Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: we're going to continue our discussion about how Apple survived
Speaker 1: the PC Wars. So if you haven't heard part one,
Speaker 1: that was last week's or the last episode rather, you
Speaker 1: should go and listen to that. The episode before that
Speaker 1: was all about obscure or semi obscure computers that time
Speaker 1: has forgotten, So computers that came out in the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties that did not stand the test of time.
Speaker 1: So these are all sort of part of kind of
Speaker 1: a series about computers and why the computer landscape is
Speaker 1: the way it is today. Why don't we have a
Speaker 1: Commodore sixty four, a really you know, would be like
Speaker 1: a Commodore like two thousand forty eight or something at
Speaker 1: this point. Why don't we have that? Instead? We've got
Speaker 1: these various Windows based machines and Macintosh machines or mac machines.
Speaker 1: Why is that? So we're looking at the Apple side
Speaker 1: of that story and continuing that story today. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the last episode, I talked about the early history of
Speaker 1: Apple computers and how the company hit a home run
Speaker 1: with the Apple two platform, but then found itself on
Speaker 1: shaky ground. When Apple launched the Macintosh in night four,
Speaker 1: the company was still depending upon revenue generated by Apple
Speaker 1: two sales, mostly in the form of the Apple to
Speaker 1: E computer. The platform had the benefit of a large
Speaker 1: library of programs. A lot of developers had made software
Speaker 1: for the Apple too, and the computers were dependent upon
Speaker 1: processors that have been manufactured in the late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: which raised some eyebrows because now you had this increasingly
Speaker 1: old platform, had a good library of software, but couldn't
Speaker 1: remain relevant. At the time, the software rarely required more
Speaker 1: resources than the Apple two could provide, so they hadn't
Speaker 1: quite hit a a true stopping point yet. There there
Speaker 1: were some concessions being made by software developers to make
Speaker 1: sure that their programs could run on Apple two properly,
Speaker 1: but it was good enough. It didn't push the the
Speaker 1: the capabilities of the Apple two platforms so hard that
Speaker 1: it was unable to meet the requirements of the software.
Speaker 1: It didn't hurt that Apple two had a text based
Speaker 1: operating system rather than the graphic user interface that the
Speaker 1: Macintosh introduced to the home computer market. Because, if you
Speaker 1: remember from our last episode, one of the big challenges
Speaker 1: the Macintosh faced was that the gooey this graphic user
Speaker 1: interface took up most of the computer's memory, which left
Speaker 1: very little for it to do other applications. The Apple
Speaker 1: two didn't have that problem. It was all text based,
Speaker 1: so it could reserve its memory for all the programs. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Macintosh continue to struggle in those early days due
Speaker 1: to an expensive price tag and a limited number of
Speaker 1: application is available for the platform. When the McIntosh came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen eighty four, it was not alone. Apple
Speaker 1: launched another computer a couple of months later, while it
Speaker 1: also launched the Lisa two, which was an attempt to
Speaker 1: salvage the Lisa project. It would ultimately rebrand the Lisa
Speaker 1: Too as the Macintosh XL. But that's not the computer
Speaker 1: I was referring to. Instead, I'm talking about the Apple
Speaker 1: to See. So even as Apple was trying to forge
Speaker 1: a new path with the Macintosh line of computers, it
Speaker 1: was still leaning heavily on the Apple Too platform. So
Speaker 1: what set the Apple to See Apart from the Apple
Speaker 1: to E, which had launched in three Well, for one thing,
Speaker 1: it was a lot smaller the C and Apple to
Speaker 1: see stood for compact. It was, at least by some definitions, portable.
Speaker 1: The basic computer had a handle that could fold down
Speaker 1: to become a stand that would tilt the computer keyboard
Speaker 1: into the proper position for typing. It did not, however,
Speaker 1: have an degraded display, so you would have to carry
Speaker 1: a separate display around with you and connect it to
Speaker 1: your portable computer. Also, it didn't have a battery power supply.
Speaker 1: You would have to plug the computer in somewhere. Now,
Speaker 1: eventually you could get battery packs that the computer could
Speaker 1: use as a power source, but it didn't ship with them. Still,
Speaker 1: the industrial redesign of the Apple form factor and its
Speaker 1: versatile size UH and its features meant it got support
Speaker 1: in the market. Even though it was built on an
Speaker 1: aging foundation of the Apple two platform. It actually received
Speaker 1: the highest number of day one orders in Apple's history,
Speaker 1: and it initially cost hundred dollars. After a year on
Speaker 1: the market, it sold more than four hundred thousand units,
Speaker 1: so it proved that the Apple two platform still had
Speaker 1: legs seven years after it had been introduced. In April,
Speaker 1: Apple officially retired the Apple three platform. Between the Apple
Speaker 1: three and the Apple three Plus, which was a slightly
Speaker 1: upgraded version, the company had managed to sell only sixty
Speaker 1: five thousand computers. It had manufactured ninety thousand. The Apple
Speaker 1: three was just about, by any measurement, a total failure.
Speaker 1: In Apple announced it had shipped seventy thousand Macintosh computers
Speaker 1: within the first one hundred days of it being available,
Speaker 1: though I should point out that shipped and sold are
Speaker 1: two different metrics. Still, this was not a bad number,
Speaker 1: but it was still shy of projections Apple had made
Speaker 1: when the Macintosh was still in development. They had said
Speaker 1: that they needed to sell forty seven thousand units per month. Instead,
Speaker 1: they had moved seventy thousand units in a hundred days,
Speaker 1: so they were still falling short. In September, Apple introduced
Speaker 1: the five hundred twelve kilobyte version of the Macintosh. This
Speaker 1: version was more expensive than the base model. It cost
Speaker 1: three thousand, two hundred dollars when it launched. The following month,
Speaker 1: Apple announced they had sold the two millionth Apple two computer.
Speaker 1: That means in just a little more than a year,
Speaker 1: the company went from producing it's one millionth Apple two
Speaker 1: machine to selling its two millionth unit. Now, this was
Speaker 1: spread across the family of Apple two computers at that time,
Speaker 1: so the Apple to the Apple two E and the
Speaker 1: Apple to C the Apple two line continued to keep
Speaker 1: the company afloat. By the end of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: Apple had sold a quarter of a million Macintosh systems.
Speaker 1: It was a modest success, but far short of those
Speaker 1: two point two million units the company had hoped for
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty one. Still, the Macintosh was a
Speaker 1: nice change of pace. It was not a commercial flop
Speaker 1: like the Lisa or the technical flop like the Apple three.
Speaker 1: In Night five. While struggles at the management level would
Speaker 1: ultimately prompt Steve Jobs and Apple to part ways, the
Speaker 1: company was still struggling with what to do with the
Speaker 1: Lisa Too. At first, the company rebranded the Lisa Too
Speaker 1: and called it the Macintosh XL, but the rebranding wasn't
Speaker 1: enough to save the project, and ultimately Apple would abandon
Speaker 1: it in April five, just a few months after rebranding it.
Speaker 1: Also that year, Apple made some major cuts. The number
Speaker 1: of employees had topped five thousand, seven hundred at Apple,
Speaker 1: but in June the company eliminated about twenty percent of
Speaker 1: all of its positions. In nineteen six, Apple was a
Speaker 1: very different company. Both of the co founders were gone.
Speaker 1: The Apple three and the Lisa projects were both a
Speaker 1: thing of the past. The Macintosh line was continuing, as
Speaker 1: did the now ancient by computer standards Apple two line.
Speaker 1: On the tenth anniversary of Apple's founding April first, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, the company announced the Apple two GS. This
Speaker 1: was the last major update to the Apple two platform.
Speaker 1: Apple would later introduce upgrades to the Apple to E
Speaker 1: and the two C lines, but the two GS represented
Speaker 1: the last big development on that platform. It was the
Speaker 1: ind of the life cycle for the Apple two platform,
Speaker 1: or at least the beginning of the end. The G
Speaker 1: S and two g s, by the way, stood for
Speaker 1: graphics and sound. This is one of those things that
Speaker 1: confused me back when I was a kid, because we
Speaker 1: had an Apple to E. The Apple to C came
Speaker 1: out after the Apple to E, but in the alphabet,
Speaker 1: C comes before E, and I didn't know that the
Speaker 1: letters actually stood for stuff. And then the Apple two
Speaker 1: GS came out, and I really was wondering what was
Speaker 1: going on. That's because these letters actually were standing for
Speaker 1: different terms in this case, Like I said, g S
Speaker 1: stood for graphics and sound. The Apple two GS at
Speaker 1: a graphic user interface that was similar to the Macintosh Gooey.
Speaker 1: It also had a mouse. It did not have an
Speaker 1: integrated floppy drive in the computer case, but rather it
Speaker 1: would have an external floppy disk drive, so you would
Speaker 1: have to connect it via a cable to the CPU.
Speaker 1: These were three and a half inch discs at this time,
Speaker 1: not the old five and a quarter inch discs. Some
Speaker 1: people mistakenly at the time would call these discs hard
Speaker 1: disks because three and a half inch discs were in
Speaker 1: hard plastic as opposed to that thinner, more flexible stuff
Speaker 1: that the five and a quarter inch discs used. But
Speaker 1: they were still technically floppy disks, not hard disks. That's
Speaker 1: a tangent. The two GS had a different processor than
Speaker 1: it's Apple two computer predecessors. It used the Western Digital
Speaker 1: sixteen bit sixty five C eight sixteen microprocessor. However, that
Speaker 1: microprocessor was compatible with the older six five O two
Speaker 1: processors that other Apple two computers used, so the two
Speaker 1: GS retained backwards compatibility with existing Apple to software. The
Speaker 1: clock speed on the new processor could reach two point
Speaker 1: eight mega hurts, though, if you were running old Apple
Speaker 1: to software, you would have to limit the clock speed
Speaker 1: to one mega hurts in order to make it compatible
Speaker 1: with that old programming. If you bought third party hardware,
Speaker 1: you could actually over clock it to a then blistering
Speaker 1: eight teen mega hurts. The company all so boasted two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty six kilobytes of RAM, which could be expanded
Speaker 1: up to eight megabytes. The company had a display that
Speaker 1: or the computer rather had a display that could support
Speaker 1: a resolution of six hundred forty by two hundred pixels
Speaker 1: in four color mode or three d twenty by two
Speaker 1: hundred pixels in sixteen color mode. So still well, it
Speaker 1: was high definition at the time. It's pretty low resolution
Speaker 1: these days. The two gs also introduced a new hardware
Speaker 1: element that found its way into the Macintosh line after
Speaker 1: a little bit. This was called the Apple Dusktop bus. Now,
Speaker 1: a bus is a communication system within a computer or
Speaker 1: between computers. Its job is to transfer data between components
Speaker 1: or between computers. For example, a computer's CPU and its
Speaker 1: memory are tightly coupled, and a bus provides the communication
Speaker 1: link between those two components. The Apple Desktop bus was
Speaker 1: a peripheral and external peripheral that allowed users to connect
Speaker 1: different devices to a proprietary standard for Apple systems. You
Speaker 1: can use it to connect stuff like a keyboard or
Speaker 1: a mouse to a computer. This was Apple's proprietary approach
Speaker 1: to a universal connector universal within the world of Apple,
Speaker 1: but not outside of it now. Eventually, the company would
Speaker 1: discontinue this BUS system in favor of following the industry
Speaker 1: standard of USB later on. Much later on, as Macintosh
Speaker 1: computers will continue to use a dB until the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. The a dB was one of many projects
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak had worked on before he left the company
Speaker 1: in Ve. Also in nineteen eighty six, Apple swapped out
Speaker 1: the five twelve kilobyte Macintosh for a new enhanced version
Speaker 1: that cost less. The new machine sold for two thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and the Macintosh Plus also debuted in nineteen eight six.
Speaker 1: It had a whopping hole megabyte of RAM and a
Speaker 1: ES of read only memory or ROM. This machine was
Speaker 1: capable of running more demanding applications and put it beyond
Speaker 1: the limits of what the failed Lisa and Lisa two
Speaker 1: platforms were supposed to do. So finally, Apple had moved
Speaker 1: beyond those and it cost dollars, which was expensive, but
Speaker 1: not nearly at the levels of the earlier Macintosh and
Speaker 1: Lisa computers. By this time, Apple was really swinging focus
Speaker 1: to the Macintosh line. The Apple two products were finally
Speaker 1: running out of steam. There are only so many updates
Speaker 1: Apple could make to the legacy platform to keep them
Speaker 1: relevant in the face of competing machines. Those machines were
Speaker 1: largely IBM compatible PCs at this point. Now I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about them in the next episode, but the Macintosh
Speaker 1: line looked like it was truly going to be the
Speaker 1: future of the company. Now. That did not mean that
Speaker 1: Apple would abandon the Apple two platform right away. Sales
Speaker 1: were still okay, so they were still bringing in money
Speaker 1: for the for the company, and the Macintosh sales figures
Speaker 1: had not quite reached a level that was sustainable in
Speaker 1: the long term. The former president of Apple France, a
Speaker 1: man named Jean Louis Gassa, came over to Apple's US
Speaker 1: operations to take the role that Steve Jobs had held
Speaker 1: for years. Gassa made decisions that were very different from
Speaker 1: its predecessor. He wanted Apple to stop concentrating on making
Speaker 1: machines for home users and focus on the more profitable
Speaker 1: business and high end consumer market. He wanted Apple to
Speaker 1: focus more on technical superiority than aesthetic design. He had
Speaker 1: a mantra that many at Apple began to repeat, and
Speaker 1: that mantra was fifty five or die. That was a
Speaker 1: reference to Gassay's goal of hitting a fifty five percent
Speaker 1: profit margin on Apple computers, meaning that you're selling the
Speaker 1: computers at more than what it cost you to make
Speaker 1: them and market them. It was at this time that
Speaker 1: Apple really cemented its reputation as offering computers that were
Speaker 1: more expensive than the comparable IBM clones on the market.
Speaker 1: At first, Magotosh computers also suffered from a lack of software,
Speaker 1: and to be fair, the Macintosh platform consistently lagged behind
Speaker 1: IBM compatible computers in terms of a software library. That said,
Speaker 1: the emphasis on power and technical specs meant that developers
Speaker 1: could create sophisticated software for the Macintosh that IBM compatible
Speaker 1: machines could not easily replicate. This was a trend that
Speaker 1: would last for years, with certain types of processor heavy
Speaker 1: applications like video, photo and audio editing software becoming the
Speaker 1: bread and butter for the Macintosh line. That remains true
Speaker 1: to this day. If you look at the production machines
Speaker 1: here at how stuff works, you'll notice an awful lot
Speaker 1: of Macintosh computers because the people who are using it
Speaker 1: to edit audio and video work need that power, and
Speaker 1: McIntosh is still known for that to this day. I've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to say about Apple and how
Speaker 1: it survived the PC wars of the early eighties all
Speaker 1: the way through the nineties. But first, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. In Apple sold its
Speaker 1: one million Macintosh computer. That was good, but again, their
Speaker 1: original goal was to hit that two point two million
Speaker 1: units sales from nineteen eight to nineteen eighty five. So
Speaker 1: eighties seven hitting one million, they're a little behind schedule.
Speaker 1: The Macintosh and debut in nineteen eighty four, it took
Speaker 1: three years to hit that one million units sold. Still,
Speaker 1: the Macintosh Apple was offering was a very different machine
Speaker 1: than the one the design team had had in mind
Speaker 1: way back in the early nineteen eighties. Remember, they had
Speaker 1: wanted to create a user friendly home computer that could
Speaker 1: be sold for around a thousand dollars. The actual machines
Speaker 1: had so many more features than the design team had
Speaker 1: originally intended that it cost more than twice as much
Speaker 1: as the goal price the team had anticipated when they
Speaker 1: were first talking about it. That spring, Apple introduced the
Speaker 1: Macintosh to This was the first of the computers of
Speaker 1: the gas Say era. It cost a whopping six thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars when it was released that you could
Speaker 1: actual we find it for a little less at about
Speaker 1: five thousand, five hundred at some places. The computer boasted
Speaker 1: a thirty two bit microprocessor for Motorola, running at sixteen
Speaker 1: mega hurts clock speed. It also had one megabyte of
Speaker 1: RAM expandable up to sixty eight megabytes, and two d
Speaker 1: fifty six kilobytes of ROM. It was also the first
Speaker 1: Mac to support a color display. This was Apple's first
Speaker 1: big step to creating a three M machine. Now, this
Speaker 1: was a term used in the early eighties to describe
Speaker 1: a computer that had at least one megabyte of memory,
Speaker 1: a million pixel display, and a mega flop of processing power.
Speaker 1: There was actually another project that was supposed to get
Speaker 1: Apple to that fabled three M land. It was called
Speaker 1: the Big Mac. Steve Jobs had overseen the project back
Speaker 1: before he left Apple. The computer was supposed to run
Speaker 1: Unix as its operating system instead of the system Mac
Speaker 1: Operating System. After Jobs left and guess A took over
Speaker 1: his role, GASA canceled the Big Mac project. Much of
Speaker 1: that work was then transitioned over to the Macintosh to design.
Speaker 1: The Macintosh two had a megabyte of memory, and when
Speaker 1: paired with the right display, could support a million pixels,
Speaker 1: but it fell short on the floating operations per second metric,
Speaker 1: topping out at one sixty kilo flops. The leads on
Speaker 1: the Macintosh to design were Michael Dewey and Brian Berkeley
Speaker 1: and Heartmot s Linger. Now, back when they first started
Speaker 1: on the design works, Steve Jobs was still around. They
Speaker 1: kept their work secret because they were expressly violating Steve
Speaker 1: jobs as wishes with the Macintosh two's features. Specifically, Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was not in favor of color displays and Macintosh
Speaker 1: computers because at that time printers were monochromatic. So if
Speaker 1: you could view colors on screen, but you could only
Speaker 1: print and black and white, the print outs would not
Speaker 1: represent what you were working on. That would be a disconnect.
Speaker 1: This was a viole lation of the what you see
Speaker 1: is what you get or whizzy wig design philosophy. Jobs
Speaker 1: was also against the idea of expansion slots, which the
Speaker 1: Macintosh two had. Jobs felt that expansion slots were great
Speaker 1: for hobbyists, but that they made the experience complicated for
Speaker 1: the average user. The secret project had a code name
Speaker 1: Little Big Mac. It was developed in parallel with the
Speaker 1: Big Mac project that Jobs was overseeing before his departure.
Speaker 1: The Macintosh two ended up being sort of a combination
Speaker 1: of these two projects. Actually, it had several code names,
Speaker 1: many of which were city names during its whole design process.
Speaker 1: The case design of the Macintosh two made it look
Speaker 1: a lot more like your standard IBM compatible machine. Had
Speaker 1: a case that you would placed on your desk horizontally.
Speaker 1: You'd set your monitor on top of this horizontal case.
Speaker 1: The keyboard was separate and would sit in front of
Speaker 1: the case. The Macintosh two was one of the first
Speaker 1: Macintosh machines to feature the Apple Desktop bus ter used
Speaker 1: by the Apple two GS, and from that point forward,
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers would typically ship standard with the Apple Desktop
Speaker 1: bush and The Macintosh two was also the first of
Speaker 1: the Macintosh computers to feature what is commonly referred to
Speaker 1: as the chimes of Death. Well the Macintosh se which
Speaker 1: came out the same month as the Macintosh to also
Speaker 1: had the chimes of death. This was the sound notification
Speaker 1: the Macintosh would make when there was a critical failure
Speaker 1: in the system. The sc was more of a traditional
Speaker 1: Macintosh computer, souped up a bit for the business world.
Speaker 1: It cost three thousand seven dollars upon release, making it
Speaker 1: a less expensive solution than the Macintosh too. The same year,
Speaker 1: Apple spun off its software division as a new company
Speaker 1: called Claris. The company was able to focus on developing
Speaker 1: software for the Macintosh platforms and had licenses to several
Speaker 1: legacy mac programs like mac Wright and mac Paint. It
Speaker 1: would operate as a separate entity until nine, when Apple
Speaker 1: would reacquire the company. Also in nineteen eight seven, Microsoft
Speaker 1: released the second version of Windows. The first version of Windows,
Speaker 1: which came out in nineteen eighty five, hadn't received much attention.
Speaker 1: Most people dismissed it as being clunky and not terribly useful,
Speaker 1: but Windows two point oh was doing a little better.
Speaker 1: That prompted Apple to sue Microsoft and Hewitt Packard with
Speaker 1: a claim that the Windows Gooey the g Uy infringed
Speaker 1: upon the intellectual property of Apple. The claim stated that
Speaker 1: the Windows platform too closely resembled the Macintosh user interface.
Speaker 1: The courts ultimately decided against Apple on this front. When
Speaker 1: Windows three point oh debuted in nineteen nine, it marked
Speaker 1: the beginning of a big transition in IBM compatible personal
Speaker 1: computers as they began to migrate from DOSS to Windows,
Speaker 1: and it reduced one of the qualities that differentiated Macintosh
Speaker 1: computers from IBM compatibles. Believe it or not, even at
Speaker 1: this stage, ten years after the day Dave view of
Speaker 1: the Apple to, the company was still selling Apple two machines.
Speaker 1: Many of those products, even the updated, enhanced versions, would
Speaker 1: finally say goodbye. In the early nineteen nineties. Apple made
Speaker 1: an Apple to E card that could be used with
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers to make them backwards compatible with certain Apple
Speaker 1: to software packages, but even that would take a bow
Speaker 1: by The Apple two platform still helped provide revenue to Apple,
Speaker 1: but it was clear that the Macintosh was going to
Speaker 1: have to step up. What followed were a series of
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers that followed the design philosophy of Gassa and
Speaker 1: the Macintosh too. These were expensive desktop publishing machines that
Speaker 1: were technically sound, but at a premium price. The Macintosh
Speaker 1: started to gain a reputation for being a bit elitist.
Speaker 1: It was undeniably useful for many processor heavy applications, but
Speaker 1: it was so expensive and the suite of software was
Speaker 1: so much more narrow than the library available for the
Speaker 1: IBM compatible computers that a lot of average consumers dismissed
Speaker 1: the platform out of hand, and a smaller user base
Speaker 1: meant that software developers had less incentive to create programs
Speaker 1: for the Macintosh. The logic goes like this. You're a
Speaker 1: programmer and you want to create a really cool application.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's a game. You want that game to
Speaker 1: reach as many people as possible, both because you want
Speaker 1: people to experience your work, and of course you wish
Speaker 1: to profit from that work. You want to make some money.
Speaker 1: It makes sense to focus your efforts on the largest
Speaker 1: possible audience. Now, if you don't have time to develop
Speaker 1: and program a game for both Macintosh and PC platforms,
Speaker 1: you have to choose one or the other. With way
Speaker 1: more people owning IBM compatible machines, at this point, it
Speaker 1: just makes sense to develop for the PC and Windows platforms.
Speaker 1: That's where you're going to reach the largest number of people.
Speaker 1: Assuming your game resonates with your intended audience. Now, that
Speaker 1: didn't mean there weren't developers, even game developers who concentrated
Speaker 1: solely on the mac Kintosh. There were. There, just weren't
Speaker 1: as many Macintosh developers as there were Windows or PC developers.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen eighties, the Macintosh stood as the
Speaker 1: only real challenger to the IBM compatible PC. Other companies
Speaker 1: had withdrawn from the home PC market, acknowledging that it
Speaker 1: was too competitive to make a go atit. Tandy and
Speaker 1: Texas Instruments were out. Atari was in rapid decline and
Speaker 1: soon would exist only in name. Commodore had retired the
Speaker 1: Commodore sixty four, but was still hanging in the race
Speaker 1: with its Amiga line of computers. But by the mid
Speaker 1: ninety nineties, Commodore couldn't hold together and declared bankruptcy. The
Speaker 1: game was essentially down to all the companies that were
Speaker 1: making IBM compatible machines or Windows based machines or DOSES
Speaker 1: based machines, and Apple, and Apple had a tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: sliver of that market share. Apple had carved out of market,
Speaker 1: but it was a small one. It was no longer
Speaker 1: a dominant player in the home computer world, but it
Speaker 1: was the only real alternative to the Windows machines. Those
Speaker 1: DOSS machines. The IBM PC clones that were running uh
Speaker 1: either DOSS were increasingly at this point Windows. In nine,
Speaker 1: Apple would release the Macintosh Portable. Now, this was the
Speaker 1: first truly portable Macintosh computer with an incorporated screen that
Speaker 1: could fold down to make the computer into a kind
Speaker 1: of clunky wedge shape. It had a track ball in
Speaker 1: place of a mouse, had cereal and scuzzy ports for peripherals.
Speaker 1: It had a floppy drive and a forty megabyte hard drive,
Speaker 1: had a megabyte of RAM, and use the Motorola sixty
Speaker 1: eight thousand processor running at a sixteen mega hurts clock speed.
Speaker 1: The portable machine cost a hefty seven thousand, three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: It ran on mac Os six point oh four when
Speaker 1: it launched. As for its power supply, that came in
Speaker 1: the form of a rechargeable battery, Only it wasn't a
Speaker 1: lithium ion battery. It was a lead acid battery, you know,
Speaker 1: kind like the kind that you would find in a car.
Speaker 1: That added a couple of pounds to this portable computer.
Speaker 1: So the whole thing weighed about sixteen pounds or seven
Speaker 1: point three kilograms. In other words, it was a hefty
Speaker 1: portable computer. You probably wouldn't want to lug it around
Speaker 1: everywhere you go. A couple of years later, Apple would
Speaker 1: give the portable computer another shot, you know, he would say,
Speaker 1: let's try and get this form factor down, and they
Speaker 1: released the power Book one hundred. Only this computer wasn't
Speaker 1: actually designed by Apple. The power Book one hundred was
Speaker 1: based off the original Macintosh portable schematics, but it was
Speaker 1: designed by Sony la gasp Sony helped miniaturize the components
Speaker 1: that made the Macintosh portable so gush darn anti portable.
Speaker 1: The power Book one hundred launched in ninete, and while
Speaker 1: it wasn't a solely Apple design product, it did help
Speaker 1: put Apple back on the right path. In the magazine
Speaker 1: Macworld published in our icle written by Jerry Borrel that
Speaker 1: had some troubling implications now, Borel cited an earlier interview
Speaker 1: from n in which Apple executive Mike Spindler, the CEO,
Speaker 1: who well at the time he was still under the CEO,
Speaker 1: but he would become the CEO of the company, said
Speaker 1: that they were investigating the possibility of licensing the Macintosh
Speaker 1: operating system to other hardware manufacturers. Now, this was very
Speaker 1: much the opposite of what Steve Jobs felt was the
Speaker 1: right path for Apple when he was still there. From
Speaker 1: its earliest incarnation, Apple had done its best to protect
Speaker 1: its hardware and software. It had sued companies that put
Speaker 1: out clones of the Apple two platform. But as Apple
Speaker 1: and the market changed, so too did this philosophy. By
Speaker 1: the early nine nineties, it sounded like Apple was interested
Speaker 1: in making some cash by licensing the mac os to
Speaker 1: other types of hardware. While the interest was there, Apple
Speaker 1: didn't make a move to do this until John Scully
Speaker 1: had left in ninete, replaced by Michael the Diesel Spindler
Speaker 1: and I'm not making up that nickname, so the same
Speaker 1: person who gave that interview in ninety one was now
Speaker 1: running the company. In nine Apple made a big switch.
Speaker 1: The company had depended upon Motorola produced microprocessors since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, when the failed Lisa computer had a Motorola
Speaker 1: sixty eight thousand chip in it, But delays in manufacturing
Speaker 1: a Motorola at Motorola rather meant that some of the
Speaker 1: higher end computers in the early nineties they used the
Speaker 1: Motorola sixty eight O four OH processors were launching behind schedule,
Speaker 1: so Apple executives decided they would switch to a different CPU,
Speaker 1: and there were a couple of different options available now.
Speaker 1: The most popular and arguably the most powerful choice would
Speaker 1: have been Intel, the company lead the pack in microprocessor technologies,
Speaker 1: But rather than switched to Intel, Apple executives decided to
Speaker 1: go with power PC. Starting in nine with the power
Speaker 1: macintoh and perform A six series, the company began using
Speaker 1: power PC chips as CPUs. John Scully would later admit
Speaker 1: that it would probably would have been a better idea
Speaker 1: to go with Intel from the start. After two thousand five,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what Apple did, they switched from power PC
Speaker 1: to Intel processors. But during this power pc era, there
Speaker 1: were many different lines of Macintosh computers on the market,
Speaker 1: all of them on the high end spectrum for computers.
Speaker 1: Macintosh accounted for about seven percent of the overall market
Speaker 1: share for desktop computers. There were some unauthorized Macintosh clones
Speaker 1: being sold in various places, and Apple executives decided it
Speaker 1: was better to make some money off of official, licensed
Speaker 1: Mac clones than to see these unlicensed ones pop up
Speaker 1: with no benefit to Apple. The company began to offer
Speaker 1: up a license to the Macintosh ROMs and operating system
Speaker 1: to other manufacturers. This gave Apple a quick jolt of cash,
Speaker 1: but before long Apple began to regret this this vision
Speaker 1: because other companies were able to make McIntosh compatible computers
Speaker 1: using power PC based machines for less than the official
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers on the market, so Apple was undercutting its
Speaker 1: own sales in other words, because it was allowing these
Speaker 1: other companies to make Macintosh compatible machines. Michael Spindler would
Speaker 1: step down as CEO and nine During his time at
Speaker 1: the HELM, he was rumored to have held discussions with
Speaker 1: big companies about possibly selling Apple to a competitor like
Speaker 1: IBM or Sun Microsystems, that obviously didn't happen. His replacement
Speaker 1: was Gil Emilio, who was only CEO from ninety six
Speaker 1: to Amelio wanted to address some of the big problems
Speaker 1: left in the wake of Scully and Spindler, namely some
Speaker 1: pretty public failures like the Apple Newton and the less
Speaker 1: public but perhaps more impactful failure of an operating system
Speaker 1: upgrade called Copeland and in a moment I will talk
Speaker 1: more about this would be successor to the macOS known
Speaker 1: as System seven. But first, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Okay. So, by the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: it was clear that the Macintosh line was going to
Speaker 1: need a new operating system. System seven, which was introduced
Speaker 1: in was a good OS and had a lot of
Speaker 1: useful features and support, but it was showing its age.
Speaker 1: The original intent was to do a huge overhaul to
Speaker 1: the operating system and come up with something that was
Speaker 1: more future proofed. This project was called Copeland. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to have several next generation features that would push
Speaker 1: Macintosh into a new era of sophistication. It was born
Speaker 1: out of a practice Apple was following that has the
Speaker 1: informal name of blue or pink. During brainstorming sessions, developers
Speaker 1: would propose upgrades to existing operating systems features that they
Speaker 1: thought it should have. So ideas that were considered to
Speaker 1: be relatively easy to implement would go on blue cards.
Speaker 1: Ideas that were a little more difficult and perhaps a
Speaker 1: bit further off would go on Pink cards. Ideas that
Speaker 1: were really tricky but considered to be worth doing would
Speaker 1: go down on Red cards. Then developers would essentially divide
Speaker 1: up into a couple of teams the Blue team would
Speaker 1: go to work on the near term upgrades to whatever
Speaker 1: operating system they were working on. The Pink team would
Speaker 1: concentrate on something a bit more revolutionary. Copeland started out
Speaker 1: as a Pink Team project. However, as time went on,
Speaker 1: managers began to pull ideas from the Red cards and
Speaker 1: put them in with the Pink team's plans. So this
Speaker 1: is another case of feature creep, something Apple had struggled
Speaker 1: with many times in its past. As new features were
Speaker 1: added to the specs of the operating system, the development
Speaker 1: time grew longer and the project fell further behind schedule.
Speaker 1: After gill Emilio replaced Michael Spindler as CEO, he brought
Speaker 1: on Ellen Hancock from National Semiconductor to come men and
Speaker 1: review the operating system in development to see if it
Speaker 1: was actually close to where it needed to be. Hancock
Speaker 1: did a full review and she concluded that the operating
Speaker 1: system was in a total shambles. She said that while
Speaker 1: parts of the development process were fairly well along, others
Speaker 1: were lagging way behind, and there was little hope that
Speaker 1: all these various pieces would be able to come together
Speaker 1: into a cohesive operating system. Amilio was then left in
Speaker 1: a really bad position. The company had put a ton
Speaker 1: of effort into developing this new operating system, and it
Speaker 1: just wasn't where it needed to be. He made the
Speaker 1: call to purchase a new operating system rather than continued
Speaker 1: down the path of trying to develop Copeland. His decision
Speaker 1: led him to purchase a fledgling computer company called Next. Now,
Speaker 1: this was a company that been founded by a very
Speaker 1: special person. That person was Steve Jobs. Emilio announced that
Speaker 1: Apple would acquire Next and that Jobs himself would come
Speaker 1: over to Apple in an advisory position. Amelio made this
Speaker 1: move in an effort to right the corporate ship. Jobs
Speaker 1: would end up contacting the Board of directors and he
Speaker 1: argued that Amelio should be removed as CEO, that Apple
Speaker 1: was on the verge of collapse and that a series
Speaker 1: of bad decisions made by the last three CEOs had
Speaker 1: put the company in a terrible position. The board agreed
Speaker 1: with Jobs. They removed Amelio, and then Jobs took over
Speaker 1: as interim CEO. He would become the official CEO of
Speaker 1: Apple by two thousand. Jobs made some really big changes
Speaker 1: soon after his arrival, which included canceling a lot of
Speaker 1: projects that were in development. And also firing people. It
Speaker 1: was around this time that the term getting jobs emerged,
Speaker 1: meaning you didn't want to find yourself alone in a
Speaker 1: room with Steve Jobs for fear of getting fired on
Speaker 1: the spot. Jobs called for an end of the licensing
Speaker 1: program for Macintosh technologies. He wanted to see no more
Speaker 1: Mac clones on the market, and he wanted everything to
Speaker 1: fall fully under the control of the company. Again, no
Speaker 1: version of Macintosh should ever come from anyone other than Apple,
Speaker 1: and while Apple developers continue to go down the legacy
Speaker 1: operating system route for a couple of versions, Jobs helped
Speaker 1: foster in the mac os ten build, sometimes called mac
Speaker 1: os X because it's Roman numeral ten. This introduced many
Speaker 1: of the features that were originally promised in Copeland, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly the same as the one that was
Speaker 1: in development, but it had a lot of the elements
Speaker 1: that were in development from a few years back. Jobs
Speaker 1: even presented at a Macworld conference and he included a
Speaker 1: live streamed message from the rival, you know, the the
Speaker 1: anti Apple, the big adversary, Bill Gates, keeping in a
Speaker 1: mind that Apple and Microsoft had had a very long
Speaker 1: relationship with each other, sometimes adversarial, but Bill Gates live
Speaker 1: streamed a presentation at Macworld, and he announced that he
Speaker 1: was making a one fifty million dollar our investment in
Speaker 1: Apple on behalf of Microsoft, which got a rousing round
Speaker 1: of booze from the crowd, who were all very much,
Speaker 1: very passionate Apple supporters and thus a little biased against Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Apple introduced an all in one computer called the iMac.
Speaker 1: The iMac represented a return to Apple's focus on home users.
Speaker 1: It was aesthetically pleasing, it was available in various colors
Speaker 1: after its initial launch, and it seemed to go back
Speaker 1: to what set Apple apart in the first place, this
Speaker 1: idea of a friendly looking machine that's meant for the
Speaker 1: average person, not something that is cold and calculating or intimidating.
Speaker 1: The iMac also adopted universal standards like USB and got
Speaker 1: rid of those proprietary connectors Apple I've been using for
Speaker 1: more than a decade. So that bus that Apple had developed,
Speaker 1: which was useful for the Macintosh, was abandoned for the
Speaker 1: more standardized universal Cereal bus. The USB in Apple retired
Speaker 1: the Macintosh name when it discontinued the Power Macintosh. That
Speaker 1: was the last machine to actually be called a Macintosh
Speaker 1: from that point forward. The computers in this line were
Speaker 1: just referred to as MAX, not Macintosh Is. A couple
Speaker 1: of years later, Max began to include hardware that had
Speaker 1: been standard in BCS for a while, like CD rewriteable drives,
Speaker 1: so those are optical drives that would allow you to
Speaker 1: write data to c d s. Until about two thousand
Speaker 1: two thousand one, you couldn't find that in MAX. And
Speaker 1: then Apple also began including DVD drives on machines. The
Speaker 1: Mac was now getting position not just as a computer,
Speaker 1: but as a media device. This also helped boost sales
Speaker 1: and launches of other products like the iPod and iTunes.
Speaker 1: Helped even more because Apple products worked really, really well together,
Speaker 1: and now you could get Apple devices to communicate with
Speaker 1: stuff made from other manufacturers, but the experience was never
Speaker 1: as seamless or easy. A good example of this is
Speaker 1: iPods and iTunes. I had an iPod, I did not
Speaker 1: have a Mac, and I found it really frustrating to
Speaker 1: update my iPod to transfer music over the iTunes build
Speaker 1: for Windows just didn't work as well as what I
Speaker 1: kept hearing about, because again I didn't have a Mac.
Speaker 1: I finally got a Mac and then the experience was
Speaker 1: incredible and I realized, oh, this is a very nice
Speaker 1: design approach where you make sure that all of your
Speaker 1: stuff works seamlessly, and maybe you make sure it doesn't
Speaker 1: work quite as well if you're using other people's stuff.
Speaker 1: I can't say for certain that the decisions were conscious
Speaker 1: to make that happen, or that it all was purposeful,
Speaker 1: but it was certainly convenient and in favor of Apple
Speaker 1: because it meant that you were much more likely to
Speaker 1: go with a full Apple ecosystem because everything just worked
Speaker 1: with each other, as opposed to mixing and matching where
Speaker 1: things may not work so smoothly. Oh and Jobs also
Speaker 1: oversaw the transition for power PC machines to Intel powered
Speaker 1: Mac computers, and to this day Mac uses Intel chips.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of how Apple survived the PC wars.
Speaker 1: For a really long time. The company was just largely
Speaker 1: dependent upon a proven but aging technology in the form
Speaker 1: of the Apple two platform. It's it's hard to stress
Speaker 1: how important the Apple two was to Apple the company.
Speaker 1: Without the Apple two platform and it's long long life
Speaker 1: cycle and the fact that it was relevant or managed
Speaker 1: to remain relevant for so long, Without that, Apple would
Speaker 1: not have lasted because it was really putting its neck
Speaker 1: out with some high risk projects like Lisa and the
Speaker 1: Apple three that ultimately failed. Without that Apple to safety net,
Speaker 1: the company probably would not have existed. It wouldn't have
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have lasted, and all we would have at
Speaker 1: this point would be IBM compare doable windows based machines
Speaker 1: after the Apple two platform is all about leaning heavily
Speaker 1: on high end, high profit margin computers in the Macintosh era,
Speaker 1: which ended up being unsustainable in the long run and
Speaker 1: nearly led to the company's collapse. Only when Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: came back and laid down the law did the company
Speaker 1: seem to get its footing again. Would Apple have survived
Speaker 1: without Steve Jobs returning to the company, Well, it's hard
Speaker 1: to say, because obviously we can only see what has happened,
Speaker 1: not what would have happened. But Jobs certainly had a
Speaker 1: major impact on the performance of Apple, even if it
Speaker 1: was just through what people called his reality distortion field. Today,
Speaker 1: Apple is an insanely successful and valuable company. It's constantly
Speaker 1: right there on the verge of becoming a trillion dollar company,
Speaker 1: But there were times in its history when it could
Speaker 1: have joined the ranks of Commodore or Tandy or Atari.
Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing it survived long enough to become
Speaker 1: the powerhouse that is now, and also amazing that much
Speaker 1: of its success is due to stuff that isn't a
Speaker 1: computer at all, like the iPod or the iPhone or
Speaker 1: the iTunes suite. That's pretty phenomenal. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: i'll explore how IBM got into the personal computer market
Speaker 1: and why the company made the decision to get out
Speaker 1: of it. We'll also learn how tons of companies were
Speaker 1: able to create machines that emulated IBM's design and to
Speaker 1: find the PC market as it stands today. If you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future topics of tech stuff, maybe
Speaker 1: there's something you would like an update on something I've
Speaker 1: covered in the past but has changed since the last
Speaker 1: time I covered it. Maybe there's a brand new technology
Speaker 1: or a company or a person in tech that you
Speaker 1: think I should cover. Or maybe there's someone you would
Speaker 1: like me to interview or have on as a guest host.
Speaker 1: You need to let me know. Send me an email.
Speaker 1: The address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line on Facebook or
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Speaker 1: And remember you can watch me record podcasts live every
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Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday. Just go to twitch dot tv slash
Speaker 1: tech stuff. You can jump into the chat room and
Speaker 1: chat with other fans and chat with me as well,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon for
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