker 1: found one, it wouldn't work. At this point. It's been
Speaker 1: exposed to elements since nine nine, So you don't want one.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. If I hear about you doing it,
Speaker 1: I'll be very put out. I've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about the history of the Macintosh from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four to nine, but before I get into the
Speaker 1: next segment, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All right. So, a few months after the initial Macintosh
Speaker 1: hit store shelves, Apple released an update called the Mac
Speaker 1: five twelve, also known as the Fat Mac. This Macintosh
Speaker 1: had five twelve kilobytes of memory, That's why it was
Speaker 1: called that, so significantly more memory than the initial Macintosh,
Speaker 1: which remember, only had a hundred twenty eight kilobytes. That
Speaker 1: additional memory made it easier to develop programs for the
Speaker 1: Macintosh because the operating system no longer hogged nearly all
Speaker 1: of the system's memory. But that extra memory came at
Speaker 1: a cost. The fat max price tag was three thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars in nineteen five. That's equivalent to nearly
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars today. It's uh incredibly expensive. Still, the
Speaker 1: Fat Mac had a big advantage. It could actually do
Speaker 1: stuff pretty big when you compare it to the original Mac,
Speaker 1: and some software and one additional piece of hardware really
Speaker 1: helped increase the value of the Macintosh line. So on
Speaker 1: the software side you had stuff like Aldus page Maker
Speaker 1: and eventually became Adobe page Maker. It helped usher in
Speaker 1: a new era of computing. This was the era of
Speaker 1: desktop publishing. That was not a thing really before the
Speaker 1: Macintosh and eldest PageMaker made it a thing. So PageMaker,
Speaker 1: if you've never used it, it's sort of a layout
Speaker 1: program and allows you to lay out a an attractive
Speaker 1: aesthetic design to stuff like newsletters, flyers, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: A program if you want to make a program for
Speaker 1: a play or some other event, you could use PageMaker
Speaker 1: to size everything and uh and position it properly so
Speaker 1: that you had an attractive layout. And that meant that
Speaker 1: you could suddenly do this at home, whether if you
Speaker 1: had the right equipment or with a small business. You
Speaker 1: could do it there. You didn't have to go to
Speaker 1: a larger publishing house and contract with them to make
Speaker 1: your stuff. This was revolutionary. It was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why computers, personal computers and small computers that bus
Speaker 1: this is used. We're so popular and men that they
Speaker 1: gave these entities, whether they were individuals or small businesses,
Speaker 1: greater opportunities. Uh, so that was very popular. But there
Speaker 1: was also some other software that was helping out in
Speaker 1: Microsoft began to publish software for the Macintosh. So Microsoft
Speaker 1: and Apple haven't always had a contentious relationship. In fact,
Speaker 1: Microsoft has often in Apple's past helped the other company
Speaker 1: out with loans or with investments. Uh, it hasn't always
Speaker 1: been a I hate you, No, I hate you more
Speaker 1: kind of relationship. One of the earliest programs Microsoft made
Speaker 1: available for the Macintosh was Word one point oh, which
Speaker 1: was the first real competitor to Apple's own Mac Write
Speaker 1: software and eventually overtook Mac Write. People began to prefer
Speaker 1: Word one point oh, and it's later very visians to
Speaker 1: the mac right word processing program. Another program that came
Speaker 1: over to mac was the Excel one point oh software,
Speaker 1: the spreadsheet program. In fact, it came to the Macintosh first.
Speaker 1: It was a Macintosh exclusive for a while. Uh in
Speaker 1: the early days. That was just the case because it
Speaker 1: wouldn't even come to Windows until late nine. So Apple
Speaker 1: had a headstart on Windows when it came to Excel.
Speaker 1: But there's a whole story that I've talked about in
Speaker 1: a previous episode about why that is so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into it. Here on the hardware side
Speaker 1: was a device called the laser writer. This was a printer,
Speaker 1: a monstrous lee heavy printer. It weighed seventy seven pounds
Speaker 1: that's about thirty five ms, and it had a three
Speaker 1: hundred dots per inch resolution, pretty standard for printers of
Speaker 1: the day. And it cost a hefty amount seven thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and let's adjust for inflation because I like to
Speaker 1: do that, that's about sixteen grand in today's dollars. Sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for a printer. But you could network multiple
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers to this one printer, so that increased its value.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to buy a printer for every computer.
Speaker 1: If you had several computer workstations at your office, you
Speaker 1: can network them together to this printer and they could
Speaker 1: all print from the same printer. That was a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal, very novel concept when it came to this
Speaker 1: level of computer enterprise. Normally, you'd be paying a lot
Speaker 1: more money for a networked system that was created pretty
Speaker 1: much by contract for your company. So it meant that
Speaker 1: Apple could actually compete in that space. And uh they
Speaker 1: could also print in different fonts. The earliest laser writer
Speaker 1: only a few different fonts, but that was still a
Speaker 1: huge advantage over older printers, remember like Daisy wheel printer.
Speaker 1: Actually you may not remember Daisy will printers. I do
Speaker 1: because I grew up with them. Those had a physical
Speaker 1: font on the device itself, so you couldn't really change it,
Speaker 1: but the laser writer could reproduce a few different fonts,
Speaker 1: giving you some options. And later versions of the laser
Speaker 1: writer and later versions of the operating system and the
Speaker 1: accompanying software would allow even more fonts. So that made
Speaker 1: desktop publishing even more attractive. So this, this combination of
Speaker 1: software and hardware suddenly made the Macintosh a more attractive
Speaker 1: device if you wanted to go into publishing. And this
Speaker 1: really begins the relationship Apple has with creators, people who
Speaker 1: are into graphics eventually into film and audio. Apple kind
Speaker 1: of established that relationship with people at this stage, this
Speaker 1: early stage with the fat Mac. It meant that you
Speaker 1: were catering to people who didn't really feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: the IBM compatible approach to computing. They found it more
Speaker 1: intuitive to go to the Mac system and that would
Speaker 1: remain true for decades. In fact, for a long long time,
Speaker 1: Apple dominated when it came to production, particularly video and
Speaker 1: audio production. Here at How Stuff Works, our video department
Speaker 1: works almost exclusively on Macintosh computers. So, even though I
Speaker 1: would argue PCs have caught up in a large part
Speaker 1: and software for the PCs have caught up in a
Speaker 1: large part, two, Apple's dominant place in that market, there's
Speaker 1: still people who prefer the Apple approach, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: depending upon what format you're working in, Apple still doesn't
Speaker 1: better than PCs do. All of that began way back
Speaker 1: in with the Fat Mac and the launch of the
Speaker 1: Laser Writer and the launch of these software programs I've
Speaker 1: been talking about on the corporate side. Five was when
Speaker 1: Apple said goodbye to the co founders, but under very
Speaker 1: different circumstances. Steve Wozniak, who had mostly been away from
Speaker 1: Apple ever since he had suffered injuries in an airplane
Speaker 1: crash and had been working hard to recover from them.
Speaker 1: He left on his own accord in February night five,
Speaker 1: and he went back to college. Eventually he went into
Speaker 1: teaching and then began to do other stuff as well.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs, however, didn't really have a choice in the matter,
Speaker 1: not really when you get down to it. After numerous
Speaker 1: teams reported being incredibly frustrated with Steve jobs managerial style.
Speaker 1: The executives of the company, primarily CEO John Scully, decided
Speaker 1: to effectively strip Steve Jobs of all of his power.
Speaker 1: They removed him from all the projects. They put him
Speaker 1: in an office in a building that was mostly deserted. Uh.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs himself referred to it as Siberia. And of
Speaker 1: course Steve Jobs is not one known for making melodramatic
Speaker 1: statements like that, so you know it had to be awful.
Speaker 1: But the point being the Steve Jobs had really very
Speaker 1: little to do with the company that he had helped create.
Speaker 1: He had been pulled away from it and removed more
Speaker 1: or less from power. Not everyone was upset about that
Speaker 1: because so many people had had issues with his management style,
Speaker 1: but it still was a difficult story, right to say,
Speaker 1: we've decided this founder of our company shouldn't be involved
Speaker 1: in any of the company's projects, but was still effectively
Speaker 1: an employee of the company. He was still drawing a
Speaker 1: salary at that point, but Jobs decided he didn't want
Speaker 1: to just sit at a desk in an empty building
Speaker 1: and pull a salary from a company. He wanted to
Speaker 1: see if he could perhaps regain control of Apple, and
Speaker 1: so he went to some of the executives at Apple
Speaker 1: to see if any of them would support him and
Speaker 1: what would effectively be a coup to go to the
Speaker 1: board of directors demand that John Scully be removed as
Speaker 1: CEO and perhaps Steve Jobs would take his place. But
Speaker 1: one of the executives he went to felt very strongly
Speaker 1: that this was the bad decision. That person was Jean
Speaker 1: Louise guess guess A. Now Jean Louise guess Ay was
Speaker 1: someone who had risen up in the Apple ranks. He
Speaker 1: was a manager in their in their various product division lines,
Speaker 1: and he did not like Jobs. Jobs and guess A
Speaker 1: did not get along. So guess A ended up going
Speaker 1: over to John Scully and tattletaled on Steve Jobs. Essentially
Speaker 1: told John Scully, who was off on a business trip, Hey,
Speaker 1: you should know this. Steve is going around stirring up
Speaker 1: trouble and he wants to try and go to the
Speaker 1: Board of directors and go over your head and replace you.
Speaker 1: John Scully rushed back to Apple. He called a meeting
Speaker 1: of the board of directors. He was furious with Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs for what he saw as an act of disloyalty
Speaker 1: and dishonesty, and so they had it out in front
Speaker 1: of the Board of Directors. It was, by all accounts
Speaker 1: and ugly confrontation, and ultimately John Scully was asking the
Speaker 1: Board of Directors for essentially a vote of confidence and
Speaker 1: to say, you know, who would they go with? Would
Speaker 1: they side with Jobs or would they side with Scully um?
Speaker 1: And then the board cided unanimously with John Scully. Every
Speaker 1: member of the board, including the people I've already mentioned
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're on John Scully's side, and they
Speaker 1: effectively pushed the Jobs out of his company. Uh. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the story was Steve Jobs and Apple doesn't end here.
Speaker 1: In will actually revisit Steve Jobs later on this episode,
Speaker 1: but we've also covered this story in other episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff. So if you want to hear a really
Speaker 1: deep discussion about what Steve Jobs did in his years
Speaker 1: away from Apple, there are a couple of different places
Speaker 1: you can check out, or a couple different episodes you
Speaker 1: can check out. There's a two parter called How Bill
Speaker 1: Gates and Steve Jobs Work. They published in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: so they were very early episodes of Tech Stuff. We
Speaker 1: launched tech Stuff in two thousand eight, So Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I talked about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who
Speaker 1: had a lot of not just similarities, but a lot
Speaker 1: of They worked a lot together in those early days
Speaker 1: of Apple and Microsoft. So you can check out that
Speaker 1: two parter. And there's also a very sad episode titled
Speaker 1: One More Thing and that published in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: shortly after Steve Jobs passed away. And in those episodes,
Speaker 1: I really he talked about what Steve Jobs did in
Speaker 1: his ears away from Apple. So I'm not going to
Speaker 1: cover it here, but we will revisit Steve Jobs because
Speaker 1: he does factor back into Apple's history a bit later on.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more, check out those episodes
Speaker 1: I just mentioned. Now, Jobs would end up publishing letters
Speaker 1: of resignation. He sent letters of resignation to the press
Speaker 1: after he had effectively been forced out of his own company.
Speaker 1: So it's more like you can't fire me, I quit
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Uh. Presumably he did this in order
Speaker 1: to get the media on his side, but it did
Speaker 1: not have the effect that he was hoping for. In fact,
Speaker 1: Apple stocks rallied as a result of Steve Jobs being
Speaker 1: pushed aside and sending out these resignation letters. Effectively, the
Speaker 1: market was saying, who we're sure, are glad you got
Speaker 1: rid of that guy. Uh. Not a great message to receive.
Speaker 1: Not a that's big blow to the ego, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: But it gave Scully more confidence in his decisions, which
Speaker 1: would emerge in physical form with the evolution of the
Speaker 1: Macintosh line. Now. One of the CEO's first acts once
Speaker 1: he had been confirmed as being the head of Apple,
Speaker 1: was to lead a massive reorganization at the company, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people say it was long overdue. So again,
Speaker 1: up to that point, Apple's org charts were based based
Speaker 1: on products. If you worked in the Apple two line,
Speaker 1: you were in one division. If you worked on the
Speaker 1: Apple three line, you were in another division. If you
Speaker 1: worked on the Macintosh you were in yet another division,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Each department was separate
Speaker 1: from all the others. And John Scully said, this doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. What we should do is have a
Speaker 1: big product development department, and everyone who works on various
Speaker 1: products will be inside this structured department with a manager
Speaker 1: overseeing that product, our product development overall, so everyone would
Speaker 1: have a single boss they would report to, who in
Speaker 1: turn would report to John Scully as CEO. Then you
Speaker 1: would also have a department just for sales, you would
Speaker 1: have a department just for marketing, and these departments would
Speaker 1: work together, but they wouldn't be dependent upon individual products.
Speaker 1: It would largely be these big divisions within Apple. So essentially,
Speaker 1: he was saying, let's go to your traditional corporate structure.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he was inventing a new type of leadership.
Speaker 1: This is something that's common across corporations all over the world.
Speaker 1: So he was just saying, let's go to that because
Speaker 1: it makes more sense. It's streamlines things, people know who
Speaker 1: they report to. There's not this this compartmentalized UH structure
Speaker 1: between different products. People can actually communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: We can make sure that people working on one product
Speaker 1: are not stepping on the toes of people who are
Speaker 1: working on another product. Everyone can talk to each other,
Speaker 1: and that ended up being viewed as a positive move
Speaker 1: in the market. Again, people thought this guy knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing, and they felt confident in Apple's performance because
Speaker 1: of this restructuring. UH. Apple stocks would end up performing
Speaker 1: really well over the next few years. Meanwhile, Jean Luis Gassay,
Speaker 1: that manager I was talking about who tattle tailed on
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs became the manager for the Products division. Effectively,
Speaker 1: he took over the position that Steve Jobs was inhabiting
Speaker 1: before he was stripped of all of his responsibilities. So
Speaker 1: Gassa became the manager for Products Division and decided to
Speaker 1: make a major change to the Macintosh line. So remember
Speaker 1: that last Mac was the Fat Mac or the Mac
Speaker 1: five twelve. The next computer in that line was the
Speaker 1: Mac Plus. Now Apple introduced this in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: and it looked identical to the Fat Mac. If you
Speaker 1: were to put two side by side, you probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to immediately tell them apart unless you could
Speaker 1: actually read the designation on the case. But inside it
Speaker 1: was actually quite different from the fat Fat Mac. So,
Speaker 1: for one thing, the Fat Mac was not meant to
Speaker 1: be expandable. Steve Jobs hated the idea of users being
Speaker 1: able to alter the computers that Apple designed. He wanted
Speaker 1: to have closed systems, meaning that you bought a computer,
Speaker 1: that's the computer you got to use. You didn't get
Speaker 1: to expand it in any way unless you were to
Speaker 1: go to a third party, and that would violate your warranty.
Speaker 1: The Mac Plus was different, and it was actually expandable. Um,
Speaker 1: you could upgrade your machine if you wanted to. It
Speaker 1: was the first Macintosh to feature a small computer system interface,
Speaker 1: also known as a scuzzy drive s C s I.
Speaker 1: But people call it scuzzy, not that it was scuzzy,
Speaker 1: it's just how we pronounce it. It's actually a set
Speaker 1: of parallel interface standards that allow you to connect other
Speaker 1: devices to a computer, so a scanner and external hard drive, printers,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. It's just meant to be kind
Speaker 1: of a universal uh plug for certain types of computer peripherals.
Speaker 1: I talked a little bit about it in a recent
Speaker 1: episode about USBs when I was comparing USB s to
Speaker 1: serial and parallel ports anyway, uh the scuzzy would remain
Speaker 1: a feature in every Mac that would follow from that
Speaker 1: point until n You could also upgrade the memory of
Speaker 1: the Mac Plus. The Mac Plus would come with a
Speaker 1: whole megabyte of memory, remember the previous fat Mac at
Speaker 1: five twelve kilobytes. Megabyte was another big jump up, but
Speaker 1: you could expand that to up to four megabytes using
Speaker 1: a thirty pen memory module that was easily pluggable into
Speaker 1: the Macintosh system. You didn't have to do any crazy
Speaker 1: soldering or anything like that. It had an expansion slot
Speaker 1: you could plug these these chips into. Previous Apple devices
Speaker 1: didn't allow you to upgrade your memory, so what you
Speaker 1: bought was what you got, unless you again went to
Speaker 1: a third party and had it professionally altered. So this
Speaker 1: was a huge departure from Steve Jobs's philosophy. Guess Say's
Speaker 1: approach was almost a hundred eighty degrees different from Jobs,
Speaker 1: and would continue to be different from Jobs over the
Speaker 1: next few years. The Mac Plus also included a keyboard
Speaker 1: with some features that we now considered to be pretty
Speaker 1: much standard for keyboards, like arrow keys and a number pad. Obviously,
Speaker 1: not all keyboards have those, especially for things like laptops.
Speaker 1: You might not have a number pad on all laptops,
Speaker 1: but for your standard PC keyboards the kinds for desktops,
Speaker 1: you pretty much find arrow keys and number pads on
Speaker 1: most of those these days. But this was novel thinking
Speaker 1: back in so it was something that differentiated the Mac
Speaker 1: Plus from other computers on the market, and it also
Speaker 1: ran the third generation of Max operating system, which was
Speaker 1: then called System three. This was before Apple started calling
Speaker 1: the operating system mac OS. They just called it system
Speaker 1: and you could use double sided floppy discs with this device,
Speaker 1: which allowed you to store a whopping eight bytes of
Speaker 1: data per disc. I remember those days, but anyway, that
Speaker 1: was a big thing back then. Having a double sided disc,
Speaker 1: you know, effectively doubling the amount of information you could
Speaker 1: save on a disc. That was a huge space saver.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you had to have twice as many of those
Speaker 1: stupid discs, and that was a pain in the butt.
Speaker 1: Later in Apple discontinued the Fat Mac and replaced it
Speaker 1: with the five twelve K E, which was similar to
Speaker 1: the Mac Plus. So you had the Mac Plus, which
Speaker 1: was sort of the high end machine, and then they said, well,
Speaker 1: the Fat Mac doesn't really mess her up to the
Speaker 1: Mac Plus. Will make a new version of the Fat
Speaker 1: Mac called Mac five twelve K. It did not have
Speaker 1: some of the elements that the Mac Plus had. It
Speaker 1: didn't have the scuzzyport, and it didn't have the expandable
Speaker 1: memory capability. It had those older traditional Apple style memory chips,
Speaker 1: and as you might imagine, that didn't measure up well
Speaker 1: with the Mac Plus in the market. So you had
Speaker 1: consumers or small businesses, mainly and larger looking at the
Speaker 1: Mac Plus versus the Mac five twelve k E, and
Speaker 1: they said, why would I go with the five twelve
Speaker 1: k E which has fewer features than the Mac Plus.
Speaker 1: So ultimately the five twelve K did not sell very well.
Speaker 1: The Mac Plus, however, was a very popular UH product
Speaker 1: within the Apple line, in fact, so much so that
Speaker 1: it would become the longest lived computer in the Macintosh line,
Speaker 1: meaning it was the one that Apple produced the longest
Speaker 1: amount of time UH from nineteen eighty six to nineteen
Speaker 1: so four years of producing the same computer. That's a
Speaker 1: long time in computer terms, because parts become obsolete so quickly,
Speaker 1: right processors get faster, we can put more memory into
Speaker 1: these machines, but the Mac Plus would stay on store
Speaker 1: shelves largely unchanged from nineteen eight six to nine. Now
Speaker 1: at this stage, I should mention that I'm not going
Speaker 1: to cover every single variation of the Macintosh in this episode.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds like it because I've started with
Speaker 1: the big ones so early on, but that would just
Speaker 1: be ridiculous. If I were to do that, it would
Speaker 1: eventually just lead to me reading off specs for different
Speaker 1: computers and that would get incredibly boring incredibly fast. I
Speaker 1: do want to cover some of the big changes that
Speaker 1: happened throughout Apple's history and the history of the Macintosh,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to cover every variation of every
Speaker 1: entry into the Macintosh line. There are lots of them,
Speaker 1: so many that it actually became a problem for Apple,
Speaker 1: But I'll go into that in a little bit. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna try and get a deeper understanding of not
Speaker 1: just the growth of the personal computer market, but the
Speaker 1: evolution of Apple as a company. So that being said,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven saw some milestones in Apple history. For
Speaker 1: one thing, Apple built the one millionth Macintosh in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven. Now that was a bit behind schedule, because
Speaker 1: you remember, way back in nineteen eighty one, they were
Speaker 1: hoping to sell two point two million Macintosh computers by
Speaker 1: the end of nineteen eighty five. Here it is nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, and they've just built the one million Macintosh,
Speaker 1: so they're well behind what they were hoping for back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one. However, that being said, this was
Speaker 1: a totally different world seven. You saw massive competition in
Speaker 1: the market. Not only did IBM have its own personal
Speaker 1: computers out there, but you had all the clones of
Speaker 1: IBM computers, the IBM compatible computers, because IBM licensed that
Speaker 1: technology to other companies, so there was a lot of
Speaker 1: competition in the space. So hitting that one million mark
Speaker 1: was still impressive, even though it was much later than
Speaker 1: what they had hoped for, uh and it was significant.
Speaker 1: So that year Apple introduced new computers in the Macintosh line.
Speaker 1: They launched the Mac S E and the Mac two
Speaker 1: as then the part two son of Mac. It was
Speaker 1: the Roman numeral two as well, kind of similar to
Speaker 1: how they did Apple one, Apple to Apple three. We
Speaker 1: start seeing the Macintosh regularly shortened to just Mac. At
Speaker 1: this point, very few people started referring to them as
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers. They just called a max really. After the
Speaker 1: first Macintosh, that became pretty standard, and the Mac two
Speaker 1: marked another big departure from the original Macintosh design jobs
Speaker 1: and wanted the Mac to be that closed system. Like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the Mac two had six expansion slots that
Speaker 1: could port all sorts of stuff, including different types of
Speaker 1: video cards, which was a huge departure for Apple, plus
Speaker 1: different types of network cards, scuzzy drives, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: It could also display color they video cards. If you
Speaker 1: had the right video card in the right monitor, you
Speaker 1: could have a color display, which was a first for
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers, and it pushed the Macintosh from the monochromatic
Speaker 1: world to the world of glorious color with up to
Speaker 1: sixteen million different colors that could be displayed, which is
Speaker 1: actually pretty impressive back in the mid eighties. Later on
Speaker 1: that would be dwarfed by what you could achieve with
Speaker 1: high end video cards and monitors in n Apple's Macintosh
Speaker 1: line continued to evolve, but there weren't really any major
Speaker 1: developments like the ones I just mentioned. Instead, it was
Speaker 1: mostly revisions and evolutions of the line, but not revolutions.
Speaker 1: On the software side. The operating system grew, with systems
Speaker 1: say coming out towards the end of nineteen, but apart
Speaker 1: from the first Apple CD ROM drive launching, nothing huge
Speaker 1: really happened in the mac line, and the same is
Speaker 1: true for eighty nine, with one major exception. That was
Speaker 1: the year the Apple introduced the mac Portable. So this
Speaker 1: wasn't really a laptop computer. I mean, you could call
Speaker 1: it a laptop computer, but really it was more of
Speaker 1: a portable Macintosh computer. In theory. You could call it laptop,
Speaker 1: but only in theory because the thing weighed nearly sixteen
Speaker 1: pounds or about seven point to six kilograms, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty weighty machine to call a laptop. It was
Speaker 1: also bulky, and it was about the size of a
Speaker 1: standard briefcase. In other words, it was a giant compared
Speaker 1: to the Mac Air that you could find today. The
Speaker 1: Mac Portable had a lead acid battery, which is the
Speaker 1: same sort of battery you can find in your standard
Speaker 1: gas powered automobile, like a car battery that's also lead acid.
Speaker 1: That's type of battery the first Mac Portable had. Now,
Speaker 1: it did allow you to have about ten hours of
Speaker 1: battery life, so that's nice, but it added to that
Speaker 1: significant weight, or it was rather i should say it
Speaker 1: made up a significant portion of that weight. There were
Speaker 1: two main keyboard layouts you could get. One had a
Speaker 1: numeric keypad and the other one had a track ball
Speaker 1: which would replace the need for a mouse. So trackball
Speaker 1: sort of like the old centipede arcade machines, And if
Speaker 1: you don't know what that is, ask your parents. There
Speaker 1: were This was another one of the ideas of Jean
Speaker 1: Louis Gassy. So he decided that the portable computer was
Speaker 1: an interesting approach. He had already made a decision to
Speaker 1: stick with Apple. He had received an order, an offer
Speaker 1: rather from Commodore. Commodore was making the Amiga line of
Speaker 1: computers and they wanted Gass to come over as the
Speaker 1: new head of Commodore. But he actually turned the company
Speaker 1: down initially and said that he wanted to stick with Apple,
Speaker 1: and so he really pushed for the portable Mac. Uh.
Speaker 1: It had pretty impressive specs for the time. Apple said
Speaker 1: they spared no expense, they made no accommodation for the
Speaker 1: fact that was portable. They didn't want to compromise on quality,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the specs were pretty impressive even for
Speaker 1: just a regular desktop machine. However, it meant that the
Speaker 1: device was incredibly expensive, again not a surprise with an Apple, right.
Speaker 1: So it's price tag was six thousand, five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for this portable machine. In so if we look at inflation,
Speaker 1: that's about thirteen thousand dollars. You would have to pay
Speaker 1: thirteen grand to get this portable Mac. Now, there was
Speaker 1: a call for portable machines because more and more companies
Speaker 1: wanted people to be able to take a machine into
Speaker 1: the field You might work for a company like a
Speaker 1: utility company, and having a computer that your employee could
Speaker 1: take with him or her on a service call was
Speaker 1: incredibly valuable. So there was a need for portable machines.
Speaker 1: People had a desire for them. There was a market there,
Speaker 1: but thirteen thousand dollars for a portable Mac was a
Speaker 1: super steep price, and you might not be surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that not very many of them were sold as
Speaker 1: a result. In fact, Apple sales in general were not
Speaker 1: doing well that year. It marked the first time Apple
Speaker 1: had an actual drop in sales figures, so they were
Speaker 1: selling fewer computers than they had in the previous year.
Speaker 1: The following year, Gasse announced his retirement from Apple and
Speaker 1: vacated the head of product development, so he only lasted
Speaker 1: a little bit longer than Steve Jobs himself did. Now,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety also saw a big shift due to outside competition.
Speaker 1: That's because in nineteen Microsoft launched Windows three point oh. Now,
Speaker 1: the previous incarnation of Windows had really not made a
Speaker 1: huge impact on Macintosh sales. Consumers had not really adapted
Speaker 1: and adopted the Windows platform. But Windows three was a
Speaker 1: different story. Windows three and IBM compatible machines were starting
Speaker 1: to become more popular, and from this point forward, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to call those PCs. We'll talk about max
Speaker 1: versus PCs. I don't like that because I think personal
Speaker 1: computer is too broad a term to just refer to
Speaker 1: Windows based machines, but just for simplicity sake, we're gonna
Speaker 1: do that for the rest of this episode. So PCs
Speaker 1: were really selling well, and Windows three point oh was
Speaker 1: a dominant operating system, again a graphic user interface similar
Speaker 1: to what you would find on the Macintosh. There were
Speaker 1: even people arguing that Microsoft was copying no Macintosh, but
Speaker 1: the development of Windows was happening at around the same
Speaker 1: time him as the development of the Macintosh gooey, and
Speaker 1: to be honest, both companies really owed a huge debt
Speaker 1: to Xerox because it was Xerox is Park the R
Speaker 1: and d arm of Xerox that developed the graphic user interface. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the IBM PCs had a huge advantage over Macintosh and
Speaker 1: that they were less expensive. You could buy an IBM
Speaker 1: PC for a fraction of what it cost to buy
Speaker 1: a Macintosh, and then you can get your graphic user
Speaker 1: interface with Windows three point oh. Uh. In fact, within
Speaker 1: a couple of years, you would have about five copies
Speaker 1: of Windows three point oh for every Macintosh that was
Speaker 1: being sold. That's not great if you're Apple. Uh. I
Speaker 1: should also point out that even at this point, as
Speaker 1: late as n I still hated Windows because I still
Speaker 1: hated the idea of having to surrender so much of
Speaker 1: my computers operating system or so much of my computers
Speaker 1: processing power to the operating system them. So I was
Speaker 1: still being an elitist computer snob in those days. Although
Speaker 1: I had to give in because more and more games
Speaker 1: were only Windows compatible, and if I'm going to be honest,
Speaker 1: that was my main concern with PCs back in the day.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much concerned about the productivity software, but
Speaker 1: if I couldn't play my ultimate series of games got
Speaker 1: grouchy anyway. Remember it was also the year that the
Speaker 1: Mac Plus finally got discontinued from Apple. They decided to
Speaker 1: stop selling it, to stop making it. But it had
Speaker 1: a four year run, so that was really strong. Now
Speaker 1: I've got more to say about this period in Apple
Speaker 1: and Macintosh history, but before I get to that, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Within two years,
Speaker 1: so essentially By the time it gets to nine two
Speaker 1: Windows machines were outnumbering Macintosh machines by that factor of
Speaker 1: five to one, and that was super bad news for Apple.
Speaker 1: Apple stock price suffered dropping twenty percent, so the the
Speaker 1: value of the company decreased by one five because of
Speaker 1: this issue and other issues going on in Apple, so
Speaker 1: the company was in a dangerous time in its history.
Speaker 1: It really led to an overall operational loss and it
Speaker 1: was pretty ugly. Stockholders were demanding that something change. So
Speaker 1: John Scully was on the way out at this point
Speaker 1: because the performance of the company was suffering. He was
Speaker 1: being blamed for a lot of that, and so he
Speaker 1: left in three. But just before he left, Apple was
Speaker 1: still trying to right the ship right. The ship was
Speaker 1: starting to list. They were trying to get it back
Speaker 1: on track. I'm mixing metaphors, sue me. Apple introduced System seven,
Speaker 1: so this was the next generation of its operating system,
Speaker 1: and it introduced automatic support from multiple simultaneous applications, so
Speaker 1: you could run numerous programs at the same time. It
Speaker 1: also introduced uh It's QuickTime software in n and Apple
Speaker 1: Max began to run on the Motorola six eight zero
Speaker 1: three zero processors. And I'm sure there's an easier way
Speaker 1: of saying that, and I'm sure the computer geeks out
Speaker 1: there in the audience who are familiar with these processors,
Speaker 1: these are the ones that you know, Max ran on
Speaker 1: the sixty eight thousand processors that Motorola made since the beginning.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's an easier way of saying them, and
Speaker 1: I apologize for not knowing that, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say them the long way anyway. Uh. The Apple introduced
Speaker 1: the Macintosh Quadra seven hundred and the Quadrum nine hundred
Speaker 1: computers in nine, which were meant to be new product
Speaker 1: lines within McIntosh, although they didn't last very long. Uh.
Speaker 1: They ran on Motorola six eight zero four zero processors,
Speaker 1: which are comparable to the four A the six processors
Speaker 1: that Intel was producing at the time. So you had
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Windows that were paired up with Intel, and
Speaker 1: you had Apple pairing up with Motorola, trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that its computers were of a comparable uh uh,
Speaker 1: comparable level of quality to the to the top of
Speaker 1: the line IBM compatible machines. Apple introduced a new type
Speaker 1: of computer called the power Book, which was a line
Speaker 1: of truly portable computers. These were more These were closer
Speaker 1: to being laptops than that portable Mac was. Remember the
Speaker 1: portable Mac was really just a portable Mac, but the
Speaker 1: power Book was meant to be more of a laptop.
Speaker 1: The first of the power Books, or rather the the
Speaker 1: lowest in the whole line, the cheapest, was not actually
Speaker 1: made by Apple. Apple contracted with Sony, and Sony made
Speaker 1: the power Book one. This is unusual because most Apple
Speaker 1: products are manufactured by Apple itself, but that wasn't true
Speaker 1: for the power Book one. The battery on the power
Speaker 1: Book one hundred would last a whole two hours without
Speaker 1: being plugged in. It didn't sell as well as some
Speaker 1: of the higher end models because it just didn't have
Speaker 1: the features. The power Book one forty and the one
Speaker 1: seventy were launched at around the same time, and they
Speaker 1: sold better than the power Book one hundred did. The
Speaker 1: form factor of these ended up kind of defining the
Speaker 1: look of laptops in the future. So if you unfolded
Speaker 1: the screen, uh, the keyboard sat back toward the screen.
Speaker 1: So typically the way you would open up a laptop,
Speaker 1: and you know how the keyboard is back in the
Speaker 1: back section. In the front section, there was space for
Speaker 1: a first track ball, so again kind of like centipede
Speaker 1: ask your parents, and then later on a track pad,
Speaker 1: which is what you find standard on most laptops today. Well,
Speaker 1: it was the power Book that kind of defined that
Speaker 1: form factor, and most laptops following followed along behind it.
Speaker 1: They didn't really change that up because it just made sense,
Speaker 1: but that was the power Book that really introduced that.
Speaker 1: Now beyond this, you also had in an alliance between Apple,
Speaker 1: IBM and Motorola. They called it the AIM Alliance AIM,
Speaker 1: standing for Apple IBM, Motorola cute right. The aim of
Speaker 1: AIM yeakeniche mcadee doo was building new hardware and software
Speaker 1: to act as a platform for the next generation of
Speaker 1: computers and to stand as a direct competitor with Windows
Speaker 1: and Intel. So they wanted to make their own version
Speaker 1: of the partnership that Microsoft had with Intel and make
Speaker 1: it a competing standard. They called it PREP, which added
Speaker 1: an upper case P and upper case are, a lower
Speaker 1: case E and an upper case P. It stood for
Speaker 1: power PC Reference Platform. I was intended to serve as
Speaker 1: that competitor, and the goal was to create a new
Speaker 1: operating system that Apple would be in charge of so
Speaker 1: Apple would provide the operating system and it would run
Speaker 1: on risk based processors as r I s C, and
Speaker 1: those would come from IBM and Motorola. Apple's code named
Speaker 1: operating system was called Pink. And why well, that goes
Speaker 1: back a little bit earlier in Apple's history. So when
Speaker 1: Apple was planning out future projects several years before this happened,
Speaker 1: they would write down ideas on one of two different
Speaker 1: colors of note cards. If the idea was considered to
Speaker 1: be easy to implement, If engineers said yeah, we can
Speaker 1: knock that out and it won't cost too much and
Speaker 1: it won't take up too much time, those ideas went
Speaker 1: on blue note cards, meaning these are gonna be easy
Speaker 1: for us to do. If it was considered a challenging
Speaker 1: idea that was going to require more time, more effort,
Speaker 1: and therefore it was going to cost more internally, they
Speaker 1: would write it down on a pink note card, saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be harder to do. It might still
Speaker 1: be worth it, but it's gonna be hard. Well, the
Speaker 1: operating system was codenamed Pink because it was written down
Speaker 1: on a pink note card, creating the next generation operating system,
Speaker 1: one that wasn't rooted in the system versions that had
Speaker 1: been on Macintosh up to that point, was gonna take
Speaker 1: a lot of development time and effort, so it was
Speaker 1: codenamed Pink. Now, sadly Prep never really meshed. You never
Speaker 1: got a point where you had the hardware and software
Speaker 1: married together to make this rival to Windows Intel. So
Speaker 1: ultimately the project was a failure. But one thing that
Speaker 1: did come out of it was a new type of
Speaker 1: processor called the power PC processor, and those would eventually
Speaker 1: find their way into mac computers. Apple introduced a line
Speaker 1: of Macintosh computers called the perform Aline, and this was
Speaker 1: Macintosh's effort to actually say, hey, let's make something for
Speaker 1: the average consumer. Most Macintosh computers were so expensive and
Speaker 1: so specialized that they were just going to a narrow
Speaker 1: niche market. We're talking about those creators I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: and small businesses, but that meant they were passing up
Speaker 1: the opportunity to really target personal computer owners. They had
Speaker 1: mostly targeted those through the Apple two line. But now
Speaker 1: the Apple two line was dead. It had discontinued, and
Speaker 1: uh really it ended in when Apple to E Enhanced
Speaker 1: stopped being made. Although there were a couple of other
Speaker 1: variations in the Apple two that lasted a bit longer,
Speaker 1: but they wanted to tackle that same market with the
Speaker 1: Macintosh line, so they launched the Performance Series. So what
Speaker 1: was it. The Performance Series was really just rebranded older
Speaker 1: models of Macintosh computers. So the Macintosh computers that debuted
Speaker 1: a couple of years earlier but now had slower processors
Speaker 1: compared to the most up to date models, they got
Speaker 1: rebranded as Performer models of Macintosh and put on the market. However,
Speaker 1: Apple dumped a whole bunch of different models at the
Speaker 1: same time, and that really confused consumers in the marketplace.
Speaker 1: Imagine going to a store and seeing eight different variations
Speaker 1: of the same basic computer and not really understanding what
Speaker 1: differentiated one from another. That's kind of what happened with
Speaker 1: the Performance Series. It just added more confusion in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: and ultimately consumers just weren't sure about which computer they
Speaker 1: should pie, and not a lot of them got sold.
Speaker 1: So Apple decided, hey, let's clear up the confusion, and
Speaker 1: they produced a half hour infomercial explaining the different Performer models,
Speaker 1: and you can find it online. So if you've got
Speaker 1: half an hour to kill and you want to see
Speaker 1: how Apple tried to explain this performance series two consumers.
Speaker 1: Search for it online, you can find it. It's usually
Speaker 1: divided up into multiple parts, but you can find in
Speaker 1: the performance series of videos that made up a half
Speaker 1: hour infomercial. Now, the next person to stepa in as
Speaker 1: leader of the company, remember Scully had left in ninety three,
Speaker 1: was Michael Spindler. He came from Apple's European operations division
Speaker 1: and he worked his way up the chain there. His
Speaker 1: term was one of real controversy. It wasn't as a
Speaker 1: smooth transition, and it wasn't without issues. In fact, there
Speaker 1: were rumors that he was discussing the possibilities of a
Speaker 1: takeover with other companies like Sun Microsystems or IBM, and
Speaker 1: he also oversaw projects at Apple that ultimately failed, like
Speaker 1: Apple's Newton project. I know I've mentioned Newton in previous
Speaker 1: episodes of Tech Stuff. I think we might have even
Speaker 1: done a full episode about the Newton, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a sad and comical story simultaneously. But that was
Speaker 1: the little handheld device that was meant to be able
Speaker 1: to recognize handwriting and other and have other features as well,
Speaker 1: that ultimately had um Its ambitions were beyond its own grasp.
Speaker 1: Let's be kind and call it that. But that's another story. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the nickname for Michael Spindler was the Diesel. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that says about his character, but I have
Speaker 1: a feeling that I probably wouldn't be compatible with someone
Speaker 1: whose nickname is the Diesel, unless it was Kevin Nash,
Speaker 1: because we have a mutual love of professional wrestling. Now,
Speaker 1: Spindler would end up being replaced by the Board of
Speaker 1: directors a few years later in and the board of
Speaker 1: directors chose Gil Emilio to step in as CEO. Gil
Speaker 1: Emilio had come from National Semiconductor before joining Apple, and
Speaker 1: Emilio himself would also get replaced by the Board of
Speaker 1: Directors in But more on that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to the timeline of Macintosh. So we
Speaker 1: left off in n just took a break to talk
Speaker 1: about the shuffle at the CEO level over the next
Speaker 1: couple of years, which really tells you that Apple was
Speaker 1: in trouble. When you see a company changing CEO so
Speaker 1: rapidly because the board keeps replacing it, that's not a
Speaker 1: great sign. Doesn't show a lot of confidence at the
Speaker 1: board of directors. Level, and it probably reflects a lack
Speaker 1: of confidence at the shareholder level. But the show had
Speaker 1: to go on. So what was happening at Macintosh. Well,
Speaker 1: Apple made a big move that was a defining moment
Speaker 1: and the Macintosh line. They decided to move away from
Speaker 1: those Motorola processors I talked about a minute ago, and
Speaker 1: switched to the power PC processors, which remember we're still
Speaker 1: developed partially by Motorola in partnership with IBM, so it's
Speaker 1: not like they were turning their back on Motorola. Rather
Speaker 1: they said, from this point forward, our architecture is going
Speaker 1: to depend upon this type of computer processor instead of
Speaker 1: this other type of computer processor. But that meant big
Speaker 1: changes all down the line of the Macintosh. Now, they
Speaker 1: were hoping that the power PC processors would be able
Speaker 1: to rival Intel's x eight six chips. Those are the
Speaker 1: four eight six is the pen t M and so on.
Speaker 1: So that was the hope, and um they actually stuck
Speaker 1: with power PC processors all the way from two thousand
Speaker 1: six and then they changed again. That's a story for
Speaker 1: later now. The first mac to feature a power PC
Speaker 1: processor was the Macintosh, which also ran Mac OS nine.
Speaker 1: It was the latest version of Apple's operating system. Although
Speaker 1: it wasn't called mac OS nine, it was really System nine.
Speaker 1: It was the first computer to actually run System nine.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, Apple also released a second ver version of
Speaker 1: this specific computer with a completely different chip architecture. So
Speaker 1: you have the power Pc version of the sixty, but
Speaker 1: you also had an Intel for eighty six version of
Speaker 1: the sixty. For the first time, Apple decided to try
Speaker 1: and go with an IBM compatible route, so this version
Speaker 1: of the Mac six had an Intel forties for six microprocessor.
Speaker 1: It was DOS compatible. It could run both mac OS
Speaker 1: and Windows simultaneously. Later on Macintosh users would have to
Speaker 1: do this by setting up a virtual machine that would
Speaker 1: run an instance of Windows over on top of the
Speaker 1: Mac hardware. This was also a time when Apple began
Speaker 1: to stray further away from the concept of making as
Speaker 1: much in house as it could, and it was a
Speaker 1: big departure from the white Steve Jobs had run things
Speaker 1: back when he was still part of the company. Now,
Speaker 1: the power Pc hardware was incompatible with software that was
Speaker 1: written for Scintosh computers running the older Motorola chips. You
Speaker 1: often find this if you change processor types. That change
Speaker 1: in architecture requires software to behave a different way in
Speaker 1: order for stuff to get done. So if you were
Speaker 1: trying to run an older Macintosh program on a power
Speaker 1: PC Macintosh, you had to have an emulator. This is
Speaker 1: a piece of software that simulates the way other hardware runs.
Speaker 1: You might remember I did one an episode all about
Speaker 1: video game emulators. The same thing is true for operating
Speaker 1: system emulators or chip emulators. So you had this software
Speaker 1: that was replicating the way old Motorola chips ran, but
Speaker 1: it would allow the software to run on a power
Speaker 1: PC processor computer. In other words, you just had to
Speaker 1: have this other piece of software to kind of act
Speaker 1: as an interpreter so that you could get stuff done
Speaker 1: on your new machine. Now, the good news was the
Speaker 1: power PC's were so powerful, these power macs, as they
Speaker 1: came to be called, we're so powerful that it didn't
Speaker 1: slow down the processing of these older Mac programs. So
Speaker 1: the emulator wasn't so processor heavy that it was impacting
Speaker 1: the way the program ran. It would actually run more
Speaker 1: smoothly on these power PC programs or power Pc machines
Speaker 1: than they would on the older Motorola machines. So that
Speaker 1: was a good story. Right. You don't want your emulator
Speaker 1: to slow stuff down, because then people get the implication
Speaker 1: that the brand new computer they just bought is slower
Speaker 1: than their old computer. That's a bad thing. So luckily
Speaker 1: the emulator ran really efficiently and it didn't slow things down.
Speaker 1: That's when things kind of went bonkers over at Apple.
Speaker 1: For the first time ever, Apple licensed other companies to
Speaker 1: allow them to bring Macintosh compatible machines to market, so
Speaker 1: this was the era of the mac Clone. They allowed
Speaker 1: other companies to license the hardware and software and make
Speaker 1: their own versions of the Macintosh computer, although they would
Speaker 1: be called different things. Uh. This, by the way, ignores
Speaker 1: the fact that PowerBook one hundred was built by Sony,
Speaker 1: but that was built by Sony for Apple. In this case,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about companies that were building machines for Apple.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about companies that would license the technology to
Speaker 1: build their own version of the Macintosh and sell it
Speaker 1: to consumers. The first was the Radius System one hundred
Speaker 1: from a company called Radius, and it was similar to
Speaker 1: Apple's own power mac The specs were very close, but
Speaker 1: the computer itself was housed in a tower style case,
Speaker 1: so very different from Apple's approach where they would try
Speaker 1: and put the monitor and the computer case all in
Speaker 1: one unit. That was typical for most of Apple's computers,
Speaker 1: not all of them, but a lot of them. This
Speaker 1: was totally different. It was more like your standard IBM
Speaker 1: compatible where you had a tower desktop. So it was
Speaker 1: a big departure from Apple's aesthetic. Uh, there were other
Speaker 1: computers that also launched at this time that were clones
Speaker 1: of the Macintosh, because there were other companies that licensed
Speaker 1: the technology from Apple, and perhaps Apple was hoping to
Speaker 1: dominate the market again and make enough money off the
Speaker 1: licenses to justify their use. Unfortunately, Apple ended up cutting
Speaker 1: off its nose despite its face. In this case, they
Speaker 1: licensed the technology to other manufacturers, but that gave companies
Speaker 1: the opportunity to produce cheaper machines running Apple hardware and software.
Speaker 1: So you could run Macintosh programs on these computers because
Speaker 1: they were clones of the mac not physically, but from
Speaker 1: a hardware and software standpoint, they were, and they were
Speaker 1: able to sell them for less expensive prices than what
Speaker 1: Apple was demanding. So Apple ended up undercutting its own
Speaker 1: sales because it authorized these other users, these other manufacturers,
Speaker 1: to make Macintosh compatible computers. So why would you go
Speaker 1: and buy what appears to be an overpriced machine from
Speaker 1: Apple if you can go to one of its competitors
Speaker 1: and buy a comparable machine for much less money. If
Speaker 1: you are a consumer or a business, it makes more
Speaker 1: sense to go the other route, to go the cheaper route.
Speaker 1: As long as you're reasonably sure that the machine is
Speaker 1: a good one, that's what you're gonna do. And in fact,
Speaker 1: that's what Apple saw. They saw a lot of consumers
Speaker 1: going to these competitors rather than going to Apple. Now,
Speaker 1: one benefit was that they had a lot more people
Speaker 1: buying into the Apple ecosystem, But because Apple wasn't controlling
Speaker 1: that hardware, they weren't seeing any money off of it,
Speaker 1: besides that initial licensing fee that they charged companies in
Speaker 1: order to produce these clones. So in the long run,
Speaker 1: it ended up hurting Apple. It was hurting their sales,
Speaker 1: although it did mean that more people were getting familiar
Speaker 1: with the Macintosh program and the Macintosh platform because suddenly
Speaker 1: they could afford a Macintosh, even though it wasn't an
Speaker 1: official Apple Macintosh. This is one of those decisions that
Speaker 1: Apple executives today probably look back on and shake their
Speaker 1: heads and mumble about it, because it really affected profits
Speaker 1: over at Apple by Apple was looking for the next
Speaker 1: generation of operating systems because Pink didn't work out. So
Speaker 1: they said, we need a next generation operating system. Our
Speaker 1: system series is starting to show its age. We need
Speaker 1: a new operating system. But to spend the money and
Speaker 1: time to develop an in house is not really practical.
Speaker 1: So they started looking outside the company and saying, well,
Speaker 1: what else is out there that maybe we could acquire
Speaker 1: and then use in future Macintosh computers. They looked at
Speaker 1: two different companies, and here's the funny thing. Each of
Speaker 1: those companies was founded by a former Apple executive. The
Speaker 1: first company was b Incorporated. That's b E Inc. And
Speaker 1: they created the bos or bios if you prefer. This
Speaker 1: company was founded by Jean Louis Gass, so remember the
Speaker 1: head of product development from a few years ago who
Speaker 1: stepped down. The other big contender was next Step, the
Speaker 1: next Step operating system, which was from a company called
Speaker 1: next and that company was founded by drumroll please Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: So once again you had guess a versus Jobs with
Speaker 1: the two operating systems that could potentially power the next
Speaker 1: generation of Macintosh computers. Now ultimately, spoiler alert, Apple decided
Speaker 1: that they would go Next. They decided against Bios and
Speaker 1: decided the next step was the operating system they wanted.
Speaker 1: So instead of setting up a licensing deal, they did
Speaker 1: something a little different. They didn't just license the technology
Speaker 1: from Next, they acquired Next. They spent a lot of
Speaker 1: money doing it too. They spent nearly four hundred thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars on the purchase, and they threw in one
Speaker 1: and a half million shares of Apple stock as well.
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind Apple stock at this point was suffering,
Speaker 1: but it was one and a half million shares. If
Speaker 1: they could turn things around, and spoiler alert, they totally did,
Speaker 1: that million and a half shares of Apple would be
Speaker 1: worth way more money. So Steve Jobs came along as
Speaker 1: part of this part of the deal. They essentially bought
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs back to Apple because he was the founder
Speaker 1: of Next and he was part of that company, so
Speaker 1: they acquired the company. Steve Jobs comes on so he
Speaker 1: would return to Apple after a very long hiatus or
Speaker 1: as he might refer to it as banishment, and he
Speaker 1: returned initially as a consultant. But Apple was reeling. The
Speaker 1: stock price had hit a twelve year low and the
Speaker 1: board of directors had decided eventually that they needed to
Speaker 1: replace gil Emilio, and in fact, there was one person
Speaker 1: who was really arguing for this, and that person was
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs. So Steve Jobs goes to the board directors
Speaker 1: and says, hey, you are in real trouble. The decisions
Speaker 1: that have have been made over the past few years have
Speaker 1: been disastrous for this company and they are leading it
Speaker 1: to the brink of bankruptcy. You gotta get rid of
Speaker 1: gil Emilio. And the board of directors agreed, and they
Speaker 1: put Steve Jobs in charge as interim CEO. But that
Speaker 1: stas wentn't last. Steve Jobs would eventually become the actual CEO,
Speaker 1: not just an interim CEO, and would end up taking
Speaker 1: control of the company he had co founded a couple
Speaker 1: of decades earlier. And uh yeah, it was a total
Speaker 1: different story Apple from that point forward. But that's the
Speaker 1: tale for another episode for part three of the Mic
Speaker 1: of the Microsoft. For Part three of the Macintosh Story
Speaker 1: other m, my brain don't work, but yes, in part
Speaker 1: three we will talk about Steve Jobs return, how he
Speaker 1: transformed the Macintosh line yet again and leading up to
Speaker 1: the max that you would find in stores today. So
Speaker 1: that will be part three. Uh, that'll that should bring
Speaker 1: us up to date. I imagine unless I come across
Speaker 1: the story that's so incredible it takes yet another full
Speaker 1: part by itself. In the meantime, if you guys have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episode topics or for guests I
Speaker 1: should have on the show, either as a guest host
Speaker 1: or an interview subject, let me know. Send me an email.
Speaker 1: My email address for the show is text stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. I keep getting emails sent
Speaker 1: to the genera at how stuff works dot com address
Speaker 1: asking what's the email address for tech Stuff. I only
Speaker 1: say it at the end of every episode. It just
Speaker 1: tells me that you stop listening when I get to
Speaker 1: this part. Don't do that. Listen to the end tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: drop me a line on the social media's like Twitters
Speaker 1: and the facebooks at both of those. The show's handle
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because at staff works dot com,