World of Apple

Read the other parts of this series:

Part 1 – 1976 – 1986

Part 3 – 1996 – 2006

Apple Computer was now 10 years old and was dominating the personal computer industry but things were not looking good, Steve Jobs was out of the picture running a separate company away from Apple and Sculley was at the head of Apple leading the company into rough waters, in a matter of a couple of years, Jobs was ousted, Wozniak resigned, the Lisa was discontinued and Microsoft released Windows 1.01. If things couldn’t be worse Apple was battling out a lawsuit with NeXT Computer although this was quickly dropped in 1986.

With the Apple III discontinued just a few years after its conception it was lucky that the Apple II was still selling well, but Apple’s focus was split, the Mac team was regularly improving the Macintosh with the Mac Plus and then the Mac 512k.

PowerBook Duo 230, introduced October 1992

The Mac team had another great idea and the whole team was determined to do it; create the worlds first portable computer. In 1989 Apple released the Macintosh Portable, the portable Macintosh featured a 16MHz processor and sold for a whopping $6,500 and weighed in at 7.2 kilograms. But Apple didn’t give up, hiring industrial engineers and teaming up with Sony, Apple managed to produce a greatly improved Mac Portable, they called it the PowerBook, in October 1991 three revisions of the PowerBook were released. The PowerBook 100, which was low-end, the slightly more powerful PowerBook 140 and finally the high-end version known as the PowerBook 170. The PowerBook was the world’s first truly portable computer and has set the way our laptops look to this day.

In 1992 Apple furthered the original PowerBook range with the PowerBook Duo, it was very thin and light for its time and could be inserted into a docking station to expand the systems memory, storage space, connectors and monitor. It was not as successful as expected but it was still a step forward.

Along with its great developments in portable computing Apple was competing directly with Microsoft at trying to further the abilities of the Operating System. System 7 was what Apple produced, although said to be very resource hungry it was a massive upgrade and became the basis for Mac OS for many years to come.

In fact Apple looked like it was going to be just fine without Jobs driving, Apple was turning a good revenue with good portable sales, MacAddict magazine even named the period the “first golden age.”

The “golden age” certainly did not last; Microsoft was on the scene and was starting to steal some of Apples limelight. It seems that consumers thought that Windows was so similar to the Macintosh and could be run on such inexpensive hardware that Windows began to gain quite a bit of popularity. Instead of trying to get one up on Microsoft, Apple simply decided to take them to court for theft of intellectual property. After many years of battling the case was eventually thrown out of court.

“Hey, Steve just because you broke into Xerox’s house before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and take the stereo.” Bill Gates

The failed lawsuit was the least of Apple’s problems with Sculley replaced by Michael Spindler. Apple was suffering. With all the management focused on the lawsuit a severe drop occurred with production and quality within Apple, deadlines had been missed and released products just flopped.

Newton main menu

With a lack of inspiration and passion Apple moved into the consumer electronics market, first it attempted the digital camera market, although it was certainly way ahead of its time it just didn’t catch on with the consumer market, the Quicktake Digital Camera was discontinued in 1997.

More famously Apple released the Newton, it was one of the first personal digital assistants available but it really wasn’t the plan. The idea was to reinvent personal computing and for it to be integrated into daily lifestyle. But as development went on with the Newton the term PDA was coined and it eventually stuck that the Newton was simply an extension of personal computing rather than a reinvention. The project overall was a mediocre success for Apple and certainly helped alleviate the financial and management troubles Apple was suffering at that time.

“I suspect Newton is used as a name because the device can easily be dropped (and probably as easily broken) thus confirming certain precepts of gravitation developed by Isaac Newton.” John C. Dvorak

The Newton became quite a cultural icon, being featured in The Simpsons, The X-Files, Jurassic Park and Hackers.

Apple Newton featured on The Simpsons

In 1994 Apple announced to the shock of many that it was joining teams with its long-time competitor IBM and Motorola in the AIM-Alliance, the “aim” was to create a new computing platform, PowerPC Reference Platform is what came of the alliance but more importantly for Apple they got a speed boost. It was thought that the coupling of Apple software and Motorola hardware would create such performance that it would leave the PC behind. Later in 1994 the Power Macintosh line was started using IBM’s PowerPC microprocessor. The processor was RISC which differed from the previously used Motorola 68k, which meant Apple had to rewrite almost all of its software and offered a form of emulation for pieces of software not compatible with the platform.

Apple had certainly suffered through the late eighties and early nineties, going through 3 CEO’s, lawsuits, and discontinuing many products. Apple entered 1997 with much better prospects, Gil Amelio offered freshness to the executives and the new alliance with IBM and Motorola was picking up new sales for Apple.