From Macintosh to losing the plot
How the Mac arose from an expensive defeat and changed computing forever
THE MAC WAS never intended to be Apple’s star: that was the Lisa, Apple’s first computer with a graphical interface. While impressive, the Lisa was also unreliable and incredibly expensive: when it launched in 1983 it cost $9,995. An IBM PC was around $1,500.
While the Lisa was busy bombing, Jef Raskin’s skunkworks project was working on something much less expensive and, as it would turn out, much more important. Raskin, Burrell Smith and Apple co–founder Steve Wozniak were focusing on a more modest Apple computer without a hard disk, multitasking or as much memory. The team was joined by Steve Jobs, who effectively took it over when Wozniak was recovering from a plane crash. Their project, the Macintosh, was an instant hit.
Software led
Software deserves much of the credit. In much the same way that Lotus 123 sold IBM PCs, the Mac benefited from the launch of Aldus PageMaker in 1985. The combination of PageMaker, the Mac’s innovative What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface and the LaserWriter, Apple’s laser printer, invented a whole new industry: desktop publishing. Bill Atkinson’s HyperCard (1987) was another crucial differentiator. With its linked cards containing text, images, audio and video, it was decades ahead of its time.
Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, fired by CEO John Sculley in part because the Lisa and the Mac weren’t selling as well as Sculley hoped, and partly because Jobs was not an easy man to work for or with. Jobs’ part of the Apple story had barely begun, but at the time it looked like the end of the line for the mercurial co–founder. He was replaced by Jean–Louis Gassée as head of the Mac division and, under Gassée’s watch, Apple made a great Mac and a not–so–great one.
The great Mac was the Macintosh II, a much more powerful Macintosh that
delighted power users and was a big hit with consumers. The not–so–great Mac was the Macintosh Portable, Apple’s first laptop. It was transportable rather than portable and cost twice as much as the first Mac, and Gassée got the axe shortly after its release.
The Macintosh II had begun development without Jobs’ knowledge. Jobs was against features such as expansion slots and color displays, both of which the Macintosh II sported. It was Apple’s first modular Mac and despite an initial price tag of nearly $5,500 it sold well alongside the same year’s compact Macintosh SE. But with both Jobs and Gassée gone, Apple had lost its spark, and over the next decade it became a company of incremental improvements, not game–changing leaps.